Cyberbimbos

Woman as a ‘passive spectacle’ seems to apply to a lot of female characters in games: she is an object to look at in the game, and she can be manipulated even more literally by the audience. That simple viewing pleasure is disrupted by the fact that the female characters are as much part of the action as the male characters and as important to play in many games (they are active rather than passive). Helen Kennedy discusses the issue in depth looking at Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. She suggests that “it could be argued that through having to play Tomb Raider as Lara, a male player is transgendered: the distinctions between the player and the game character are blurred.” (http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/)

Kennedy does not conclude one way or the other, whether or not Croft is a “cyberbimbo or a feminist icon.” Most of my Tomb Raiding experience is related to the movies and other such after-effects of a popular new media character, and I sort of feel like she is more on the cyberbimbo side. In fact, almost all of the games I’ve ever played, the women are represented artificially. Costume is obviously not important in terms of game realism—otherwise women could not go around in little outfits kicking arse. Maybe this is an offshoot of comic book characters; the superwoman types. Obviously though, realism is not something actually sought after for all aspects of gaming and this is especially true for representing women. It is probably related to why representing sex is also so problematic. Artificial sex = porn.

J Varani