Yesterday, I published a new video. Is Lara Croft a true pioneer, a problematic tolerance, or someone trapped in the grey area between the two? Through both developer quotes, journalistic opinions, academic analysis and the personal angle, I dive into the original first lady of gaming.
Here below is the opening of my video, my thesis introduction if you will. You'll find the video itself below, and I hope it's enjoyable as well as informative.
Lara Croft. For anyone who's into gaming, you need very little introduction. I've done a whole video on how she was portrayed as a character, and plenty of others have done retrospectives on the game mechanics, on the development history, on basically every aspect of Lara Croft. But there's something that actually got me interested recently.
On my original video, there was a comment (I'll display it for you) basically saying that the person who was commenting wasn't sure whether the Lara Croft of the Legend, Anniversary and Underworld era having women as antagonists was more or less empowering to her as a woman.
And that got me thinking eventually after a prolonged period of not knowing what to make of it. I don't normally do this for comments. This was just something that activated some brainworms.
Lara Croft since her inception has been a controversial figure. On the one hand, Lara Croft has been seen as an empowering figure for women, someone who broke through gender boundaries for the medium and has become an icon of media in general, basically. But on the other, her exaggerated proportions and quite a bit of her marketing, especially from the Core Design era, has shown her in a less favourable light with many calling her sexist or a male fantasy or even – unfortunately - exploitative.
But where does the reality lie? And what about the people who actually created her? What were their opinions on the subject? How has this question evolved as she has evolved?
Because a lot of the criticism that I remember about this aspect of her comes from the Core Design era, that period between 1996 when she first debuted to 2000 when her final PlayStation entry debuted. And then we had to wait before Angel of Darkness came along and nearly killed the entire franchise.
Tomb Raider is complicated from this angle, and that's not even touching on the fact that she is a British white woman going to areas of the world that either were colonised by the British or had colonisation from other powers, and taking their stuff basically. Lara Croft is a morally questionable figure from so many angles, even today. And the series is continuing to try and reconcile that with today's wish to allow cultures to look after, display, and own their own artifacts after a prolonged period of them being in overseas museums. I've got my own opinions on the subject. They are not a part of this video.
What I will be looking at is: is Lara Croft an empowering figure for women, a sexist symbol of male fantasy, or is she more likely somewhere stuck between them?
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