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Citation

What If Zelda Wasn’t a Girl? Problematizing Ocarina of Time’s Great Gender Debate

Author:
Lawrence, Chris
Year:
2018

For years, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has incited fan debates regarding the gender of the game’s ambiguously presenting deuteragonist, Sheik—an alterego of the Princess Zelda. Efforts to definitively gender Sheik’s imagined body ignore the character’s value as a site of positive resistance against cisgender heteronormativity. A close reading of the game informed by Judith Butler’s (1988) theory of gender performance and Jack Halberstam’s (Female Masculinity. Duke University Press, Durham, 1998) study of female masculinity establishes a working theory of gender conformity in Hyrule, identifies in-game sites of disruption, and identifies Sheik as a character who performs an alternative masculinity not contingent upon the character’s imagined body.