Research Catalog

Title

Lara Croft : cyber heroine / Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky ; translated by Dominic J. Bonfiglio ; foreword by Sue-Ellen Case.

Author

Deuber-Mankowsky, Astrid, 1957-

Publication

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, ©2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 109 pages : illustrations; 18 cm.

Summary

"Since the game Tomb Raider was first released in 1996, its protagonist Lara Croft has become an international celebrity. The virtual archaeologist-adventuress has been featured in various sequels to the original game, a line of action figures, two Hollywood films starring Angelina Jolie, forty comic books, a series of novels, and a variety of clothing, merchandise, and ephemera. She has appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek, spawned innumerable Internet fan sites and a library of adulatory fan fiction, become a pornographic sex symbol, and even inspired a look-alike beauty pageant. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky's groundbreaking study examines Lara Croft as a cyber heroine - a female body ubiquitously inhabited by game players, an icon of both female strength and male objectification, and the virtual future of fame. Despite Croft's prominence there have been few critical inquiries into her bridging of the boundary between virtual and real worlds or the extent to which she reflects and influences the image of women in digital media. First published in German and revised for this English-language edition, this book is an innovative analysis of the multimedia heroine, tracing the top-down marketing strategies and bottom-up frenzy that precipitated the Lara Croft phenomenon. Drawing on feminist and cultural studies, Deuber-Mankowsky sees Croft as symptomatic of the new media environment and its tendency to erase all qualitative difference, even sexual difference."--The Publisher.

Series Statement

Electronic mediations ; v. 14

Uniform Title

• Lara Croft. English
• Electronic mediations ; v. 14.

Alternative Title

Lara Croft.

Subjects

• Croft, Lara (Fictitious character) > In mass media
• Mass media
• Croft, Lara (Personnage fictif) dans les médias

Note

• "This English translation has been updated and expanded since the original German publication"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-104) and index.

Contents

The phenomenon of Lara Croft -- A duplicitous gift -- The origins of a cultural icon -- The market and the hardware -- Medial origins and sexual grounds -- Virtual reality -- The interactive movie -- The loss of surface -- The medialization of the body -- The universal medium -- Tomb raider: the movie -- The question of sexual difference -- Afterplay: the next generation.

ISBN

• 0816643903
• 9780816643905
• 0816643911
• 9780816643912

LCCN

2004027422

OCLC

• ocm57243290
• 57243290
• SCSB-1361778

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library