She Puppet2001

An homage to and commentary on the female action adventure game Tomb Raider and its busty virtual superstar Laura Croft. I played the game on the my computer and simultaneously recorded the gameplay onto videotape. Then I treated the material as "found footage" and recut it in order to rethink the game and consider questions about women, virtual bodies, role-playing, identity issues and fandom. Ignoring the original drive of action, I make Lara explore the game environment at the edges of the programming world created for her. The limited inventory of Lara's gestures and the militaristic scenarios of the game are considered from a feminist perspective in analyzing the symbolic feminine and the popular culture that has sprung up around Lara Croft. Quotations are from three authors who philosophize the alien, the clone and the orphan: The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, The Female Man by Joanna Russ and the jazz mystic Sun Ra.