The Lara Phenomenon: Powerful Female Characters in Video Games

By Jeroen Jansz, Raynel G. Martis. 2007

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about video games. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the portrayal of gender and race in games. Previous research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White. Nowadays, quite a few video games have women in leading parts; Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft is the prototypical example. In our study we investigated the so-called ‘Lara phenomenon,’ that is, the appearance of a competent female character in a dominant position. We also studied the portrayal of men and the race of both male and female characters. We did a content analysis on the introductory films of 12 contemporary video games. Our results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did. They were portrayed with a sexualized emphasis on female features. Most game characters belonged to the dominant White race, the heroes exclusively so.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67df2b20296b7334181e346afa1759880baf3000

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Citations in the corpus

A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games (2009, background): “2006) and gender and sexuality (Braun and Giroux 1989; Dietz 1998; Downs and Smith 2005; Heintz-Knowles et al. 2001; Janz and Martis 2007).”
Sexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games across 31 Years (2016, background): “Jansz and Martis (2007) suggested that strong depictions of female characters, even when paired with sexualized features, may empower female gamers.”
Children's Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development (2010, background): “Opinions differ on whether hypersexualized female characters (such as Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series) deter women from playing, or whether (regardless of her appearance) a powerful female character might attract women (Jansz & Martis, 2007).”
Gender, Simulation, and Gaming: Research Review and Redirections (2010, background): “Furthermore, when female characters are drawn in lead roles, they are almost exclusively White (Jansz & Martis, 2007).”
Sexualized Avatars Lead to Women’s Self-Objectification and Acceptance of Rape Myths (2015, background): “…female characters noted that 77% of the female characters were hypersexualized, yet the authors categorized these representations as evidence of ‘‘the Lara phenomenon’’ described as ‘‘the appearance of a strong and competent female character in a dominant position’’ (Jansz & Martis, 2007, p. 147).”