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Sex Roles (2007) 56:141148 DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9158-0
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The Lara Phenomenon: Powerful Female Characters in Video Games
Jeroen Jansz & Raynel G. Martis
Published online: 2 February 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract The content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about video games. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the portrayal of gender and race in games. Previous research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White. Nowadays, quite a few video games have women in leading parts; Tomb Raiders Lara Croft is the prototypical example. In our study we investigated the so-called Lara phenomenon, that is, the appearance of a competent female character in a dominant position. We also studied the portrayal of men and the race of both male and female characters. We did a content analysis on the introductory films of 12 contemporary video games. Our results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did. They were portrayed with a sexualized emphasis on female features. Most game characters belonged to the dominant White race, the heroes exclusively so.
Keywords Video games . Gender . Race . Stereotypes
Playing electronic games on a personal computer, a game console, a handheld device, or on the Internet is a relatively new, but increasingly popular, kind of mediated entertain-
ment. The popularity of video games1 has arisen alongside the publics expression of serious concerns, in particular with respect to the effects of violent games (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999; Thompson, 2002). The scientific community has responded to these worries by executing dozens of studies about the effects of playing video games (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Sherry, 2001).
Far less attention has been devoted to game content. A small number of research projects have been done to analyze the way the world is represented in video games. Generally, the results of these content analyses show two things: first, the ubiquity of violence (Braun & Giroux, 1989; Children Now, 2001; Dietz, 1998; Haninger & Thompson, 2004; Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini, 2003; Thompson & Haninger, 2001), and second, the stereotypic portrayal of gender and race men...