Lara Croft

As I read Maja Mikula's essay relating gender with video games, I realized that she made many good points and brought up various arguments having to do with the main character of the game, Lara Croft. One that I found stuck out the most was one that was brought up at the beginning which was is Lara Croft a good role model? There are many people that would think that she is a good role model. She has a perfect body and her job is to fight off harm. What is wrong with that? Unfortunately, that is the problem. Nothing is wrong with her and she is perfect. I think that this makes her a poor role model. Girls who look at Lara will compare themselves to her and they will feel degraded. They may try to be as good as her which will be impossible because Croft is a fictional character. It is almost like Lara gives real girls false hope.

Lora Croft

One claim that Mikula makes about gender and video games using Lora Croft is that men and women have different reactions and desires when faced with a female character such as Lora Croft. Men feel that they must protect, care for and control Lora who for them is a sex symbol that they develop a personal "relationship" with. For women they tend to want to identify with her, using Lora Croft as a way for them to access their inner strength, femininity, and fearlessness. The article says that Lora Croft is both heroine and sex symbol, she is what you want her to be and that regardless of gender people developed personal connections to her character. I would agree that men and women would look at a dominant female and have different ways of interacting with such a character. Men, who would be intimidated by someone like Lora Croft, seek to control her and sexualize her, whereas women endeavor to become her and seek to embody her "all in one" personality.

Gender and Videogames

     One claim that Mikula makes is that when a man plays as Lara "His experience of the game thus encapsulates the patriarchal rhetoric of 'control' and 'care', by a male subject of a female object.  Ironically, even when offered empowerment to view themselves in the position of the subject and see Lara as the object of their 'control' and 'care', with her exaggerated sexuality subjected to their disciplining gaze"(Mikula 183).

     This claim bases itself off of the basic instinct of a man to protect the woman.  I do not agree that all woman need protecting and that it is solely the man's job to protect and care for women, but it does play  on the male's instinct to be the protector and provider.  In a lot of cases this is true, but it is not entirely true, and this video game is a way to let men act on this urge to feel "manly" and protect something, even if it isn't real.  I think it shows that women can be strong, and despite that fact that she is "hot" and says sexual things, she does things that many men cannot do.  She is the ideal woman to many men, but there is nothing wrong with this, because it is a video game and it is not real, and most people that play games know that it is not real.

Gender and Videogames

Maja Mikula makes many interesting claims in her essay about the role of gender in video games, and it is a world I cannot be further removed from. Her views on what video game characters represent and how players relate to them I can empathize with.
Firstly, by reading just this essay alone, I am surprised at how closely relate to fictional video game characters. I thought you just play the game, and in the stretch of time that you are playing the game you delve into the character and that's it, it does not affect yourself at all when not playing the game. That is no the case however, when Maja cites people relating to the character Lara in ways like wanting to spend more time with her and protecting her. My previous thoughts to this essay was that video game characters were left more on the vague side in their characteristics to focus more on the player themselves and what the game entails, not just the character.
Another point she makes is how unrealistically Lara is portrayed in the game, with many sexual attributes enhanced and it is not accurately portraying women. I can understand this point but as a rebuttal I say, how can anybody in a video game accurately represent a person? It is a world of fantasy where everything is embellished and enhanced, every male character isn't an accurate portrayal of men in either. In any video game, realism and accuracy is not going to exist and for a reason, because it is a videoGAME, not a virtual reality.

Lara Croft

In her essay, Mikula makes the claim that male gamers prefer to feel like they have control over their female avatars while females prefer to identify with their icons. She goes on to say that within the context of the game Tomb Raider, Lara allows both males and females to play out the game in the context that they see most fit (the women choosing to identify and the males choosing to control). Because Laura is physically attractive, this compels males to want to look at her, “spend time” with her and control her. Mikula argues that women appreciate the fact that Lara is so worldly and tough. I have to disagree with her idea; I think that men are much more comfortable controlling Lara than women are identifying with her. Her “hotness” outweighs her intellect in terms of where the attention of the gamer is going. If she retained the same “personality” but she wasn’t hypersexualized, I doubt that males would have much interest in the game. Since male customers make up most of the game’s profit, I think the game is much better tailored to suiting male fantasies, no matter what the makers claim. 

Gender & Videogames

"Lara shocks feminist writers; Lara excites feminist writers. There are many Laras, and many positions hat can be taken on her politics. She is indeed a sex object, she is indeed a positive image and a role model; and many things in between."(189).

Lara is a representation of many things, nothing, and essentially anything you'd like her character to be. She is a fictional character seen as several things which makes her unique. She was the first female heroine; so, some see her as influential, others see her solely as an object of their pleasure and then there are those that see her character as someone they'd need to protect further because she's a woman. In the market for entertainment, sex is primarily advertised, and then influence and lastly for the gamers (if it's a game, like Lara/Tomb Raider). One claim that Mikula makes is that the makers target both genders with Lara. I agree with this because they make fair arguments for both sides, for women, there weren't really any girl gamer icons as Lara, and for men, it's another game for them to play but in a different perspective, playing as a woman. Both men and women win playing this game.

Gender and Videogames

"She is a drag queen and female automaton, dominatrix and queer babe, at the same time, in different ways, for different audiences. We cannot simply answer the questions: 'is she a feminist icon or a sexist fantasy?'; a 'male fantasy' or a positive image'? But we can state, with some certainty, that she has certainty been taken up by feminists, and used for feminist ends." (188).

As the quote clearly displays, Lara is a confusing character. She is neither a sex nor feminist icon. If I had to choose though I think I would say she is more of a sex icon. The producers of the game know that they were targeting a male audience, and used this fact to their advantage. They knew that since boys are attracted to "hot" girls they could use Lara as an advertising tool for the game. Also based on what the people who played and talked about the game said they did not see her as a powerful women but rather as someone they had to "care" for.