Clive Thompson has a typically intriguing piece in Wired this month, this time considering the appeal of Lara Croft - specifically, the way in which male gamers identify with her. He claims that Lara is a kind of interactive 'Final Girl' - the name given by Carol Clover in her book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in Modern Horror Film to the usually female survivors in slasher movies. Clover's rather generous interpretation of male responses to gore flicks - that although they start out cheering on the killer, they gradually begin to side with the imperiled female lead - does sort of segue in with the Lara Croft phenomenon. She is a beautiful young woman continuously attacked by dark forces, and - like the Final Girl archetype - she's the one that moves the plot on, that takes control of the action. An interesting comparison.
When I wrote about the appeal of Lara Croft in the infamous girl issue of Edge, I went for a traditional Freudian interpretation, suggesting that she was, in fact, a fetishistic response to, and signifier of, male castration anxiety. Now I don't know what to think. Frankly, I'm done with the whole issue of feminist/neo-Freudian pop culture analysis and I'm not prepared to lose anymore sleep over it!
