In addition to videogames, Lara Croft has starred in three feature films, and she is more popular than any super model in the world, having appeared on the covers of over 1200 magazines by 2016 (Arrojas, 2016). Its main protagonist, Lara Croft, has become a significant popular culture icon who has had a powerful influence on gaming and popular culture since her creation. Since the game’s creation in 1996, Tomb Raider, including its sequels and various spin-offs, has sold at least 58 million copies worldwide (Videogame Sales Wiki, n.d). Many of these debates are manifested in discussions surrounding videogame heroines, and in particular, Lara Croft, who is the heroine of the long-standing Tomb Raider videogame series. In the videogame industry, the pay gap between male and female developers, and the lack of female developers in senior positions, for example, have also become central issues (Makuch, 2018). The #MeToo movement has recently put a new spotlight on women’s rights in the entertainment industry, and more films with female directors, such as the celebrated Wonder Woman (2017) film directed by Patty Jenkins, are being released on the big screen. Moreover, women’s absence in key positions in the entertainment industry is also being questioned.
For example, recently even the age-old Disney princess narratives, that have deeply embedded patriarchal narratives, have been rewritten: a kiss from the female villain replaces the princesses’ kiss from a male ‘knight in shining armour’ in Maleficent (Stromberg, 2014), and Beauty and the Beast (Condon, 2017) features a rebooted Belle, played by self-proclaimed feminist activist, Emma Watson. Although sexist representations of women in the media remain ever-present, some efforts are being made to challenge these portrayals of women and they yield positive (although still limited) results (Curtis, 2017). The representation of women in the media is recently under more scrutiny than ever, as the industry is starting to acknowledge that women have been portrayed in negative ways fueled by patriarchal and misogynistic ideals for decades (Curtis, 2017). Keywords: Postfeminism, videogames, ludology, narratology, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, action heroine. This paper argues, through an analysis of the Tomb Raider reboot (Square Enix, 2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix, 2015), that the new version of Lara Croft, who appears in the three most recent Tomb Raider games, presents a different version of female heroism than that of the older version of Lara Croft, and that this new heroine archetype is replicated in representations of other contemporary heroines in AAA videogames. Moreover, Lara Croft’s narrative now includes a particular focus on her relationship with her deceased mother, and ludological elements of the game change the way in which Lara Croft navigates her environment. Some aspects of Lara Croft’s characterisation that have changed are her wardrobe, her body shape, and the character’s emotional complexity. The rebooted Tomb Raider game trilogy, released from 2013-2018, presents a new version of Lara Croft, who is a departure from the postfeminist action heroine archetype that Lara Croft exemplified before the character’s reboot in 2013. Lara Croft, the heroine of the popular Tomb Raider videogame franchise, is a representative of femininity in contemporary popular culture. The New Lara Phenomenon: A Postfeminist Analysis of Rise of the Tomb Raider by Janine Engelbrecht Abstract
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