Super Mario Bros. 2 complicates gender stereotypes in a few different ways. Female and male characters should have different roles in games in order to match stereotypes. In this game Princess (the only female) has the same role that the males have. She performs somewhat different (she can float in the air for longer than the male players), but she can do everything that males can do. According to Schleiner (2001) “until recently, the characters, or avatars, in these games were almost exclusively male, with the exception of the princesses offered as battle trophies” (p. 222). In Super Mario Bros. 2, the princess is not offered as a trophy, she is part of the battle. She can play all the levels until she reaches the trophy. The stereotype is complicated here because Princess doesn’t behave like the princess would in other games such as Prince of Persia and Double Dragon.
In this game the stereotype of gender is also reflected in a few different ways. For one, Princess is wearing a pink dress with a little crown in the battlefield. This is a stereotype for all princesses. Just because someone is a princess, does not mean that they are going to be walking around wearing big puffy dresses and crowns all the time. Schleiner (2001) explains that “Lara Croft is seen as the monstrous offspring of science: an idealized, eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet created by and for male gaze” (p. 222). Princess does not look like a “monstrous offspring, but she sure behaves like one by killing everything that gets in her way. Even though Princess acts this way, she is still wearing a pink dress and “looks” like a princess; this is done to conform to the male gaze. Princess is the only female character in this game; Schleiner would say that this is done in order to invite more female to play the game. If women do not want to change their identity online, but still want to play, they have the opportunity to do so with Princess.
Works Cited
Schleiner, A-M. (2001). Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons? Gender and gender-role subversion in computer adventure games. Leonardo, 34 (3). pp. 221-226. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576939
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