Virtual Babes: gender, archetypes and computer games

21 Pages·2000·0.05 MB·English

Virtual Babes: gender, archetypes and computer games
Ms Amanda du Preez
Instructional Designer: New Technologies
Bureau for University Teaching
University of South Africa, Box 392, Pretoria, 0003
[phone]
[phone]
[email protected]
Http://home.mweb.co.za/dp/dpreeaa/research/index.html
‘Identities in Action!’
Virtual Babes: gender, archetypes and computer games.
Amanda du Preez
Instructional Designer,
Bureau for University Teaching
University of South Africa, Box 392, Pretoria, 0003, Republic of South Africa
[email protected]
http://home.mweb.co.za/dp/dpreeaa/research/index.html
Abstract
With the advent of new technologies expectations of new gender relations and
(de)constructions also came. How is gender constructed in the age of the cyborgism? Do
old gender traits and hierarchies prevail or do the fluid ether and augmentations of body
parts allow for a move toward transgenderism or postgenderism? In fact, can we and
should we move beyond gender?
With the occurrence of phenomena such as gender swapping, virtual sex, virtual stalking
and virtual rape online, gender as a construction, is still high on the electronic agenda. As
Theresa Senft explains "You may not believe in gender, but gender believes in you".
This paper will focus on the gender construction of selected virtual game characters, by
implementing an archetypal psychological approach. The "virtual babes" that will be
discussed are Lara Croft of Tomb Raiders, Elexis Sinclaire of Sin, Ultravixen from the game
with the same title and All New Gen(der) from the Bad Code game. These virtual
characters will provide interesting visual clues about the state of gender identity online.
Without simplifying or predicting, most of these virtual characters are still handicapped
by problematic fin de millennium femme fatale traits, whereas only a few playfully
deconstructs traditional gender identities. Furthermore, the fact that most of these ”virtual
babes” are mainly created and absorbed at this stage by an adolescent male audience,
contribute greatly to their specific gender characteristics. In fact, it seems as if the promise
of experimental and interesting gender relations are not always realised and that the
greatest part of virtual female characters are still portrayed with the same gender
prejudices in tact. It's gender as usual for most "virtual babes".
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‘Identities in Action!’
Supervixen
Come down to my house
Stick a stone in your mouth
You can always pull out
if you like it too much
Make a whole new religion
A falling star that you cannot live without
And I'll feed your obsession
There'll be nothing but this thing that you'll
never doubt
A hit is hard to resist
and I never miss
I can take you out
with just a flick of my wrist
Make a whole new religion
A falling star that you cannot live without
And I'll feed your obsessions
There is nothing but this thing that you'll
never doubt
This thing that you'll never doubt And I'll feed your obsession
The falling star that you cannot live
without
I will be your religion
This thing you'll never doubt
You're not the only one
You're not the only one
Now I want it too much
Now I want it to stop Now I'm lucky like a falling star fell over me
Bow down to me
Written by Garbage (S. Manson / D. Erikson / S. Marker / B. Vig) © 1995 Vibecrusher Music / Irving Music, Inc.
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Introduction
Do you miss playing Pac Man at the local corner café1? Do not despair for you can now
download the friendly dot-eating chap onto your PC. In fact currently video game arcades
are mushrooming all over malls and console and computer games2 are blooming into mega-
businesses. Old favourites such as Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the squeaky hedgehog
and Duke Nukem, the first quintessential first person three dimensional shooter, are
steadily making way for a new generation of game characters. On the forefront of this
invasion is the well-toned Lara Croft from Tomb Raiders-fame, who probably single-
handily saved Sony from a very uncertain financial future.
Video and computer games have gained tremendously in popularity, possibly because
they present consumers with their first real taste of interactive media. At the same time
these games have been clouded in controversy ever since their inception in the early
1980’s. These games are mainly aimed at the youth market (8-18 years) and just as other
youth media such as comic strips and rock’n’roll were (and are perhaps still)
controversial, games have also been scrutinised for their sexists and violent contents. In a
sense computer games continue the legacy of the comic strip for it is exactly in the
”mytho-poetic language of the comic strip” (Cotton & Oliver 1994:205) that these games
find their roots. Spiderman and Superman may belong to a passing age, but their spirit
lives on through these mega-popular virtual game characters. These brilliant new stars of
the screen will form the focus of my analysis.
1. The category of ”Virtual babes”
The category ”virtual babes” as it will be applied within the premises of this paper refers
to the phenomena of virtual female characters that have been designed for interactive video
and computer games specifically. In other words these are virtual personalities with whom
players interact while playing these games. My analysis will mostly deal with female
virtual characters, which is not an indication that male virtual characters are not
worthwhile examining. In fact, if anything, it only reveals a specific preference.
Some of the virtual babes that will make their appearances here are, Lara Croft from Tomb
Raiders, Elexis Sinclaire from Sin, All New Gen(der) from the VNS Matrix game entitled
Bad Code, Ultra Vixen from the computer game with the same name and other lesser
known virtual corporealities. My analysis of these virtual personalities will differ both in
intensity and scope. The identification of archetypal themes carefully hidden behind these
virtual characters' deadly seductive appearances, will however form a cohesive theoretical
framework for my probing. In other words different archetypal images will be identified,
as well as how these archetypes are re-invented and re-imagined into virtualities via
computer games. The ways in which these re-invented archetypes feed back into the
gender constructions of these "virtual babes" will be elucidated.
2. An "archetypal psychological" approach?
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‘Identities in Action!’
Proposing an archetypal approach as part of a gender analysis may seem odd at first. This
does not indicate that I will uncritically aligning my analysis with a Jungian reading. The
feminist critique of Jung's universalising archetypes and the disempowering effects thereof
on women specifically, have been widely published (Battersby 1989; Daly 1978; Wehr,
1988). Jung's implied integration between anima (female counterpart) and animus (male
counterpart) favours one sex only. Men were encouraged by Jung to synthesise their
anima and animus during their individuation process, while women's explorations of the
animus were treated with suspicion. Jung even referred to women who explored their
masculine traits as "animus possessed" or as possessing a "negative animus". Clearly the
Jungian system values the animus as an exclusively male category, being not satisfied with
that alone, also co-opts femininity as a positive male attribute. Moreover men's
synthesised femininity is valued more than the feminine counterpart found in women.
However, my identification of reworked archetypes in a post-industrial society moves
closer to James Hillman's post-Jungian "archetypal psychology". Although Jung is
identified as "the first immediate father of archetypal psychology" (Hillman 1983:20) he
still sees the archetypal as anthropological, cultural and spiritual in that they transcend the
empirical world of time and place. Archetypes are therefore timeless concepts that are not
in themselves phenomenal, according to Jung. On the other hand, Hillman describes
archetypes as always being phenomenal and "embodied".
Hillman arguments convincingly that archetypes do not belong to psychology or the
psyche only. Archetypes are psychoid phenomena that influence other fields and sciences
from the outset (Hillman 1972: 217). The connection between archetypes and the
imagination becomes explicit within an archetypal psychological approach. What makes
archetypal psychology relevant for this paper's exploration of virtual game characters is
that archetypes present themselves firstly and formerly as "dream-images, fantasy-images,
poetic-images" (Hillman 1983:6). These virtual characters under discussion can best be
described as collective dream/fantasy/poetic-images of our time. They appeal to our
imaginations, because they appeal to the archetypes of our time. By focussing on virtual
game characters the archetypes that are re-invented and re-circulated in our time can be
uncovered. As indicated earlier archetypes are not fixed unchangeable entities that
overcome us. Different periods and cultures create their own archetypal images. Different
ages have different imaginations, which account for different re-inventions of archetypes.
In this paper we will identify different archetypes at work in the gender construction of
virtual characters and in the process we will ask: What archetypes are imagined in an age
of virtuality? More importantly: How do these newly cultivated archetypes influence
gender construction?
3. Lara Croft: desirably untouchable
"Maybe the reason you've never been man enough is you've always been a man"
"You know how it really hurts to get kicked right between the legs? Wuss"
Copy from Tomb Raider II advertisements
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‘Identities in Action!’
The meteoric rise to fame came unexpectedly to Core Design, the creators of Lara. They had
no idea their creation would become so popular. Once released Lara became the instant idol
of every sub-teenage boy in the western world and older "boys" as well. Who said falling in
love with a few million pixels on a screen is not possible? "Real men drool over a hi-tech
drawing - the ideal girl lives in virtual spaces" writes Mirand Sawyer in a cover-article on Lara
Croft (The Face, June 1997). I will however argue that it is no coincidence that the so-called
”ideal girl” is a virtual construction. In fact, it comes as no surprise. Anyone who has visited
the site called Real Doll - The world's finest love doll will known that the ideal girl can either
be virtual, as in Lara's case, or an "ultra flesh-like silicone" mock-up, as in the case of real
dolls.3 It seems that in an age of ultra-sophisticated technologies the chances of the ideal girl
being a ”real” flesh and blood specimen are becoming slimmer by the day.
Although Lara first made her appearance as a cyber-character, she now has human stand-
ins. Usually it would be the other way around, but Lara has such a presence on the screen,
that her cyber-character calls for flesh and blood embodiment. The first Tomb Raider game
sold over 1.8 million copies world wide since its launch in 1996. Three follow-ups were
released, the latest always every bit as interactive and explosive as the previous.4 At the
time of finalising this paper Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation was released. Just in time
to hit the Christmas shelves.
The visual clues supplied by Lara provide ample explanation for her popularity. Leggy
Lara is usually clad in very short shorts, with clinging tops and boots to kick ass. She is
also armed with gun, knife and harpoon lately and more than ready for action. The fact
that Lara is top heavy, to say the least, is another visual intimation or rather a visual pun.
Lara’s breast size would make Dolly Parton, Pamela Anderson and old Barbie envious.
Add to that her superhuman agility and no-nonsense sex appeal and you have a winner.
Born from British aristocratic descend Lara gets on with her business, while looking
perfectly poised. She is an object of desire, without being overtly coy. Alluring yet
unattainable. The unattainable perfect girl, exactly because of her virtuality. It is Lara’s
unattainability that interests me most. How does it link up with the way in which her
gender is constructed? What myths are at work here?
One of the key elements of the game is its third person perspective, which opens up
interesting interpretative possibilities. Usually PC and video games are played in the first
person or allow for multiple player options that are also played in the first person. In
other words the player becomes the character and the screen shows his/her point of view.
This is not the case with Tomb Raider. The designers of the game wanted to try out a new
perspective in game playing, namely that of the third person. Core, the designers of Tomb
Raider, however, still wanted a visual character in the game. "It wasn't a shoot'-em'-up
game and we wanted the character to be coy and stealthy and agile. It just fitted more with
a woman” says Adrian Smith, Core product designer (Sawyer 1997:62). This means that
when you, as player, enter the game you look onto and manipulate the main character of
the game, namely Lara.
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‘Identities in Action!’
The choice of a leading female character was therefore a very strategic and calculated move
on the side of Core design. The designers had to choose a character with which their
predominantly adolescent male audience could easily associate. Keeping in mind that 90%
of game-buyers are male, choosing a female character seems an obvious choice. The Core
design company admits that "psychologically a male playing the game will be more
involved with a woman character in some macho protective little farty way" (Olafson
1996:164). Lara was the perfect answer to their third person designing perspective.
Although the player catches the odd glimpse of Lara's slanted brown eyes and luscious
lips while playing, he gets to watch her mostly from behind. (And what a behind it is!)
Therefore when playing Tomb Raider the player, who is predominantly male, not only
gets a prime almost voyeuristic panoramic view of the well-shaped Lara, he also gets to
control her every movement. Could this be the fulfilment of an old voyeuristic dream -
except in this version you also get to control the actions as well.
The voyeuristic impulse is however frustrated or fuelled, by the fact that Lara is not a
mutable, defenceless naive girl. On the contrary Lara is heavily armed not only literary but
metaphorically speaking as well. Even your best attempts at "disarming" her, by catching
a naked glimpse of those wonderful assets are frustrated. At the end of one of the Tomb
Raider versions Lara steps into the shower. When the player tries to peek a view, she
rebukes him by saying: "Haven't you seen enough?" before she closes the door.
However, there are those who can never get enough and who will apparently back Lara in
a corner during the game so they can flick the camera view across her remarkable chest!
But such a rather brutal act will not upset the incredible Lara. She probably would not
even notice, because she is virtually perfect. She allows you to leer and drool over her,
without ever assessing herself to you. This explains the proliferation of naked Lara
pictures on some websites, going by the Nude Raider trademark. In fact when visiting
game discussion forums, one of the first postings you will probably stumble across are
instructions of how to download patches to undress Lara and other (s)heroes. "You
haven't lived until you have seen [Lara’s]5 tits" a keen game participant informs us before
sending the information of how to go about it.
The proliferation of these seedy sites does not change anything about the inaccessibility of
Lara. If anything they only fuel her popularity and makes her more desired and admired.
You can play Lara but you can never have her. She simply won’t let you. In this sense
Lara shares a lot of characteristics with the construction of the femme fatale archetype.
She is beautiful, but out of reach. She seduces without giving herself. Except that in Lara’s
case she seems quite oblivious to the effect she has on her predominantly male audience.
(You may well ask how one can tell if a virtual character is oblivious or not!) I say this
because Lara’s gender construction is in my opinion not a unilateral femme fatale
construction. Lara does not set out to seduce, if she does - it's your problem. She does not
seduce with the intent to ”kill”, although her unattainability is deadly. In fact Lara’s
appeal links up more with another archetypal female construction in my opinion, namely
that of the goddess Artemis. This does not mean that the Artemis archetype is not also a
femme fatale construction. I will however argue that although the Artemis archetype is
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‘Identities in Action!’
fatal in her own right, she is so for different reasons.
3.1 Lara Croft as an ever evasive Artemis
How does the Artemis archetype reincarnate itself in the virtual character of Lara? For
starters both come from ”influential” families. Artemis was the out of wedlock daughter of
the upper-god Zeus and Leto. Lara Croft is the privileged daughter of Lord Henshingly
Croft, British aristocrat. Artemis is the goddess of hunting who retreats into the forest.
Lara finds herself constantly in some exotic destiny or retreat. If it is not the peaks of
Tibet (Tomb Raider Gold), it is the icy Antarctic (Tomb Raider III), or the Great Wall in
China (Tomb Raider II) or some lush tropical jungle somewhere. Artemis is armed with
silver crossbow made for her by the Cyclops. Lara is armed with gun, knife, harpoon,
rocket launcher and more. Artemis is sworn to her virginal state. Ginette Paris in Pagan
Meditations describes Artemis as the "absolute virgin _ her virginity is inviolable and
unnegotiable" (1986:115). In Lara's case all the evidence indicates that she is also faithful
to her untouched state.
Artemis is furthermore described as unwilling to compromise her independence and
therefore she spends most of her time with her fellow nymphs in seclusion. Lara is a bit of
a loner herself. In fact in the short biography provided by Core Design we are informed
that Lara became who she is after her plane crashed during a ski-holiday. Stranded alone in
the Himalayas Lara's survival tactics kept her miraculously alive. The survival ordeal made
her go through an initiation rite of some kind, which changed her outlook on life
completely. During this survival struggle Lara transformed herself from upper-class brat to
seeker of truths. Similarly when Zeus approached the young Artemis and asked her which
gifts she wanted, one of the gifts she asked for was the gift of light. Bearing light, in the
case of Artemis, and exploring lost civilisations for lost artifacts and therefore searching
for lost truths, in the case of Lara, are two very closely related activities. In both Lara's
virtual biography and Artemis's mythical existence similar events are duplicated, which
makes the linking between these two figures all the more plausible.
The resemblance does not stop there, for both Lara and Artemis are independent,
headstrong and women of conviction. Toby Gard, the artistic creator of Lara, confirms this
by describing Lara as a "tough, self-reliant, intelligent woman [who] confounds all the
sexist clichés apart from the fact that she's got an unbelievable figure. Strong independent
women are the perfect fantasy girls - the untouchable is always the most desirable"
(Sawyer 1997:65). Gard's emphasis on the untouchability of Lara ties up convincingly
with Artemis's life of aloofness. Especially male intruders and those with voyeuristic
inclinations were in danger. Actaeon's horrible death proofs that Artemis will not tolerate
Peeping Toms. In the same vein Lara shrugs off preying eyes before she stepping into the
shower with the words: "Haven't you seen enough?"
Yet the way in which Tomb Raider is constructed with its third person perspective
perpetuates and simultaneously challenges the Artemisian fear of intrusion. In a sense Lara
and her virtual world are from the start penetrated by the omnipresent third person
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voyeuristic glare of the player. The fact that the player can not surrender completely to
his voyeuristic impulses, for if he should do so the game will be lost, allows interesting
extensions and overlapping of real and virtual personalities. The player has to associate
with Lara in order to make her act. Although the player is in control of Lara's moves he
has to extend himself into Lara. Lara becomes the player's avatar or extended embodied
representative within the virtual game environment. In order to play successfully the
player and avatar merges. Frank Biocca (1997) refers to this phenomenon as "progressive
embodiment". What this basically entails is that the physical body is adapting to the
technological interface, just as the interface is adapting to the body. The body’s senses are
immersed in technology on route to a state of so-called total embodiment required for
information intensive communication. Playing a computer game, which is highly
interactive, requires a certain amount of immersion or soaking of the body with the
technological interface.
The predominant male audience therefore has to immerse with the interface when playing
Tomb Raider. They have to become "one" with Lara. One may even go so far as to suggest
that the predominant male audience have to gender switch to play Tomb Raider. Lara
seduces men into playing a woman. It is very interesting that when men actually decide to
play a woman, they choose to play a woman such as Lara. She is beautiful, smart and
"man enough" for any man. In other words: She is a "goddess".
The underlying androgynous tones should be obvious. According to such an androgynous
interpretation Lara is a male fantasy of a lost androgynous virtual "other" or missing half.
Playing Tomb Raider could then possibly symbolise a reunion between "real" masculinity
and "virtual" femininity. In most versions of Platonic androgyny it basically amounts to
the joining of inflated masculinity and imagined femininity in any case. Lara may just be
such a male apparition of "perfect" or hyper-femininity in the Platonic sense. The fact
that Lara is created by men and for men therefore plays a significant part in her gender
construction. As Lara's creator Toby Gard stated earlier - it is the untouchable girls who
are the most desirable. It is ironic that Gard's statement would have been received
favourably during the late nineteenth century as well. In fact aloofness and untouchability
were considered valuable characteristics of the femme fatale during this period. Oscar
Wilde's Salome (1891), Flaubert's Salammbô (1863) and Mallarmé's Hérodiade (1867)
were all portrayed as "monstrous, indifferent insensible, Beast[s], who, poisons all that
see her and all that touches her" (West 1993:106). The femme fatale was admired
especially for her indifference. I hinted earlier that Lara is oblivious to obnoxious perverted
behaviour, exactly because she is indifferent. Nude pictures can never disarm her, for they
are mere phantasms of a phantasm. How can one phantasm hurt another? Lara is desirably
untouchable and that is how her creators want to keep her. After all Tomb Raider is only a
game, as Core's operation's director Adrian Smith, naively reminds us. Yes, but what a
game!
4. Elexis Sinclaire: the eternal sinful woman
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‘Identities in Action!’
"At age 5, she had successfully cloned a frog. It would have been fine, only the clone had
the eyes of a human"
Copy from Ritual Entertainment, 1998
It is no coincidence that the game in which Elexis Sinclaire makes her debut, is entitled Sin.
Elexis's surname (Sin)claire is an explicit clue to Elexis's devious nature. Elexis comes from
a lineage of archetypal dangerous and deceitful women. As one author puts it: "Compared
to her Lara Croft is a school nurse" (1998). The link between women and a sinful nature is
by no means a new one. The ways in which this old theme is reincarnated in the game Sin
will form our focus here.
Sin and the follow-up Wages of Sin, are fully integrated first person and multi-player 3D
games, developed by Ritual Entertainment and released in 1998. As a player you have a
choice of playing either as Elexis Sinclaire, Colonel John R.Blade or the computer hacker
J.C. The story is set in the year 2027 in crime ridden Freeport-city. The police force is
losing their battle against crime and government passed a bill giving individual corporations
the right to form their own private security forces called sec-forces. Colonel John Blade is
the owner of such a sec-force called HARDCORPS. He is investigating the source of a
highly addictive drug called "U4", which may make reference to a state of euphoria. As the
story unfolds all traces lead to the brilliant biochemist Elexis Sinclaire, elusive director of
SinTEK Industries.
Elexis’ life story is a rather sad one. I provide you with a short synopsis for it contain
important information to solve the riddle of Elexis Sinclaire. At the age of two Elexis and
her father, Dr. Thrall Sinclaire, were abandoned by their wife and mother Diane Kettle
Sinclaire. After this sad turn of events Dr. Sinclaire send his young daughter off to the best
boarding schools money could buy. As university professor and research scientist for a
large pharmaceutical company Dr. Sinclaire’s fame grew. Elexis’ mother showed up again
to claim her dues of his growing fortune. Thrall Sinclaire would not allow this kind of
blackmail and in order to escape his estranged wife, he quickly liquidated his assets and
disappeared into the wild jungles with his six-year old daughter in tow. During these jungle
travels Elexis contracted a rare illness and she hovered on the brink of death. She survives
this ordeal and afterwards her father returned to his work with a renewed purpose, namely
to prolong life and to defy death itself. Like her father Elexis was drawn to the sciences
and earned degrees in chemistry, biology, biochemistry in record times. Thereafter she
joined her father at SinTEK Industries and together they began to reshape the world. Their
latest product called Vanity astonished the world with its apparent ability to stop and
reverse the ageing process. After this success her father retired and left SinTEK in Elexis’
capable hands. Her latest experimentation in the field of genetic research has everyone
speculating and some rightly expect the worst. Elexis wants to push the evolution of
mankind ahead by a thousand generations and we are warned that she will stop at nothing
to get what she wants. She will use her considerable beauty, charm and genius to do so.
The rejection of Elexis by her mother during her formative years definitely impacted
negatively on her understanding of life, procreation and motherhood in general. Add to this
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