Blog - Mario Bros.

I am all too familiar with Super Mario Bros 2. I spent countless hours of my grade school years trying to beat this game. As a child, I never noticed the gender differences and stereotypes that were being shown to me through this game. Upon starting the game, the user is prompted to select a character that he or she would like to “play as”. The choices range from Mario, the hero, his sidekick and brother, Luigi, some deformed mushroom named Toad, and Princess Peach. Women stereotypes are emphasized as Peach is adorned in all pink attire and a crown.

Like Lara Croft, Peach is well endowed and semi disproportional. As Scheleiner states, Peach, like Lara Craft, “is seen as the monstrous offspring of science: an idealized, eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well trained techno puppet created by the male -gaze” (Scheleiner 2001).Over the decades young men have played as Peach and have manipulated her movements to the inevitable goal of finishing the level. This manipulation agrees with the idea that people can begin to test out other gender roles and identities through games. Though peach is not clad in extra short shorts and a bikini top, her feminine assets are still expressed, these include her “polygon” butt and breast, through the side scroller style of game play.

Another interesting aspect of the game is that Peach has extra power that none of the other characters have. She can hover for short distances. This gives her a great advantage in the game and would draw users to want to play her character more. It makes me wonder why the only woman in the game is given this advantage. The possible rhetoric associated with this aspect of the game is that women may need an extra advantage to succeed.

There are a few other things within this game that are troubling. Mario is the stereotypical male. He is built and strong, perfect for the main character of any action game. While playing the game, if Mario is wounded he shrinks in size. This shrinking in size could possible be communicating to the gamer that smaller people are weak. Also, Toad is clearly darker skinned color than the other 3 characters. He is also smaller in size with a large “afro” style head. I don’t know if the creators were trying to draw a correlation between black people or if I’m just reading into this.

References

Schleiner, A. (2001). Does lara croft wear fake polygons? gender and gender-role subversion in computer adventure games. Leonardo, 34(3), Retrieved from http://www.paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/schleiner_laracroft

Princess peach picture. [Web]. Retrieved from http://smashgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/super-mario-bros-2.jpg