Nintendo Switch-ing Genders: Bowsette and the Potentiality of Transgender Video Game Mechanics
2021; Routledge; Volume: 37; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01973762.2023.2184234
ISSN1477-2809
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoIn 2018, Nintendo announced a re-release of the game New Super Mario Bros. U. To make the title appealing to returning players, the company added series staple Toadette as a new playable character, alongside a never-before-seen power-up called the Super Crown. Once obtained, this item would transform Toadette into a facsimile version of the franchise's damsel in distress, Princess Peach. This functionality whipped the Internet into a frenzy and led to the creation of Bowsette, a fan character who imagines what would happen if series antagonist Bowser donned the crown and switched genders. As Bowsette ascended to superstardom, two aspects of her reception stood out: the frequent characterization of her as a transgender woman, and the fact that the Super Crown is the only feature carried over from the re-released game to Bowsette. This article holds that these two facts are connected, arguing that the queering of the Super Crown originated from the mechanical conceit of the power-up itself. Despite not being tied to any visible LGBTQ representation within the game, the item functions as a transgender video game mechanic, which allows it to reconfigure assumed-stable cisgender imagery by intimating non-normativity through experiential means. By picking up on and highlighting the Super Crown's ludic attributes in non-ludic mediums, Bowsette challenges representation's status as the dominant arbiter of gender in our modern world, inviting us to consider the possibilities unlocked by reconfiguring gender on mechanical as opposed to visual grounds.
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