From European beauty hero to Japanese beauty girl, Laura’s transformation is a change of otaku’s taste
Abstract: Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider: War of the Origins" has changed from a mature, sexy, and powerful superwoman image to a weak, cute, and pitiful beautiful girl. Although the new Laura does not have a sexy look, she has grown up exactly in the way the otaku hopes, satisfying the Japanese otaku's inverted sexual fantasies about the perfect woman-both the object of desire and the guardian of desire.
If there is First Lady in the game world, her name can only be Lara Croft.
From the early 1996 "Tomb Raider" to the 11th generation "Tomb Raider: Shadow" (not released) in 2018, Laura swept the world with two guns, and became a "gravedigger" on six continents. Even flowing out of the boundaries of game programs, frequently appearing in the media environment jointly constructed by cultural products such as cosplay, figures, fashion magazines, manga, animation, and movies, stealing the original intention of boys from various countries.
From Julie to Vikander
On March 16th, the movie "Tomb Raider: Battle of the Origins" made waves again after 15 years, and won the single-day box office championship. On the third day of its release, it has topped the global box office (it is worth mentioning that , Nearly half of the box office was contributed by Chinese audiences). The virtual actress Laura and the Asian male god Daniel Wu teamed up to complete the men's and women's double play in minutes.
As we all know, whether in movies or games, the reason for the success of the "Tomb Raider" series is that, in addition to excellent gameplay, rich historical heritage and mystery, the most important secret is the sexy treatment of the protagonist Laura. Laura brings together all the fantasies of the otaku about the perfect girlfriend: the model’s breasts and hips, the explorer’s courage and skill, the archaeologist’s mind and knowledge, and the imperial aristocracy’s blood and wealth. They are both the best objects for obscenity. , And is the best playmate of the game.
However, Laura in "War of the Origins" has undergone a major "facelift", changing the role of the new literary star Alicia Vikander from the sexy goddess Angelina Jolie. This is of course not as simple as the replacement of the new with the old, behind it is the overall transformation of social aesthetic ideology and business strategy. Commercial films not only abandon one of Laura’s biggest selling points, the "chest", but also make Laura weak (although "Kanmei" has a few abdominal muscles), and no longer show off coquettishness, but instead use more difficult growth narratives. Mobilize the audience.
On Feminist Criticism
Vikander’s Laura is not an isolated case. Petite actresses like Scarlett Johansson have also appeared in many sci-fi and Marvel movies in recent years. "War of the Origins" just follows some basic settings of the "Tomb Raider" descendant game. Since the Japanese game company Square Enix (SQUARE ENIX) acquired the game’s original British publisher Eidos in 2010, the biggest change after "Tomb Raider 9" is the change in Laura’s image: from big breasts, big butts, A sexy and beautiful girl with a black look, genetically mutated into an image of a girl with mediocre, pitiful, and oriental aesthetics. Even if the developer of Crystal Dynamics is still a European and American company, it cannot be denied that Laura has completed the Japanese "facelift".
Before the "facelift", Laura has always been the main object of the feminist sword finger game world: exaggerated body, exposed dress, split sexual characteristics, a female image set completely in accordance with the taste of men, which has been widely criticized. This is exactly what Beauvoir’s famous saying "women are not born, but are formed by nature". New Laura seemed to have heard the criticism from the outside world and suddenly lost weight, using her youth storm to cleanse her stigma. More importantly, it also swept away the decline of the previous work and ushered in commercial success again.
Of course, Laura's change does not mean the victory of feminism, but the transformation and upgrade of the treatment of feminization and otherness.
In the European and American realist aesthetic ideology represented by Julie, Laura is a mature, sexy and powerful superwoman image. Such Laura is exaggerated, but there is no logical sense of contradiction. Such strange women are often seen in women's professional wrestling. The new Laura played by "Mei Kan" gives the impression of a weak, cute, and pitiful girl. Such a weak little girl will not be able to achieve the set of the game unless she gains imaginary power. Mission, so she only exists in the imaginary world. In the taxonomy of the cultural critic Saito Ring, the old Laura should belong to the European beauty hero, and the new Laura belongs to the Japanese fighting beautiful girl.
From European and beautiful heroes to Japanese fighting girls
There is no essential difference between the heroes of Europe and the beautiful girls and the beautiful girls in battle, and they are not in the symbolic world. They are both fictitious expressions of the structure of male desire. The difference is that the expression of the European and American heroes directly appeals to the visual. The biggest feature is the exaggerated description of the first and second sexual characteristics, such as the sexy look of Wonder Woman. Also because of the exaggeration and visibility of the heroic characteristics of the European and American beauty, she is often included in the range of feminist criticism.
The Japanese fighting girls are different. They don't have prominent female sexuality: Laura, played by "Kan Mei", has no chest and butt, and doesn't show her posture. Instead, she continues to impress us with her courage and hard work. However, although the new Laura does not have a sexy appearance, she has grown up exactly in the way the otaku hopes, mixing reactivity (pitiful Chu Chu) and initiative (combat ability), achieving individual maturity in a short period of time. The weak and cute girl turns into a gritty "mature girl" to complete impossible tasks. The setting of this dual personality satisfies the inverted sexual fantasies of otaku about perfect women-Laura is both the object of desire and the guardian of desire.
This is the usual routine of Japanese combat girls, regardless of the magical girl type (such as "Sally the Sorcerer", the left picture below), the transformation girl type (such as "Like! Like it!! Witch Teacher", the picture below) or a mix Department (such as "Sailor Moon", the right of the picture below), and other two-dimensional products, fighting beautiful girls are not just consuming women's bodies (skins), but the objectification and otherness of women's subjectivity, showing Out of the unique and hidden repressive structure of male sexual desire in Japanese culture.
Challenges to feminism
Traditionally, it is believed that the youth subculture based on Japan provides a political possibility to resist the global expansion of European and American capitalism. However, after the 2000s, as the Japanese youth subculture developed in the direction of industrialization and institutionalization, it gradually became a part of global capitalism, and its political possibilities have been declared dead.
However, the process of globalization of subcultures is still continuing and growing. Japan’s regional issues have begun to become internal issues of global capitalism. While being absorbed by capitalism, they are also changing the capitalist world.
For feminism, the enemy will not die suddenly, but will only appear in front of us in a posture that we are not familiar with-New Laura shows that the way of materializing and otherizing women has become more concealed and natural. Especially in the process of cross-cultural translation, many problems have actually been effectively filtered and concealed. If you do not have a thorough and deep understanding of the specificity of the Japanese subculture, it is difficult to find the problems. Instead, Laura’s change is applauded. .
And Japan’s unique social environment has caused people’s tolerance towards women’s issues in subcultural genres. Many contemptuous treatments against women do not constitute a social problem, and have even become a trend (for example, fighting beautiful girls derived 13 subcategories). ). Therefore, when Japan is dealing with gender issues arising from its own subcultural industry, it is not sufficiently prepared both in theory and practice, and it is also unable to provide other countries with the same amount of critical thought resources as its cultural imagination.
Such a situation poses a challenge to feminist theory and practice in the 21st century: how to transcend “natural” barriers such as culture, region, context, profession, and media, identify problems, and identify problems when youth subculture is gradually becoming a dominant culture. The development of a feminist methodology that responds to gender issues set by the youth subculture will be the key to whether feminism can break through in the future.
(Author Deng Jian, PhD student, School of Letters, Shanghai University)
Author: Deng Jian
Edit: xd
Beauty Editor: Huangshan
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