But the cultural impact of work matters. It's not the only thing that matters. But it REALLY matters. As a critic, to focus solely on the cultural impact of work is, I believe, reductive. To ignore it is, as a critic, irresponsible.
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So, 1990s Lara Croft. Yeah, I played and enjoyed the hell out of the early Tomb Raider games. I was immensely grateful at the time for a female action hero, even one who (let's not kid ourselves) was designed to appeal to male players.
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You can love Lara Croft. But if you don't think that the way she looked had the function--intentional or not--of perpetuating a gaming culture in which men viewed women as objects to whose bodies they were entitled, you're kidding yourself.
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I mean, trust me. I was AMONG DUDES in the 1990s. Dudes thought I was one of them. I know how many, many guys in their teens & early 20s talked abt her, thought abt her. She actively worked to maintain a culture of sexism within video games, gaming sites, gaming magazines, etc.
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And none of this is to say that any individual's enjoyment of those games or of Lara as a character is invalid. Of course it's not. But sometimes we REALLY REALLY want to think that because we liked a thing, therefore it was actually a net good in terms of its cultural impact.
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I loved Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II. And yet, Lara Croft, speaking in broad terms, contributed to a culture in which straight dudes felt that female characters should be designed and women should exist to cater to their desires. Both of these things can be true.
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I mean I think some part of me is still trapped in that goddamn opera house. Holy shit, that fucking place.
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Sometimes ppl respond to arguments like this one with stuff like "Okay, but Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is considered like the hottest dude ever. It's the same. Male heroes are also supposed to be extremely attractive." And no, it's not remotely the same. Because patriarchy.
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No reasonable person, IMO, is actually arguing for, like, a ban on attractive movie stars, or video game heroes, or comic book characters, or whatever. Nor is anyone really saying that female characters should never be desirable or express sexuality.
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
I was thinking about this more, and it occurred to me that one good comparison might be Portal. Chell is unquestionably a beautiful woman, as is her real-life model Alésia Glidewell, but she just isn't sexualised in the way Lara is.
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Yeah, I mean, it's a bit tough too because Portal is a first-person game in which you only rarely really see Chell but I agree that she is a great example of an attractive but not sexualized character.
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