Lara
Croft: Cyber Heroine
by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky. Trans. by
Dominic J. Bonfiglio
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
2005
128 pp., illus. 1 b/w. Trade, $53.95;
paper, $17.95
ISBN 0-8166-4390-3; ISBN 0-8166-4391-1.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University
dgrigar@twu.edu
As I write this review of Astrid Deuber-Mankowskys
book, Lara Croft: Cyber Heroine,
todays Technology news from the
BBC shows the headline, "Lara Croft Firm
Gets Bid Approach." Following the link
to the story I learn that interest in
SCI Entertainmentthe company
that currently owns the Tomb Raider
series, the video game featuring the Lara
Croft characterrose after
SCI announced that several companies expressed
interest in buying it. What is interesting
about this report is not the fact that
some entertainment companys stock
earnings have improved but rather that
the BBC news highlights the Lara Croft
name, while omitting the name of the game
from which she originates. This treatment
of the Lara Croft character is consistent
with the insights found in Deuber-Mankowskys
book, for as she shows us Lara Croft wasand,
obviously, still isa "phenomenon,"
one that overstep[s] the boundaries between
the sexes just as she has those between
virtuality and reality" (4-5). For millions
of fans around the world, Lara Croft,
not Tomb Raider, is what drives
their interest, just as for an entertainment
company her image, not the game, showcases
its news. It is this curiosity that Deuber-Mankowsky
seeks to explain in the book.
The book, Volume 14 of University of Minnesotas
"Electronic Mediations" series, is actually
a translation of a work originally written
in German and released in 2001 just after
the Lara Croft sensation had reached its
peak with the release of the first Tomb
Raider movie. Entitled Lara CroftModell,
Medium, Cyberheldin: Das virtuelle Geschlecht
und seine metaphysischen Tuchen, the
book has been updated and expanded to
address changes and additions to the Lara
Croft phenomenon. The "Forward" by Sue-Ellen
Case situates the work in current feminist
and new media perspectives, and the final
chapter, "Afterplay," brings the work
into the present. If after finishing it
last night I wondered how much power the
character still holds on global markets,
the answer, of course, came in the morning
news. Obviously, a lot. So, for those
of us interested in feminism, cyberfeminism,
popular culture, cultural studies, visual
rhetoric, and perhaps even new media and
game studies, the information in this
book still holds weight.
Deuber-Mankowsky is an engaging writer
who builds her argument carefully. She
begins in chapter one with "The Phenomenon
of Lara Croft" as much to taunt any naysayer
to read the book as well as inform her
audiences about the elements underlying
the characters success. From there
she explains the characters origins,
where we learn Lara Croft was preceded
by a plump male character by the name
of Rick Dangerous, whose oversized nose
matched his belly, and who himself owed
a large debt to Indiana Jones. (Oversized
bodily features, by the way, seems to
be the common denominator between Rick
and Lara.) The shift from Rick to Lara,
and Laras success as a "multi-million
dollar advertising commodity" speaks to
the issues the author explores in the
rest of the bookwhat she calls
distinct yet overlapping," "mutually reinforcing"
sources that are "economic in nature .
. . medial, and . . . sexual" (15). Deuber-Mankowsky
follows these three threads, weaving together
everyone and everything from Judith Butler,
Jacques Lacan, Sybille Kramer, Teresa
de Lauretis, Slavoj Zizek, Ernst Kantorowicz,
Enid Coleslaw (a character from Ghost
World), Cartesian theory, The Matrix,
Heidi, and U2, to name a few theorists,
characters, ideas, and rock bands used
to make her argument.
The final analysis reached about how and
why Lara Croft achieved such success and
what that success says about us as human
beings as well as our attitudes toward
women and media would have carried more
of a bang in 2001, perhaps, than it does
now in 2005. For today when a vapid, media
personality like Paris Hilton finds fame
for no other reason than her ubiquitous
physical presence (remarkably oversized
in some places and undersized in others),
no one is surprised when a virtual character,
even one who exhibits more wit and intelligence
than Hilton like Lara Croft, "promotes
the reduction of women to their (female)
bodies" (58), a depressing truth I and
my graduate students arrived at in the
late 1990s after I bought Tomb Raider
and asked them to join me in playing the
game in my Feminist Cyberculture course.
At best, Deuber-Mankowsky suggests that
"sexual difference [can] be understood
as an irresolvable question, a place of
unrest situated at the limits of knowledge,
and which interrogates their foundation"
(82), a view that is as hard to disagree
with today as it would have been then
when I was teaching Feminist Cyberculture.
But her conclusion, that "[t]he question
of sexual difference becomes an antidote
to narcissistic identification and the
metaphysics of gender" (83), seems a severe
judgment even with an argument so well
constructed. Were those really the forces
driving my six-year old "gamer" nephew
to play the game over and over again when
it first came out? Or was it, as he claimed
as I watched him taking the Lara Croft
persona and killing his thousandth bad
guy, the "cool" graphics?