Mario the Princess and Luigi

Mario Characters

("Super-mario-bros-2-usa-characters.jpg‎," 2009)

    I am going from memory here my computer was blocking me from playing. The princess of course represents the stereo typical needy female that can't do anything for herself she has to be rescued and led to safety. She has a pink dress on with a crown, pink pumps, and jewelry this is totally inappropriate dress if you are being held captive and are trying to escape. In real life even if that is the outfit someone was wearing when they were captured they would figure out a way to tear of the bottom of the dress to make it more manageable and they would have probably used of the torn of skirt to tie back their hair, broke the heels of the shoes, and defiantly ditched the tiara and jewelry or at the very least stashed it somewhere where they could find it later. So not only is the princess helpless and weak she seems pretty stupid too I don't think you can get any more stereotypical than that. On the other hand Mario is your stereotypical Jersey Shore Italian meat head he has a stockier build and seems to take the lead on getting the girl. He fights the King and takes the girl with him. Mario always seems to be leading the way. On the other hand Luigi is the classic side kick role he needs to be friends with the meat head for protection and so maybe he will get a girl by association. He is tall and gangly kind of like the awkward kid on the playground kids use to bully. He tends to be the follower and is softer he doesn't get the blue overalls with red shirt he gets the second best color green shirt with the blue overalls. Toad is the brains of the group he is the one that does all the work and Mario gets the credit for.

    I think this game has limited gender subject configurations the only one that I believe may relate is the positive role model (Schleiner, 2001) for the time the game came out. The princess may have represented how parents wanted their daughters to be prim and proper really girly. I definitely don't believe that she represents the Frankenstein monster, a drag queen, or a dominatrix, or a queer female gaze. (Schleiner, 2001)

References:

Schleiner, A. M. (2001). Does lara croft wear fake polygons. Leonardo, 34(3), Retrieved from    http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576939


Super-mario-bros-2-usa-characters.jpg‎. (2009). [Web]. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Super-mario-bros-2-usa-characters.jpg