Lara Croft: The Ultimate Young Adventure Girl or the unending media desire for models, sex, and fantasy

A Computer Supermodel

Lara Croft is a computer supermodel. The buxom, dark-haired, gun-totting, intelligent, and suave fantasy woman of the late 1990s helped earned her company more money than real-life supermodels—and in some cases, has gathered more attention. Lara Croft was digitally created as a computer game in 1996 and has "starred" in at least five Tomb Raider games, with more in development.¹ Between 1996 and 2000, twenty-one million copies of Tomb Raider were sold. Sales of the game and related merchandising have reached $500 million.² Her surface appearance seems to be the female equivalent of an Indiana Jones. Her fame and popularity reaches around the globe and she is treated at times as if real:

• Lara has been on more than 200 magazine covers around the world including Time magazine, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone.
• Lara was listed as one of the 100 most creative people in entertainment in Entertainment Weekly's "It" issue.
• Details magazine chose Lara as one of the "Sexiest Women of the Year."
• Lara made the list of Time Digital's 50 cyber-elite in America, ranking her among Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and George Lucas.
• Nominated as the British Ambassador for Technology.
• Greatest cyberbabe in the Guinness Book of World Records.
• Lara has been on television commercials in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
• Lara has more than 1,000 internet fan sites.
• Was on the Forbes list of the wealthiest celebrities.
• Turned down by the Elite Modeling Agency because she wasn't human. Since then the world-famous agency has devoted an entire division to developing virtual models, and other companies are now following suit. (source: www .tombraiders.com/lara_croft/Essays/LaraCroft/default.htm accessed September 18, 2001)

I'm not going to analyze these facts, other than to say that the digitally-created Lara Croft is a cultural phenomenon, garnering more fame, money, and power than many real people. The facts, when placed in context, will, however, reveal what really makes her sell—and it is the same forces that help sell other products: sexy models, surface beauty, and adventure. Tomb Raider is not just a fantasy game having its existence on a computer screen, but the game's performances reaches their tendrils into the wider culture, shaping (as it is in turned shaped by) ideological forces parading as the fun new ideal woman of the 1990s and 2000s, but in reality a cultural creation designed to boost sales and perpetuate an ideal femininity clothed in masculine form. Lara exudes feminine masculinity, and her role, rather than challenging masculine dominance, feeds it and makes this dominance acceptable through feminine curves, seductive lips, and over-sized eyes.

In one screenshot Lara is in the wilderness, in a cave searching for hidden treasures. Yet, at the same time she is in Plato's cave of hidden forms or Baudrillard's world of simulacra. She simulates and makes real what isn't there. She is not just a shadow projected on a cave wall, the crude material representation of an ideal form. Her virtuality bleeds through the illusion and causes one to catch their breath. Not from her life-like image—for the image is angled, cartooned—but from her pouting red lips, her long pony tail reaching to her waist, and her over-sized breasts and eyes all carved from the virtual media world of an ideal sexuality. She embodies male fantasy, becoming, like a porno star, the empty shell to be filled by male desire. Yet her outward appearance is coded with much more than just a knock-out body. She's also an adventure model. And many female players find her a role model who can solve her own problems, exuding intelligence in addition to sexiness.

Her angled steel guns...