With her fearless acrobatic style she runs, jumps, and swims her way toward the truth of it’s origins and powers – leaving only a trail of empty tombs and gun-cartridges in her wake. (Eidos, 2003 )
This advertising statement from Tomb Raider, an integral part of the action/adventure computer game genre, emulates the change that has occurred in the genre of action films, the rise of the action heroine. In many ways Lara Croft is the archetypical action heroine, she is one of ‘the new breed of arse-kicking female protagonists’. (Hills, 1998, p. 1; see also Pretzsch, 2002) Lara has become a metaphor that represents a distinctively postmodern way of life. It is not that heroines were scarce, or that computer games were rare. The time in history was right. Technology, questions of gender, equality and the accessibility to computer games gave impetus to the success of Lara. Lara Croft encapsulates a specific set of historical and cultural forces such that the term ‘Tomb Raider’ has entered the cultural universe. What is interesting about Tomb Raider is that it was the first game that captured the public imagination and brought Eidos and Core Design out of the gaming wilderness onto centre stage. This one game created an enormous industry revolving not so much around the game, as around the character in the game. The question must be asked “Who is Lara Croft”? Why this fascination with a character that is after all, only a pixellated facsimile of a woman. The reach of this one game is enormous and does give rise to the speculation about what exactly are people viewing and thinking when they are playing the game.
Nor is Lara Croft solely relegated to the game. Lara has caught the public imagination, and the imagination of the purveyors of cultural products. The Lara merchandise incorporates not just computer games but also comics (Novatscheck, 2003), DVD/VHS, Lara posters, books, tshirts, caps and hats, glassware, music, watches and trading cards (Lara Croft Online Store, 2003).
The film Lara Croft was released in Australia on June 21 2001 (Tomb Raider the Movie: Date Release, 2001) What was notable about Lara Croft was not that this was a new movie, but that this was the result of a film that had evolved from a computer game. The character of Lara was therefore totally constructed within the game, and subsequently the film, without any referent in the external world. Lara was, and remains, a totally fictional character arising from the imagination and computer simulation. With current sales of the Eidos Interactive Tomb Raider franchise currently at over ‘28 million units worldwide’ (Eidos, 2003), as well as two films the popular cultural capital is high from the industry perspective but so is the investment by fans. The influence of the character of Lara Croft cannot be stressed enough and will be developed throughout the thesis – the phenomenon of Lara has crossed from gaming culture through the medium of film, Internet, print and television. Complexity lies within the way that Lara crosses many divergent boundaries, boundaries that lie at the heart of cultural traditions.
There has been a great deal of time, effort and money invested in Tomb Raider such that it and Lara Croft have entered the pubic imagination and become part of the general awareness of society. How then do we make sense of the phenomenon of Lara Croft? Why would we want to make sense of it? The possible answer lies in the way that we view culture, and create meanings from everyday objects. The one intriguing fact about Lara is her ‘constructedness’. The way in which she is constructed demonstrates a lot about representation, identity (including gender identity), the modes of production and the modes of consumption in the early 21 Century. It is, in effect, an artefact that has become a medium of contemporary culture to such an extent that academics have started to seriously study Lara, though much of this study has been on her representation.
Birgit Pretzsch (2002, p. 1) in her thesis, ‘A Postmodern Analysis of Lara Croft’ states that her study was to be “informed by postmodernism and feminism”. The most interesting aspect of her analysis was the use of these two terms conterminously. What she arrives at is a study in which the “concepts of identity, the body and reality” (p. 57) are raised as part of the analysis of Lara Croft. It is important that an examination take place of these two separate concepts as defined by Birgit in the postmodern analysis.
In analysing Lara, Birgit describes feminism as a philosophy that is egalitarian in its principles but ‘needing’ to overthrow all narrowly defined concepts relating to the gender and the perpetuation of inequity. Pretzsch argues that representation is of particular interest for study as it “frequently reinforces the notion of the male subject and the female object” (p.2). At the heart of the assertion that images perpetuate “meaning and power” (p. 2) Pretzsch focuses on the notion of discourse in which she argues that paramount to discourse is the assertion that discourses are ubiquitous; and discourses construct ‘legitimate and illegitimate’ statements about social order. In terms of ‘legitimate’ discourses it is shown that “though she appears in many different forms of representation, there are several recurring themes … constructed as highly attractive, very sensual and quite [an] independent woman.” (p. 34).
As a visual phenomenon Lara’s appearance is of prime importance and Pretzsch argues that the most important of these discourses is the idea that Lara is ‘hyper-sexualised’ (though at no time does she ever give a definition of this term) constructed as very overtly female in terms of her primary sexual characteristics (see Fig. 1). In the many images that Pretzsch studied she never found any images that in any way hide Lara’s figure pointing out the fact that even when in the snow Lara is shown in shorts (see Figure 2 below). What are being stressed in the representation of Lara are her objectivity and the ‘right’ of men to look at Lara. In this regard there is little doubt that the representational discourse perpetuates “a potentially limiting view of sexuality and women” (p.34) that reinforces the existing power inequity.
Other discourses that Pretzsch highlights are Lara as independent’ and dangerous. If one studies the Curriculum Vitae of Lara (pp. 8,9) you can see what sort of woman has been constructed. Pretzsch goes on to state that in the C.V. some key words were used to describe Lara:
The key attributes that are … associated with Lara are ‘powerful’, ‘sexy’, ‘agile’, ‘charming’, ‘virtual’, ‘no-nonsense’, ‘independent’, ‘athletic’, ‘adventurous’ and ‘feminine’ … She is strong, intelligent and courageous. She has a no-nonsense attitude … using her skills, determination and quite an impressive array of weapons. (p. 10)
One of the interesting things about this study is the idea that Lara did not occur in a vacuum. There were predecessors to Lara. Lara combines within her traditional male values associated with female characteristics. As such, Pretzsch implies that she is an ‘action figure’ following in the footsteps of Indiana Jones, James Bond, Emma Peel, Wonderwoman, Superwoman, Barb Wire and Tank Girl. While she mentions these predecessors Pretzsch does not say much about the phenomenon of the action heroine especially the growth of these in film during the early 1990’s which also played a part in the development of Lara. At the heart of the feminist analysis of Lara is that all representations of Lara start from the premise that dualisms are being reinforced – masculine and feminine; real and artificial, natural and cultural. It is these dualism which construct Lara as both challenging some social codes of feminism though at the same time reinforcing the concept that woman are to be attractive, viewed, and manipulated and that they will say nothing while they are being used.
Another important aspect of the study was the emphasis on the concept of the postmodern. Birgit stresses three aspects of the postmodern. Firstly, that postmodern theories are primarily concerned with “representations and their meaning” (p. 2) asserting that a symbol can represent reality directly and spontaneously. Second, that aspects of the postmodern are to do with the embracing of popular culture losing the distinction between ‘low’ and ‘high’ art forms. Thirdly, that the postmodern has to do with mass culture more specifically the idea of new media forms and how this aids to configure new identities and individualities (p. 3).
Yet it is hard to understand the place of Tomb Raider, and Lara Croft, in any meaningful way precisely because of the complicated nature of contemporary society. One way out of this dilemma is to examine Tomb Raider in detail using a cultural circuit model as proposed by Du Gay et al (1997, p. 3) which has its roots in the theories of Karl Marx, and his 19th Century analysis of the ‘circuit of capital’” (Taylor et al, 2002, p. 607).
The circuit of culture model proposes that meaning is not intrinsic to the object being examined but is derived from a complex interaction between five different ‘moments’. From du Gay’s point of view it does not matter what items are being studied. It matters that the artefact has become enculturated within our society. Du Gay (et al, 1997, p. 8) states that “[b]elonging to culture provides us with access to such shared frameworks or ‘maps’ of meaning which we use to place and understand things”. Not only does there exist a shared understanding of Tomb Raider, but there is the added phenomenon that Tomb Raider has its own culture around which has arisen its own shared framework. Perhaps the term Circuit of Culture Model is not the best way to study Lara. The notion of circuit creates an imagery of linear flow. What would be fitting to the complexity of Lara is a ‘Matrix of Culture” model. If one looks again at Figure 3 the flow of culture is between the five instances in the circuit. What I envisage is a more dynamic model where intersections within and between moments are more fluid. Having this in mind the Matrix of Culture would be more suited to frame this study on Lara. The Matrix model underpins that cultural forces flow in an ad hoc fashion with rarely any linear flow (Figure 4 below). In examining the phenomenon of Tomb Raider the five moments of the Circuit of Culture as outlined above will be used. They form a framework which allows for a deeper analysis of Lara then can be undertaken if just one moment of the circuit paradigm was studied. While it may be considered arbitrary to start this examination at any of the moments for this paper it is important that we look firstly at the moment of production.
In 1995, Toby Gard, of Core designs had an idea for a computer game, a game that was to be developed around a female as the avatar. In an interview for the BBC (‘Origins’, 2001) Toby stated that Tomb Raider’s character’s original concept “was to exaggerate her femaleness”. Having a female avatar was a huge departure from previous games at that time, and the head of Core Design was concerned about using a female avatar.
Lara has alternatively been called a “feminist icon [and a] cyberbimbo” (Kennedy, 2002), “Cyber-goddess, Icon of the Nineties, Virtual World Star” (Pretzsch, 2000), “female enemy number one” (Jones, 1999), and “pixellated boobs” (Hamilton, 2000). All of these articles focus either on the visual aesthetics of Lara or on the gender traits that are constructed in the character portrayal. Whatever the foci, there is an almost unbearable focus on either the primary sexual characteristics or on the gender portrayal; or any combination of the two inter-related concepts. From the earliest depictions of Lara (see Figure 2) we can see exactly the way that she has been depicted as excessively female, a caricature of women, built to impress men.
Yet Lara has not arisen in a vacuum, she is the direct result of what Du Gay calls the ‘chain of meaning” (et al, 1997, p. 24); in this, we borrow culture. It is from this chain that we make meaning out of something new from something old. The predecessors of Lara are those women figures, real or imagined that sport a visually sexy body with some kick-ass fighting power. Pretzsch (2000) includes Emma Peel, Wonderwoman, Supergirl, Barb Wire and Tank Girl. A strong argument exists that Barbie was also a precursor of Lara as the predominant features of both of these figures is there measurements, both of them having unrealistic measurements designed for men and their fantasies rather then being constructed for women (Dooley, 2003). The development of Lara also occurred in the same time that there was a rise of the action heroine in films. Movie characters such as Ripley (Alien, 1979, Aliens, 1986, Alien3, 1992), Thelma and Louise (1991), Sarah Connor (The Terminator, 1984, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991), Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs, 1990) and others transgress previous cultural codes to encode these characters as “transcending the limitations traditionally placed on female bodies and minds” (Hills, 1998, p. 2).
Yet another influence that can be traced on the development of Lara is the action heroine in adventure comics. There was Superwoman, Supergirl, Batwoman, Wonderwoman, Vamperilla, Femforce, Black Canary and plethora of other heroines. So while Lara is presented as a ‘new’ action heroine she is but one in a line of heroines stretching back but into the world of film and comics. What is new about this action heroine is that she enters a new medium, the medium of computer games.
There are people that extol the phenomenon of Lara Croft as they see in her a very acceptable role model for women, irrespective of her build. Action heroines such as Lara are breaking the stereotypical view of women as merely passive recipients of whatever life throws at them. Lara is imbued with traits that make her not just equal with men, but better then men, operating out of a view of the world that rejects feminine normalisation and any notion of powerlessness (Kennedy, 2002, Puig, 2001). There is also the contradictory argument focusing on the normalisation of gender stereotypes and the way that we view women in particular. What the inventors of Tomb Raider have done is to perpetuate unrealistic images of women that have been constructed over the last hundred years, but with a new twist. A notion that creates the ultimate patriarchal toy, not only is she beautiful with an over-exaggerated bust, thin waist, she is totally controlled by the gamers themselves, who are mostly men (Jones, 1999, Children Now 2000, see also Bordo, 1990), not only that, but she revels in violence. Such construction portrays Lara’s character as ‘feminine’ in appearance yet ‘masculine’ in behaviour traits blurring the boundary between and within the dichotomised gender system. On the way, Lara has evolved, not only in her visual characteristics as hypersexual female, “with [a] distorted body image,… disproportionately large breasts and small waists and hips” (Dill et al, 2003, Pretzsch, 2000) but also through the various media that present her in a traditionally masculine landscape, imbued with hypermasculine traits that contradict the usual notions of gaming culture (Kennedy, 2002, Puig, 2001).
In fact, the whole rationale for Lara is that she was created for a target audience of “males between 15 and 26 years old” (Bradley, 1997, 14). At that stage they were the target audience for most games, yet as these players have matured and gaming itself has come of age there has been a shift away from the extreme hypersexualized Lara to a more realistic body image, but alas, still one that is unattainable for the majority of the female population. (NEED A REF.)
Modern portrayals of gender currently seem to focus on an either/or proposition where people are classed as feminine or masculine depending on the strength of the particular form of identity politics. Identity, as a separate entity, is very much entwined in a relationship with identity politics where the prevailing rhetoric is very much one of culpability. The result has been a discursive response on two broad inherited positions:
… incorporation and antagonism. The incorporative mode … requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic’s authority and judgement, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no pre-established context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defence and counter-charge (Gergen, 1995:3).
Apportioning blame to identity is fore grounded in the notion that there is an essential self, an ontological reality of “I”. There is an innate recognition that to partake of identity politics a person must be aware of some form of ‘self-designated identity’ (Gergen, 1995:1), a reflexive acknowledgement of self. If the prevailing rhetoric has been one of blame there is room for a rhetoric built on conscious decision and self worth.
A person’s identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor – important though this is – in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the self. (Gidden, 1991: 54).
Gender narratives constructed using an inherently positivist structure allow for ambiguity and choice, freeing individuals from shame, blame and antagonism.
The rhetoric of a shared ‘fixed’ identity is constantly challenged by the idea that identity is not predetermined and does not control who we are. It is meaningless to talk of categories of ‘women’, ‘men’ and ‘genders’ when these concepts themselves are contested. While it may be feasible for political purposes to speak of a fixed identity and to construct identity politics around individual concepts; the very idea is fraught with inherent misconceptions. Indeed, identity is such a diverse site that even to imagine that people inhabit a collectivity through one characteristic, while not taking into account other divergences, is flawed. Far more meaningful is to see gender identity as including a compilation of elements that constitute a performance – we include and assume in that performance a variety of body images, roles, costumes, dialogues, mores and expectations. Donna Harraway (1985) describes an individual as a created creature socially constructed from a variety of sources – gendered, nationalised and totally illusionary. Harraway recognises that in the construction of an identity there are multiple sites and multiple dichotomies.
The concept of blending gender is important for the conceptualisation of people within society as legitimate but yet at the same time ambiguous. The notion of blending cultural depictions of feminine, masculine, effeminate and butch still mystifies and confuses the general populace because our society is so mired in the stereotypical aspect of the ubiquitous gendered polarities of feminine and masculine – equating feminine with female and masculine with male. Though instances of blended gender in contemporary society are on the increase throughout all media, including film it is still extremely difficult to break away from the concept of traditional gender expectations. In fact, there seems to be a cultural resistance to breaking free from these cultural artefacts of gender stereotyping.
This thesis argues that Lara, far from being conceived as a ‘full’ signifier, is in fact “an ‘empty sign’,… allow[ing] diverse, often contradictory inscriptions and interpretations” (Mikula 2003:83). In the character of Lara we see the dissolution of distinctions between self and other, between masculine and feminine and between the notions of a fixed gender particularity. Lara enters the world of the postmodern and blurs the boundaries of identity and power. As a locus of the imagination Lara has also been encoded with connotations of youth, vibrancy, sexiness, resolution and resourcefulness. One way to understand this is to state that ‘Woman want to be her, and men want to look and possess her’, thus creating identification with the product.
These depictions of blending are not part of the aberrant (Harris, 1995), nor used as a mirror to inflate gender egotism, but they are part of mainstream popular culture. Examples of gender blending within popular culture are many and exist in all mediums. Lara lies very much on the boundary between imagination and digitisation. The production of a postmodern artefact such as Lara Incorporates much more then a shaping of her structure, it involves all the articles of production.
The French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard states that one of the major problems of capitalism is a “contradiction between a virtually unlimited productivity (at the level if the technostructure) and the need to dispose of the product” (Poster, 1988, p. 38). Baudrillard, along with other postmodern theorists, argues that identity has become ephemeral and this has impacted on consumer choice which reflects our temporal sensibilities. We live in a hypertextual world where choice has become redundant and so we are driven to simply accumulate. Thus, accumulation and not selection is the shopper’s objective. Taking this view it can be seen that there is no place for a consideration of the consumer as ‘independent’ and outside the flow of ‘production and consumption’. There are categories of consumption which can be classed as ‘being owned’ by the consumer. It is here that the consumption of Lara comes into her own as her ‘devotees’ use her, and consume her in ways that contradict the idea of the ‘production of consumption’.
Bibliography:
Bordo, Susan. 1989, ‘The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity’, Gender/Body/Knowledge. In Alison M.Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo, Eds., New Brunswick, Rutegers UP.
Bradley, David (1997a): Introducing Tomb Raider. PCFG 4, 14-15. Cited in Pretzsch, B. 2000, A Postmodern Analysis of Lara Croft, Masters Thesis, URL: http://www.frauenuni.de/students/gendering/lara/LaraCompleteTextWOPics.html. (accessed 26 February 2002).
Canada, K, and Brusca, F 1992, “The Technological Gender Gap: Evidence and Recommendations for Educators and Computer-Based Instruction Designers”, Educational Technology Research & Development, Vol. 39, No. 2, URL: http://www.arielpcs.com/resources/articles/etrd.shtml, (accessed 12 January 2006).
Cassells, J. and Jenkins, H (Eds.) 1999,
Children Now 2000, Girls and Gaming: A Console Video Game Content Analysis, December 2000, URL: http://www.childrennow.org/media/video-games/video-games-girls.pdf, (accessed 10 March 2003)
Curtis, C (Ed.) 2000, Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction, Roseville CA, Prima Games.
Denton, N 1997, ‘Tomb Raider drives Eidos to record sales’, Financial Times, London (UK): May 31, 1997. p. 16 (online Proquest).
Dill, K.E., Gentile, D.E. Richter, W.E., & Dill, J.C. 2003, Violence, Sex, Race and Age in Popular Video Games: A Content Analysis, URL: http://www.lrc.edu/psy/dillk/Content%20Analysis.htm. (accessed 20 July 2003).
Dooley, C. C. July 16 2003, Lara Croft: The New Barbie for the 21st Century, Suite.com, URL: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/feminism_revisited/102078. (acccessed 7 October 2003).
DuGay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H. and Negus, K. 1997, Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage Publications.
du Preez, Amanda 1999, Virtual Babes: gender, archetypes and computer games, Paper presented at the Identities in Action. Languages and Discourses, Communities and Selves, Values and Representations Conference, Gregynog, Wales, URL: http://www.informatik.umu.se/nlrg/nlr/virtualbabes.pdf, viewed 13 October 2005.
Eidos UK 2005, “Tomb Raider 1”, Eidos Games, URL: http://www.eidos.co.uk/games/info.html?gmid=24, viewed12 September 2005.
Eidos Interactive Corporate History, 2003, URL: http://www.eidosinteractive.co.uk/corporate/index.html. (accessed 22 July 2003).
“Video games: Serious Fun” 1993, Fortune, Vol. 128, Iss. 110, December 27 (online Proquest).
Gargett, A. 2002, ‘Lara Croft: the Post-Human Feminine Cyborg’, Nasty, Issue 11, March 2002, URL http://nasty.cx/archives/000808.html.(accessed 24 August 2002).
Gergen, K. 1995, ‘Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics’, URL http://www.swathmore.edu/SocSci/kgergen1/text8.html. (accessed 9th August 2001).
Giddens, A. 1991, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Identity in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
Hamilton, S. 2000, ‘Virtual Gender or Virtually Gendered? Thinking About Cyber-feminism’, Paper presented at the Femmes Br@nchées Soirée: Salon #32, Feminism in the Year 2000, September 2000, URL: http://www.studioxx.org/xwords/virtual.html. (accessed 12 May 2003).
Harraway, S. 1985, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980′s’, Socialist Review, 80.
Herman, L., Horwitz, J., Kent, S., and Miller, S 2002, The History of Video Games, Published on Gamespot URL: http://serialkiller.org/articles/videogames_history/videogames_history.pdf, viewed 12 December 2005.
Hopkins. S 2002, Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture, Annadale, Pluto Press.
Hills, E March 1998, The Action Heroine as Feminist Figuration: Mapping the Transgressive Potential of Hollywood’s Post-Woman Women, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Rockhampton: School of Languages, Culture and Creative Arts, Faculty of Education and Creative Arts, Central Queensland University
Hopkins. S 2002, Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture, Annadale, Pluto Press.
Inness, S (ed.) 2004, Action Chicks, New York, Palgrave.
Jones, C. 1999, ‘Lara Croft: Female Enemy number One’, In Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, Eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, London: MIT Press, pp. 338-339.
Juul, J 1999, A Clash Between Game and Narrative: A thesis on computer games and interactive fiction, URL: http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis/AClashBetweenGameAndNarrative.pdf, (accesses 12 January 2006).
Kahrmadji, V 1999, Development of Video Game and Its Impacts on Societies Socially and Psychologically, URL: http://multimedia.design.curtin.edu.au/cache/v/0003/, (accessed 20 December 2005).
Kennedy, H., 2002, ‘Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?’ Games Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 2, Dec. 2002, URL: http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy. (accessed 12 May 2002).
Kotick, R 2004, ‘The Only Limit is Imagination’, Financial Times, Aug 30, p. 11.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2001, Motion Picture, Paramount Pictures, Hollywood, California.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life 2003, Motion Picture, Hollywood, California.
Mikula, M. 2003, ‘Gender and Videogames: the Political Valency of Lara Croft’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2003.
Muller, J 1998, “Virtual Equality? Software Firms Find New Niche: Games For Girls”, Boston Globe, March 29 1998. p. A.1.
Novatschech, N. Tomb Raider Comics, URL: http://www.tombraidergirl.com/comics/index.html. (accessed 12 March 2003)
Poole, S 20000, Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames, London, Fourth Estate.
Poster, M. 1998, Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Oxford, Polity Press.
Puig, C. 2001, ‘Women Kicking Butt’, The Gold Coast Bulletin, Ed. 1, Tues 13 February 2001, p.T04.
Pretzsch, B. 2000, A Postmodern Analysis of Lara Croft, Masters Thesis, URL: http://www.frauenuni.de/students/gendering/lara/LaraCompleteTextWOPics.html. (accessed 26 February 2002).
Rouse, R 1999, “What’s Your Perspective?”, Computer Graphics, Vol 3, No. 3, August 1999, http://www.paranoidproductions.com/gamingandgraphics/fifth.html, (accessed 10 January 2006).
Selek, R 2005, “A Supergirl By Any Other Name Is Still A Super Girl!”, Sequential Tart, http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/may00/art_0500_10.shtml, (accessed 7 April 2005).
Sedgewick, E. K. 1995, ‘Gosh, Boy George, You Must Be Awfully Secure in Your Masculinity’, In Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson, Eds., Constructing Masculinity,. New York: Routledge, pp. 11-20
Taylor, B. C., Demont-Heinrich, C., Broadfoot, K. J., Dodge, J. & Jian, G., 2002, ‘New Media and the circuit of cyber-culture: Conceptualizing Napster’, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Vol. 46, Issue 4, pp 607-620.
Tomb Raider the Movie, Date Release, URL: http://digilander.iol.it/laracroftvertigo/movie%20release.htm. (accessed 4 April 2002).
White Star, 2001, Lara Croft: Lethal and Loaded, Maximum Films, released on DVD.
Filed under: Uncategorized
