Today, I spent a total of one hour of my life playing Super Mario 2. This game is primitive and extremely difficult but it also lends a few statements on gender roles. In this game there are several main characters a person can play named Princess Peach, Toad, Mario, and Luigi. These characters attempt to avoid enemies and finish their quests. Most of them have special abilities. Mario is well rounded and does not seem to have any ability in particular, Luigi can jump very high right over impossible walls, Toad can move very fast, and Princess Peach can glide along while jumping. Other than these specific differences each character is essentially the same in ability.
I find that Princess Peach is the coolest character because of her awesome jumping ability and in this sense, this game does not discriminate against female characters. She is similar to Lara Croft in that she is an able fighter. She is what Anne-Marie Schleiner writer of the article "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games" would be considered a positive role model for women and girls. This is how Scheiner sees Lara Croft stating that "Lara Croft is a positive role model for women and girls and a possible entry point for women into the male discourse domain of computer games" (Schleiner).
Scheiner states that sometimes subjects in games gravitate to a certain position in relation to the user. This is what she calls the "gender subject configuration" (Schleiner). Unlike Croft, Princess Peach does not seem to play the role as a sex object because she is well clothed and the character is not displayed with enough resolution to have much fine detail. She may actually roll back gender stereotypes because here is a princess who is just as strong as the guys.
The producers of Super Mario 2 seem to be quite enlightened except for the fact that most of the characters in the game are male and this may reduce the appeal of this game for females. Princess Peach looks very young and weak, and wears pink which is stereotypically a girl color. On the contrary however, Princess Peach is an able character who conflicts with this stereotype of the princess being weak and in the end expresses exactly the opposite. Princess Peach is an awesome character who is a stereotype fighter!
Bibligraphy:
Schleiner, Anne-Marie. 2001. “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games.” Leonardo. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576939
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