Lara Croft: She Puppet

What are the general claims about the film as a rejection of modernist aesthetics? (anti-art, feminism, etc.)

The first general claim is that instead of using everyday people or friends (“nobodies”) much like other of her works, Ahwesh uses a well-known video game heroine, Lara Croft, and uses the video game images to comment on the game’s ideals in return. While basically all of the films we’ve seen “star” regular people, not models/celebrities, attempting to act or just being themselves at times, She Puppet uses the basically ideal model of what society(at least the video gaming world) believes a woman should be and look like.

Secondly and more importantly, Ahwesh, by using the gameplay of Tomb Raider synced with voiceover, deconstructs the game itself to exploit its unconscious flaws(i.e. never ending violence, etc.) and also defamiliarizes the audience of mise-en-scene, works of drama, and the gameplay action. By utilizing these two techniques, Ahwesh creates a postmodernist/postfeminist viewpoint of how demeaning pop culture images can be and also how an virtual supermodel heroine can be controlled by the hands of a gamer, most likely a male.

These claims are supported by Wees by stating how things in the film are much different than they normally are in gameplay. Most noticeably, the sound effects and music(I forget if there is any in the game) have been removed or altered and replaced by feminist thoughts and passages read by a woman’s voice. Also, instead of running through the game, killing everything that gets in Lara’s way, the movements of the video game protagonist are altered most of the time to simply stand still to appear like she’s observing the world around her. In other sequences, the character doesn’t even put up a fight and gets killed several times in a row. With these images combined with the voiceovers, it really makes it seem as if we are hearing Lara Croft’s deep feminist thoughts as she runs through a male-dominated cyberworld.

To what degree does the analysis correspond with your own?

My analysis of the film was basically the same as Wees’s. The film really felt like a film to me and not just video game clips. Having played the game in the late ‘90s, I was familiar with the Lara Croft character and the controversy surrounding her image and role in video games. Knowing this, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen something like this before that exploited Tomb Raider’s sexual themes. Viewing the gameplay as a film with voiceovers of seemingly Croft’s inner thoughts, it really made me look at it from a different perspective and gives a whole new meaning to the game. It was actually interesting to see the game “played” differently to give Lara a whole new personality, one of feminine values and not just eye candy for gamers.