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[- Lara Croft
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By Aileen, Section Filter It Yourself!
Posted on Tue Apr 15th, 2003 at 04:44:00 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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Filtered through: 20 years of feminism
Some time ago, I wanted to go into my workroom at home, but I found the room full of male persons of various ages and sizes crowded around a computer screen playing Tomb Raider together. They all looked terribly guilty, when they saw me standing in the doorway, and immediately began to explain that they know it is dreadfully sexist, the way Lara Croft is depicted, but they just like the game. Just the game. It wasn't a discussion I wanted to engage in.
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Instead, I squeezed past them to my computer, went to the Motherboard website and started the RealPlayer video of Motherboard's SwitchBitch performance with "Lara Croft" executing commands like "run", "jump", "turn left", over and over and over. Then I just walked out of the room.
Twenty years ago, I would probably have engaged in an earnest discussion about what implications the portrayal of Lara Croft has for women, all women, and I might have felt some concern about how much my mother-in-law likes the game. Now, though, there is Motherboard's Lara Croft, perfectly poised to run, jump, shoot, in between the dancing babies of the Virtual Mosque and the Frankenfurbies. The contrast between Motherboard's Lara Croft and the game-players' Lara Croft was so funny that no further discussions were needed. After twenty years, it feels good to just laugh. |
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