141 - Barbie vs Lara Croft

Alex and Jem compare two of the biggest female protagonists of present times: Barbie and Lara Croft. Which is a better role model? Do they empower or damage the feminist cause?

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Transcript

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to another episode of gaming the system where uh intersectional feminists talk about gaming through a feminist lens today it's um me Jim and Alex and we're um going to be talking um uh a little bit about Barbie we talked um last time about the movie um which we both it really enjoyed and um so we thought it would be really interesting to talk about um the Barbie games which were um popular back in the '90s I think and um and also about how they compared to with and how Barbie Compares with um another feminist icon of the 90s uh Lara CL Croft um so um basically we have a resident expert in these two in Alex so i' I've been to host because I I did play I have played some Tom Raider but I didn't play any of the Barbie games um and um Alex assures me that she has um and so I'm quite interested to um to hear um yeah how you got into which did you play first the Barbie games or the the tomam Raider games oh it's a difficult one I think we start to with tomam Raider cuz that was I was about six or seven I think my team Raider to cuz we had the demo of Team Raider 2 from PC gaming magazine although I can't I think it would have been around the the mid 90s that the Barbie games really got into their own stride um and I played I think the key standar Barbie games were probably the Barbie detective series and there were three of those so there was Barbie detective mystery of the carnival Caper I think is how the title goes it's quite a long one um basically involved solving a crime usually a robbery um at a carnival and it's basically a point and click adventure you steer Barbie around the screen to find Clues and such like um with a magnifying glass and usually you have to chase your as salent who's a cloaked black figure with a black hat and we used to me and my sister used to play together and get very scared whenever he like popped onto the edge of the screen and went away again we're like oh God he's there he's over in that corner we need to go find him um and uh yeah you basically pursue him until you catch him and and uh you get to do interviews as well interview everyone at the uh Carnival and all the voice acting was was like um Mur she wrote levels of over the top you know uh where they were all very caricature characters which was always really fun and then the second one was B detective vacation mystery where the Barbie detective Incorporated team uh went off on a nice holiday to a Manor House of some kind that was on the coast and uh you were going there for a holiday but it turns out there's been another robbery and uh you need to investigate that and then the third one came on to PlayStation because those two were PC uh a couple of years later and that one was on a cruise uh which again was a very interesting setting but very similar in terms of probably I think someone had their jewry stolen from from a cabin if I remember rightly and you had to investigate everyone on the cruise ship um and see which which person it was and they were very good and another game I remember very early on was uh I think it was Barbie Super Sports uh which involved either roller skating or snowboarding those were the two sports um that you could play and you could play with Barbie but also three of her friends I think their names were I remember there was a Teresa and Christine I think Kira and they were all different eth ethnicities as well which was um good representation for the mid90s um and then I think even before that there was an even earlier one that I remember I think it was something to do with fashion and you designed clothes for a catwalk show um and also I think there were various locations for catwalks like an actual catwalk a path outside which was like jungly um and then like Barbie's bedroom so you could do like pajama based fashion shows and stuff and like decorate the rooms and things um so that was very was very much in into a girly niche as it were um but all of them were I think designed mostly by matal interactive And the tagline that always came before each of them loaded uh was Barbie games games for girls uh which was always a very now that I look back I'm like okay that's an interesting marketing PL there um but my mom just used to buy them for us cuz we used to play a lot of well not a lot actually but we used to get like educational games from like Marks and Spencers about mass and English you know Peak Peak 90s stuff and uh Barbie was one of the sets of games that we used to me and my sister used to play together I've completely forgotten uh Barbie Explorer which was clearly inspired by Tim Raider um very much and you could play it was basically a platformer um in um well Crash Bandicoot style so it was like a rolling map that you just run through and platform your way through and you had to collect gems and things with with very very loud and annoying sound effects yes I remember that very fondly but yeah those are the main ones that we kind of played in the mid 90s to early 2000s um wow yeah so there were many more than that actually yeah there were so many yeah I was just looking and there and just just between 1984 and 2000 there was over 20 games released and there's been a whole heat more I can't even I can't haven't can't even count them all do you think that was because at the time bobie was going through a a Renaissance of sorts or was just super popular at the time or has it always just been the same level of popular I'm not sure I don't know I mean I I mean when I was playing with Barbie would have been in the 80s late 80s um and into the 90s and I mean the first game here is was in 1984 um in on the Commodore 64 so um and then the next one wasn't much you know it was like 1991 I suppose there there's a fiveyear gap sorry year Gap there but um you know it's um it's interesting actually I mean what's I thinks really interesting is that um at you know that that there's this attitude that computer games are for boys yes and yet you have a huge amount of games coming out that were you know by their own admission for girls um and so clearly the bar World Mattel obviously thought that there was an an an audience for for these games um very much no I think that's a good point definitely um I was trying to remember I think it's interesting because when we think about we've talked about the film uh in a previous episode and how all of the Barbies represented were like different types of Barbies and I think the games are really are a really good illustration of that in that Barbie is not just one thing she can be many different things and that's what was so great for Mattel I guess in making so many of these games is that they had so many options they could do a lot of different things put Barbie in a lot of different settings and make a game out of it um which is perhaps the appeal and I think looking at the types of games we played they weren't necessarily um apart from the fashion one um defined by one particular agenda so like a detective an Explorer um a sports person you know this could be any agenda really um yeah which I think Mom was quite Keen to kind of not push but like obviously she'd let us play what whichever Barbie games we wanted but it's just interesting to note that those were the ones we enjoyed the most and they weren't necessarily like cook with Barbie or clean you know or get rest in put makeup on some of them but uh they weren't um they weren't solely just about very girly things um yeah yeah yeah she's she's offer doing doing having Big Adventures and I think that was one of the things that was that was sort of in the film was this idea they all the Barbies in Barbie land believe that they were like a sort of feminist icon and that they that they'd been helping to make the world better for girls and giving them more choices and stuff because they had all of these different types of Barbie yes so it's interesting isn't it that we have this um very equal style uh Barbie doing lots of cool stuff and and going out there and doing things and yet um there's this very reductive attitude of what Barbie actually is and I I'm not sure like if I speak to people who played with Barbies as as children um that they they'll often say you know oh but my Barbie was having Adventures or my Barbie was very few of the people that I speak to it might just be the people I associate with but very few of the people that I speak to saw Barbie as this hyper um pink Hyper feminine hyper you know fashion victim you know there was there was that wasn't the Barbie that we that lived in our imaginations which makes you wonder if this is if if this idea of Barbie as sort of anti- feminist is actually more a making of of the patriarch I'm getting a little bit me here but yeah you know it just makes you wonder doesn't it like it's was she I mean and I think that is what the film explores I do think the film does explore a lot of that and I think you know it's interesting because the games that you're that you're descri I did not know there were this many games it's yeah it's amazing how many there are like we played them all but like no there's many more but yeah um when I think about also the way that the games uh were designed in that the way you play them is very much sort of about you interacting as much as possible and it's very much putting you as the focus like quite often in a lot of the games before you even start playing you put your name in so Barbie can say it to you while you play and I think that really engages the player and makes it kind of not just this is Barbie's thing it's uh Barbie and me together and we're doing it together yeah and you've got that connection definitely how you would feel playing it and it's so funny you go down this you'd have a list of names that you could pick from I think in some you could type it in but usually it was like this database of names and there was so many we used to go through and listen to her say all of the different names because she'd say them in a very particular way so she'd be like Jim Alex like that and I you could quote it and it would sound exactly the same every time obviously but uh so they'd be like this weird pause after she'd say her name and then she'd be like I think we should go and talk to Becky or but they' just be like where they programmed in all the different names it was quite funny but I do think it did make a concerted effort to um break down the wall of the screen and kind of make sure the player was engaged and involved but again that might come from it being uh marketed at children primarily perhaps um um whereas another game which we'll come to talk about team raer was very much not marketed at children um as well but we can talk about that in a moment I'm sure yeah so before we go on to talk about team raer how do you feel that the Barbie games were empowering I mean did you feel empowered by by them or I certainly enjoyed them and I think um like I mentioned in a couple of times in lots of different episodes but the second Barbie detective um vacation Mysteries and I think probably the first one actually featured Becky the Barbie who is a wheelchair user she had red hair and she was kind of her skill was very good with tech so she'd have her little computer laptop and it would be called the crime computer and uh you could go onto it and like analyze Clues and like get all your recordings for interviews there and Becky would come on like a video call and be like I think we need to check back in this location um because of blah um but there was no like weirdness around the fact that she was in a chair and I just think for me as a wheelchair user um or at least not not until it would have been not until like the late 90s to early 200000 but to have that representation there before I became a wheelchair proper wheelchair user um was just really nice to see um because obviously I knew that I would need to use start using the wheelchair at some point because of the way my disability impacted my Mo my mobility and it was just good to see that kind of thing represented in a game and and for that character to be a key important character in progressing the story along a lot of the time and a good friend of Barbies as well uh which is just really nice um so yeah I think in a lot of ways they were quite empowering games uh even though some of them obv they were all very pink a lot of the artwork was very pink um and they were relatively simple when we think about video games as a whole they're not like groundbreakingly complex um because they're children's games so a lot of them were just point and click or just very basic controls or platforming but I think for me at the time they were they were very good games yeah do you think that um we need an adult Barbie game I mean do you think there's there's a a that could be a that could be a market there for and I'd say I don't know I'm not sure what the story would be um but I think there's probably space for one I don't see why not I don't see why not especially now with with the film and everything although that is to bring back capitalism it might be seen as a bit of a money grab but uh yeah no I think that's interesting an interesting idea if there was one would you play it I think it would depend what what what it was about really yeah um yeah I mean I think I would I would like to see CU I mean there were cartoons aren't there as well um in the in the sort of Barbie Arsenal and I think I would like to see uh a Barbie game that had more depth to it than than one that's aimed at sort of 10 year olds I think it would be interesting to see where that went and I think it's interesting that the film although I know that plenty of people took their little kids along to see it it wasn't aimed at children it was very much aimed at sort of teenagers and up and and I think you know it it was an interesting reframing and repositioning of the Barbie character um and I think that actually as you alluded to um earlier you know that is it possible that that the other um feminist icon Lara Croft um has has her has a part to play in sort of influencing modernday Barbie because Lara is kind of like action Barbie in a lot of ways very much and yeah yeah I wonder how much is each each has fed into the other I think it's really interesting when you compare the two because we know that Loft was created by a man with a male gaze very much and at least in the early days probably still now um but I feel like they didn't I think they gave her an attitude that rebelled against that male gaze and I think it's referenced a lot in the older games um in the way that she speaks to other men in the games not very often but she does um in the fact that I've mentioned it before she doesn't take much [ __ ] so um she know she's an independent capable um woman who obviously resorts to violence and things a lot of the time to achieve her ends a lot of people I think have the view that she's pretty selfish in her Pursuits um but again I mean like we you talk about the moral the moral nature of a lot of video game characters there's probably not a lot there um but um it's just interesting because the Barbie games were probably all designed by men as well but the values that Barbie was projecting in that the general message of the games was perhaps more educational in that they were owned at children and so they were designed to be a fun time but they also had lessons to impart about um well I don't know really actually trying to think of something now but uh yeah I'm just trying to get it straight in my head about because we know that Lara the way that she's portrayed has changed over time with the more modern adaptions with the games um and the films in fact and I think we could definitely draw a comparison with the films as well when we think about the portrayals of Angelina Jayy um and I remember her name for kinder I can't remember her first name though this is terrible um is it Al Alysia binda I think it is yes we'll go with that um for the two modern tomam Raider films um and they're very different poal of Laura Croft in their own ways I think Angelina obviously nailed the kickass aspects of Lara particularly well um but that was very much a film for the male Gaye for those 14-year-old boys he played Tom Raider in the bedrooms growing up and things um but I do like I have a soft spot for the films because you know such a big fan of the franchise and then the more modern film I think it's interesting when we talked about the the themes of Barbie in that there we talked about motherhood and generational things and um just generally like the power of women as a group as well I think is another theme um from that film whereas the themes of Team Raider are very much Lara's relationship with her parents is a recurring theme through both the games and the films um and also usually centers in on her relationship with her father whereas Barbie is very much about your relationship with your mother which is an interesting comparison I think to draw um and what that says about the intent behind it I'm not quite sure because um I guess you'd have to be a psychologist to really delve into into what that means um but I just think it's really interesting the way that the both those women are framed um and also the way that the more modern Tomb Raider games Lara comes with this hero complex which is a different thing to how she was portrayed in the older games because she feels like everything's her fault and she needed to save everybody all the time which is a thing that was mentioned in the um speech in the Barbie film about how everything's our fault and we need to fix it all the time um so there's this guilt running through the the newer team Raider games which I think perhaps is a reflection of the way that a lot of women feel nowaday maybe I don't know maybe I'm clutching at straws but um no I think think there's so much in that I think there's a there's a PhD in in looking at how those two characters um interact or um what they say about our attitudes to women I think that one of the things that came across in the film was as you as you've said you know about the um the speech about how we have to be everything to everyone Barbie is everything to everyone and that's what makes her um extremely um uh compelling but also also slightly threatening I think to the to the status quo because in a lot of ways Barbie's Roots lie in this idea of like the perfect woman um and how how a woman should be and yet over over time time that's that's really grown and and as as Barbie has um represented women more different women um we've seen that sort of idea that actually you know what is the perfect woman if even Barbie is not can't be one there isn't one Barbie then you know then the perfect woman is is is very diverse and there are lots of different ideas of the perfect woman out there and I whereas I think so so I think with Lara Croft you've got she's she's m a much more narrow character um and in a lot of ways interestingly I would say she is um on the surface more threatening to the patriarchal system because she's you know she's physically strong she's um anti you know anti the system yeah she's sort of rebellious she's um Power she has power in her own right and so it's almost like in order to um be able to follow that fantasy through the male designers have S tethered her in various ways as in you know making her it or a lot of it about her relationship to her father and to an establishment and you know tying her to the landed gentry and there's a whole heap of things that sit her within the structures that we associate with um patriarchy yeah um whereas I think Barbie has been and and if you look at how the patriarchy would describe the two characters they would say look at Lara Croft she's this you know example of how women have got all these freedoms and look at Barbie She's an example of how know women are being constrained but actually if you look at them both objectively it's potentially could see it in a completely opposite way so there's a huge amount to unpick there and so so let me ask you this yes if you had a daughter no if you had a child son or daughter or neither um and you wanted you were considering whether to introduce them to Barbie or to Lara Croft as a as as their sort of inspo um female character who would you gosh that's a hard one it's a hard one I think there's more obvious oh it's so hard just thinking about the films even um I think there's more issues with certainly the very first two films than there are with Barbie as a film um but in terms of characters I don't know it's hard it's hard because we've just like you say you can switch the two around can't you and say Barbie is perhaps more what a woman should be striving for even though there's obviously a lot wrong with Barbie in that you know we don't even need to go into body image and all that sort of stuff um but again it's the same with you know that's one particular body image that's not necessarily a true representation and it certainly isn't a true representation of women as a whole um yeah that's that's a very hard question I think I'm G to go straight down the middle and just say Barbie Explorer because that is the Barbie version of L craft I think I would do that one to start off with and then see which one they leaned more towards and go with what they want I think um yeah it's a tricky one but yeah another thing I was picking up on when I was looking into the comparison just even when you consider um the characters around Laura and the characters around Barbie and how Barbie's relationships are all um pretty equal I would say and there's like pretty good representation uh among them and they're all an equal part of a team particularly in the detective games whereas when you look at the characters around Lara um in the older games the only other women in the games were women that Lara killed um and then in the newer games there's either women who get killed or women who Lara has to save because they're incapable um but in one particular obvious example is Lara's friend Sam from the Tom Raider of 2018 when they're all on the island and she's essentially the um the character you have to rescue time and time again because they're completely out of their depth on the island um and Lara has to be the one to pick up the pieces so outside of Lara you've got all these women being represented as either the enemy or the pitiful um subject that needs rescuing and sorting out because they can't cope they can't manage anything and I just think that's really perhaps the sign of the writer's um particular views um but it's just a very interesting thing to think about um in terms and even you know when you think those barie games were back in the '90s um and I'm not I'm not saying they're perfect by any means but like just the comparison is really interesting to think about I think I would really like to know like who the writers um were um and yeah whether there was whether you know gender played played a part in in that because I think there is a difference in it and that one of the things that we experience as young girls is a is a real sort of um discouragement of genuine sort of friendships and a sort of um this idea that we are competing with other women um and I think that most women who I know the older that they get the more frustrated they are when they look back and and think that that was how how they had seen it because actually you know the as I got older my female friends are more and more and more important and invaluable and it's it's something that I think is is to be cherished and that we have support amongst other um other people that are the same or similar to us um and I think there is a conflict that is sort of encouraged there by the media um so it's interesting to think that you know that the Barbie the Barbie stories tend to sort of encourage this female friendship and and the Lura coft one is is had she has female friends but um she's always very solit isn't she yeah as a character you don't think of her as having loads of friends she's always sort of on her own a lot isolated and yet and yet as such a resourceful um person you would think she would be you know beating friends off really with a with a big stick so you know I think it's a um an interesting fix the position it would be interesting to know the genders of the people that had had written written the stories so yeah well I think that that is um enough for today on Barbie um is there anything that you would like to add not that I can think of no I think we've had a great discussion there lots of extra questions to go away and think about yeah yeah lots to think about we'd love to hear your views on the movie and the games um both Barby and laara Croft um and um obviously we would like you to like and share and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts and um we're very excited um to be attending the um independent podcast awards at the end of October um and we've been nominated um in um in their gaming category so um we're we're excited to see how we do with that and we will of course keep you up to date with that news um and I think that leaves me to just say um thank you for listening and we're um we're out every Thursday so check us out see what we've got to say and um we'll see you next time thank you goodbye by