Lara Croft As The Final Girl

Clive Thompson, over at Wired, takes a look at the appeal of playing as Lara Croft ... and doesn't focus on her physical assets. From the article: "The Final Girl theory emerged in 1985, when Carol Clover -- a medievalist and feminist film critic -- was dared by a friend to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Back then, most feminist theorists loathed slasher films, and regarded them as classic examples of male misogyny. It wasn't hard to figure out why: Thousands of young men were trooping into theaters to cheer wildly as masked psychos hacked apart screaming young women. That really didn't look good. But as Clover sat in the theaters, she noticed something curious. Sure, the young men would laugh and cheer as the villain hunted down his female prey. But eventually the movie would whittle down the victims to one last terrified woman -- the Final Girl, as Clover called her. Suddenly, the young men in the audience would switch their allegiance -- and begin cheering just as madly for the Final Girl as she attacked and killed the psycho."

B. Stevens

Brinke Stevens -- my nomination for favorite Final Girl.

Why I cheer.

I cheered at the end of Texas Chainsaw massacre because that meant the movie was almost over and I could get on to something more interesting. Maybe I'm too much of a geek. *shrug*

May the best X win!

The summary at least misses the point. The audience didn't "switch their allegiances"; in each conflict, they were cheering for the better (generally smarter) of the combatants. That's why those films seldom just have people being killed. Instead:

1. We meet a character
2. We get to see how stupid they are (or greedy, or two faced, or whatever)
3. We get to see what happens to them for it

Then, at the end, we get to see someone who didn't exhibit these character flaws win.

It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits.

--MarkusQ

Re:May the best X win!

"It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits."

Survival traits? Sorry, not even that. And I could, for example, make a pretty good case for greed BEING a survial trait for you and yours.

No, such films are nothing more than grown up versions of the boogyman stories parents would tell their children, all about what happens to little kids who do bad things.

True Neutral?

So does this mean the young men in question would be True Neutral?

This is why

You know, I have an MA in Literary and Rhetorical theory, and this kind of crap is why I left Literary study for Rhetoric and Digital Media when I went for the old Ph.D. The worst part is, I can probably cite most of the papers and books that this woman read, without even finding her references. It gets predictable. Want an alternate reading/viewing? Lara Croft is a modern female version of the "American Adam" archetype, as laid out by R.W.B. Lewis in 1955 in a book by the same name. She's "an individual standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling, ready to confront whatever [awaits her] with the aid of [her] own unique and inherent resources" (p.5).

The point - and I do have one - is simple: the beauty of cultural criticism is that everyone can debate it endlessly, and everyone who's got the right sources can be right! Yay!

Re:This is why

Love your shorts.

Kill Bill

I don't really know about Lara Croft, but I'd say I felt this for Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill. I was like, whoa.. I really want this chick to kick ass!

Cheering?

What I don't get is the mention of cheering when the bad guy killed the dumb girl. Didn't they cheer just as loudly when the bad guy killed the idiot boy? For me it was about getting rid of the stupid idiots no matter what their gender and then putting the agent of destruction away once the job was done.

I call shenannigans on this...

This article just did not have any convincing arguments regarding Lara Croft as a positive thing for female role model. If the intent behind Lara was anything besides selling a game with a sexy icon, then there would be no need for the misproportionate breasts, the sexual innuendos, and the skimpy outfits. If the theory of the "Final Girl" is true, would it not work with any mildly appealing women? Well, the answer to that is even revealed in his article, and that is no; the anonymous gamer, anonymous being indicative of the reliablity of his source, even says that he feels like he's protecting Lara; He's protecting Lara. As much as I dislike the Tomb Raider games, I know enough about them to know that anyone who thinks they are "protecting" Lara is disillusioned and just as misonganistic as any man from the 40's. Lara is not a person who needs protecting; the games make that clear.

Lara is indeed a girl that every boy wants to be with, but not in a plutonic way; they want to control her, and have her be the object of their sexual fantasies.

What are they cheering for?

"Thousands of young men were trooping into theaters to cheer wildly as masked psychos hacked apart screaming young women... Suddenly, the young men in the audience would switch their allegiance -- and begin cheering just as madly for the Final Girl as she attacked and killed the psycho."

Maybe the men weren't cheering for the psycho or the woman, but for the violence itself .

Buffy Anybody?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was originally devised by Joss Whedon (who has a degree in feminist film studies) as the reversal of the girl and the monster enter the alley and only the monster exits. In contrast, with buffy she and the monster enter the alley and only Buffy exits. The first girl is the final girl, without the misogyny.
This is a much closer analogue to Laura Croft, or other fictional kickass ladies like the Major in Ghost in the Shell.

I say bullsh*t

Hmmm the last girl who finally defeats the monster. Isn't this called "survival of the fittest"?

However, I really don't think of Lara as the "Final Girl". She's just a tough girl, period, if not a sex symbol. C'mon, we all know she was famous for her gravity-defying measures, but later was slimmed down to appeal more to the feminine public. I much less identify with her.

Now allow me to compare to another famous treasure hunter.

Indiana Jones

Family: A devout religious man (Junior?)
Studies: Ph. D. in Archeology
Job: Archeology teacher in Barnett College, NY ("X never ever marks the spot")
Reasons for treasure collecting: "It belongs in a museum!"
Favorite Gadgets: His leather whip and a Fedora with a very high sentimental value (belonged to the man who stole the Cross of Coronado).
Sex appeal: "And my mother's ears, but the rest belongs to you."
Most used quotes: "I hate Snakes!", and "Don't call me Junior!"

Lara Croft

Family: Extremely Rich family (can you compete with the Countess of Abbingdon?)
Studies: At home
Job: What job?
Reasons for treasure collecting: Add to her dad's collection, and, once in a while, save the world
Favorite Gadgets: Dual 9 mm Pistols
Sex appeal: Boing, boing, boing!
Most used quotes: ?

I'll take Indiana Jones, thank you.

Funny theory...

I thought it was the Dangerous Chick With Weapons theory (i.e., Resident Evil, Blade Trinity, Aeon Flux, and Ultra Violet). Surprisingly, that was the one thing that didn't happen in the Silent Hill movie. The main chick lost her weapon (a butcher knife) before she could use it on anything, and the cop chick ran out of bullets before she was rendered unconscious. The ending was a bit peculiar since you do have a Final Girl but evil still won out in the end.

the jackals laud the victor

Wait, wait, wait. There's a whole theory based on an audience cheering for the person they expect to see win?

I'm shocked. No, no, not shocked that the audience sided with the obvious soon-to-be victor. That's predictable. I'm shocked that anyone places stock in a theory that suggests that the winner's traits matter in whether the audience sided with that character.

Its also called glory supporting... Just look at

Hey guys....

UKism here but football is exactly the same. For anyone from the U.S. you might as well stop reading right now as i doubt this will make any sense.

"Does anyone know any manchester United supporters from Manchester?"

The fact is people will support whom ever ends up being glorious. In most of these films the girls are against impossible odds, so the men support the "evil henchman/manic killer/giant monster of death" and why?

Well lets get really "medievil"..... Cave men... they are fighting right? Big clans.... Your not going to support the losers are you? Death to the losers.

Anyone whom supports something that loses ends up dying along with it, its built into our genes. The reason the women dont do the same? Well they were not the hunters appently.

She's the one for me.

The valkyrie at my side is shouting and laughing with the pure hate for blood-thirsty joy of the slaughter

And so am I

The fire, baby. It'll burn us both

There's no place in this world for our kind of fire

My warrior woman. My valkyrie

You'll always be mine. Always. And never

Counter interpretation

[All information here shared by my wife with her English masters degree. Any and all misinformation introduced by my transcription of her description of the theory.]

Actually Lara Croft doesn't really fit with the final girl theory. In Carol's definition you can't start with the *final* girl. She goes through a metamorphosis and becomes more masculine as she survives more of the horror.

Interesting points about the final girl theory:

The theory is flawed (all failings acknowledged by Carol Clover, she doesn't assert that this theory is anything grand or definite) in that it assumes that only adolescent males enjoy horror movies. The theory is completely broken if you agree that any women enjoy horror movies.

The theory itself says that the adolescent boys can identify with the final girl without themselves feeling threatened by the killer (who is hunting women), but who demonstrates the traits of a stereotypical adolescent male masculine fantasy (surviving against all odds, strong, capable, etc.). The theory is that this is a way for young men to indirectly experience homo-erotic fantasies. The women are characteristically running from phallic, penetrating objects such as knives and other stabbing weapons. Yet the final girl is also an erotic object herself. She usually has an asexual name (like Sam) and carries a phallic object like a torch, stick, etc.

Yes, the world of literary theory is stranger than you know. o_O

Avert your eyes!

Suddenly, the young men in the audience would switch their allegiance -- and begin cheering just as madly for the Final Girl as she attacked and killed the psycho.

Dude, spoiler alert!

Over analysing things...

I think this is a case of over analysing things a bit to much, the real reason for Laras success is much simpler, the Tomb Raider games simply were good (well, at least the early ones) and one of the first real 3D games of the time. Tomb Raider basically put Prince of Persia into 3D and into a different setting, thats all, the breast thing was for most part an accident that then got used for marketing. If the games would have been not that good, there would have been much less hype and Lara would most likly be long forgotten. After all the Tomb Raider games doesn't even feature excessive use of violence, you defend yourself against a few aggressive animals and thats it, no human killing in TombRaider1 at all. If Tomb Raider really would have been about attracting teenage boys with sexy girls they would have added some more useless violence as well, wouldn't they?

Lara Chooses Danger

Lara Croft isn't the Final Girl because she's not simply beset upon by danger like the victims in slasher movies. She is from a family of archeologists and she willingly places herself in dangerous situations in the name of exploration (and perhaps wealth and fame?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Croft [wikipedia.org]

Angelina Jolie turned the genre around

We have Angelina Jolie to thank for turning the video game movie genre around. Almost all the video game movies before "Tomb Raider" were horrible duds. ("Super Mario Brothers" was actually funny, but that's as good as it got. Few people could sit through all of "Wing Commander".) After "Tomb Raider", most video game movies were successful. It's as big a milestone in film as the first Batman movie, which demonstrated that you can make a good drama out of a comic book.

It speaks well of Jolie as an actress that she was able to bring off the role without it being a joke.

Why men cheer

like other people have said, i don't believe it's about sexism at all, men just enjoy violence and cheer when there's some cool nasty gore going on, irrelevant of who it's happening to...

Alien franchise

All the Alien stories I've seen, be it movies, comics or books, have a Final Girl. Ellen Ripley is of course the most well-known, but there are others, for example in the AvP movie.

Why don't people look at the GAME?

The original Tomb Raider game was different in more ways than the gender of the main character. For starters, it was a BIG change from first person shooters, and looking back, it still stands out for it's differences.

In 1996, first person shooters were already a huge hit with gamers. In general, they tended to be somewhat brainless "if it moves, shoot it" type games(and still are for the most part). There were still some adventure games out there where you had to think your way through the adventure, but the popularity of first person shooters had already started to dominate the thinking of some people. And that's where Tomb Raider came in, as an alternative to that.

Tomb Raider featured extensive puzzle solving as a part of the gameplay. Jump from here to here to flip a lever to open a door, with a time limit on some parts of the puzzle. In many ways, the game would have done well with a male main character but using the same game.

Another feature that helped it do well was the support for 3D accelerators, which were JUST showing up on the market. Before that time, you had software rendering of everything, and to keep the game performance at the proper level, Eidos just couldn't provide high quality graphics(for the time) in software. Hardware acceleration(the original 3Dfx Voodoo chip being the dominant one) made the game look and play a LOT better. So for eye candy, this also had a large effect on how well the game did.

Then you had the subject matter, with Indiana Jones and treasure hunting being popular, a game that had the plot about going into ruins to look for treasure was a good one and it worked well.

You also had HUGE levels for the time. To come out of a pool of water to look UP at some large ruins that for whatever reason were now underground, and feel like the character is small in comparison was different from just about all the other game of the time was a very cool experience. Most of the ruins had animals in them to deal with, not people, so there was the sense that violence wasn't the core of the game.

And then, FINALLY, you had your female main character, with her trying to get all the pieces to the artifact. Obviously teenage boys tend to be drawn to women with large breasts, and many try to make this the center of any theories on why the original Tomb Raider game did well without looking at the other aspects of the game. There were a number of women as well as older players who enjoyed playing for the game design as the primary reason for enjoying the game. It's true that some women enjoyed playing a game where the main character was a woman, and the vast majority of men will enjoy seeing attractive women in a game, but I feel that the other aspects don't get enough attention when Tomb Raider gets mentioned.

Tomb Raider may not have done quite as well without a woman as the main character, but it was still an amazing game, and would have done well.

fit

Darwin would appreciate this.

Identification?

I'm not sure I've ever 'identified' with characters in any medium; and if I have it was more likely during the decision-making dialogue of Planescape Torment than in a spatial puzzle-solving/reaction test game. To my mind Lara is a vehicle, and it's nice to drive a flash car. And the games are perfectly playable from this perspective.

Yet another worthless feminist interpretation

My wife was an English lit major in college. We had lot of arguments about the validity of feminist interpretations of various books and movies. When she came out of class one day convinced that there was a global male conspiracy to disenfranchise women I just about lost it. I mean honestly, its tough enough to get more than 4 guys to agree on anything more complex than which football game to watch, and that is not a trivial task in and of itself on some Sundays.

Anyway, years later I stumbled onto this link http://www.dourish.com/goodies/decon.html [dourish.com] online. It pretty much summarizes how to deconstruct any book or movie and then turn it around to make it fit whatever interpretation you are looking for.

I don't see any more validity to folks who look for blantantly feminist themes in games, movies, book, etc...than I do with folks who always look at things with an intent to overlay racial overtones. In the end they will find what they are looking for, or at least make it appear as if they do.

Um? No.

Yeah right, we identify with the character. That's why we like Lara Croft so much. So if she didn't look as hot as she does, or if she were a boy or something, the game and movie would be just as popular right?

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

"stopped reading?" you must be new here

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

"Medievalist" did it for me - not that I'm a fan of "Feminist" anything, but what does "Medievalist" even mean?!

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

Heh, because her entire point is bullshit ? ;) PS. Your not.

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

And you call yourself a geek. What a looser. "Medievalist" means she likes to go the RenFaire, "Feminist" means she has higher standards then to waste time on a self important fool like you, and "Film Critic" means she likes to go to the movies. Except for the fact that she views you as a cockroach, she would be a great date for a geek.

I think this relates to the article about a lack of new computer science students: an unacknowledged reason is that geeks don't reproduce very often.

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

You are the only one, and your ignorance and misogyny is showing. Grow up, women are equals, stop associating the extremists of a group as being the extire group.

All groups extremists drag that groups name through the mud - misogynistic punks just like to forget that

Christian extremists drag the name of Christianity through the mud
Muslim extremists drag the name of Islam through the mud
Environmentalism extremists drag the name of Environmentalism through the mud
Animal Rights extremists drag the name of Animal Rights through the mud
Extremist feminists drag the name of Feminism through the mud

do I really need to go on or are you going to wise up and learn that the fundamental tenents of feminism are: equality of the sexes, the right to choose their roles for both sexes, respect between the sexes.

These extremists vary from that. There are whacko feminists who think all sex is rape, while I know several feminists who think porn awesome*: i'm marrying one of them and the other is going the PRODUCE porn. There are whacko feminists who really are "man haters" but they are not the majority by a long shot.

So GROW UP and stop trying to pretend that the minority is the majority: feminism is about equality - not all these things that Rush Limbaugh falsely attributes to it because of some it's more extreme members.

*except like.. snuff porn, and bukakke

(PS: I'm a guy and a *gasp* feminist because I believe in the equality of the sexes!)

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

So GROW UP and stop trying to pretend that the minority is the majority: feminism is about equality - not all these things that Rush Limbaugh falsely attributes to it because of some it's more extreme members.

There are several problems with feminism. One of them is the name. The name doesn't say "equality", it's all about women. Another one is the baggage. There've been so many radical feminists that have been embraced by the movement that there's an instant stigma attached to being a "feminist".

Personally, I don't instantly shut down when I encounter someone describing themselves as a feminist, but I have to admit that I'm slightly less likely to pay attention, because of all the ridiculous shit that's carried the feminist banner. I'm a humanist, or maybe an equalist?, and I do believe that all people should be considered equal until they prove that they aren't.

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

the summary mentioned Lara Croft, Feminist and midievil all in the same moment...

Why would we stop reading? we might miss the 8008I35!

Re:"Medievalist and Feminist Film Critic"

Don't worry about it, I did also. I had mental images of angry^H^H^H^H^H^H feminists, wearing period armor & combat boots, chanting something involving film, men, and penises (Think PCU [imdb.com]) Shame you got so much flack about it.

~nate

Re:Feminists of the world unite!

You are correct. Sex sells. And, violence sells. Sex and violence are very close relatives. Many, if not most, women prefer their sex at least a little violent. Yes, yes, more, more, harder, harder...