Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)
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"The Horror is Alive": Immersion, Spectatorship, and the Cinematics of Fear in the Survival Horror Genre / Jay McRoy
Abstract: The video game genre known as "survival horror" resembles contemporary horror cinema in that both increasingly popular forms of entertainment allow audiences to experience fear resulting from the development of suspense coupled with the dread and shock of encountering monstrosity. One need only note the remarkable success of "next generation" video game franchises like Resident Evil (1996) and Silent Hill (1999) to realize that, more than ever before, game players in their late teens and beyond long to immerse themselves within interactive nightmares that offer the kind of thrills and chills once available exclusively through horror literature and films. However, despite the fact that survival horror video games allow those that play them the opportunity to interact with virtual environments in ways that determine which supporting characters, special weapons, or alternative endings are accessible, the survival horror genre ultimately adheres to the technological conventions, established themes, and (at times frustrating) narrative linearity of the cinematic tradition from which they arise. Consequently, when exploring the complex aesthetic and political relationships between survival horror video games, the experience of "playing" these texts, and horror cinema, two crucial questions must be addressed: To what extent do video games constitute a cultural phenomenon that merits not only serious critical inquiry, but a mode of inquiry informed by the discourse of film studies? And, if video games in general, and survival horror video games in particular, call for a detailed analysis, what visual or dramatic elements must a survival horror video game possess (or lack) to differentiate itself from other, similar video game genres? By way of analysis of prominent games in the survival horror genre, McRoy attempts to answer these pertinent questions while also raising questions about "new media" and its relation to older modes of criticism (both generic and film).
I. Introduction
<1>The popular video game genre known as "Survival Horror" resembles contemporary horror cinema in two significant ways: both forms of entertainment let their respective audiences experience fear resulting from the steady development of suspense or the dread and shock of encountering monstrosity, and both have a devoted and steadily increasing fan base. One need only note the remarkable success of "next generation" video game franchises like Resident Evil (1996) and Silent Hill (1999) to realize that video gaming is by no means predominantly the domain of children and adolescents. People in their late teens and well beyond, many of whom were practically weaned on "first generation" gaming systems from companies like Atari, Nintendo, and Sega, hunger for more adult fare, including games that offer the kind of thrills and chills once available exclusively through horror literature and films. Video games from the survival horror genre satisfy this market by providing players with a gaming experience reminiscent of sitting in a darkened theater and watching a protagonist fight for her/his life amidst swarms of decaying zombies, mutated animals, and other unpleasant creatures of the night. Furthermore, Survival Horror games heighten this experience by positioning those that play them as active (and interactive) participants in a virtual nightmare. No longer merely spectators, players assume the roles of the frequently imperiled lead characters and, in order to succeed, must rely on their wits, rather than sharpened reflexes, highly developed finger muscles, and impeccable hand-eye coordination. Weapons and ammunition are often scarce, and when a player's character "dies," the game is over; there are no "extra lives." However, despite the fact that Survival Horror video games traditionally allow those that play them to interact with the virtual environments in ways that determine which supporting characters, special weapons, or alternative endings are accessible, the Survival Horror genre ultimately adheres to the technological conventions, established themes, and (at times frustrating) narrative linearity of the cinematic tradition from which they arise.
<2> In exploring the complex aesthetic and political relationships between Survival Horror video games, the experience of "playing" these texts, and horror cinema, two crucial questions must be addressed: To what extent do video games constitute a cultural phenomenon that merits not only serious critical inquiry, but a mode of inquiry informed by the discourse of film studies? And, if video games in general, and Survival Horror video games in particular, call for a detailed analysis, what features comprise the Survival Horror genre? In other words, what visual or dramatic elements must a Survival Horror video game possess (or lack) in order to differentiate itself from other, similar video game genres?
II. In Too "Deep": Entering the World of "Survival Horror"
<3>There can be little argument that video games, whether played on computers or video game consoles, are "a significant form of entertainment" (Rockwell, § 5), especially when one considers that video game sales in the United States generated $4.3 billion dollars in revenue in just the first nine months of 2001 (Reuters, § 2) and, based on statistics provided by the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), topped off at a whopping $6.35 billion for the year (Wrobleski, § 1). To put these numbers into perspective, ISDA noted that "almost 225 million computer and video games were sold in 2001, more than 11 times the number of tickets sold to NBA and NHL games for the last completed season, and about 14 times the number of NFL tickets sold in the 2000 season" (§ 4). Of course, the video game industry is not without its detractors, chief among them conservative, "family values"-oriented groups offended, despite the obvious presence of parental advisory labels, by what they considered violent content all-too-readily available to minors. Not surprisingly, a recent legal battle centered on the question of whether or not video games, like other forms of entertainment ranging from books to films, constituted "free speech" and, thus, warranted protection by the First Amendment of the Constitution. On April 19th, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh of St. Louis, Missouri, delivered a highly controversial decision when he ruled that: There is "no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures" (Associated Press, § 1). Although his decision was based on a subsequently overturned ruling in Indianapolis, Indiana§, its message raises a number of important issues.
<4>First, the very fact that the content of these electronic texts stimulated a large-scale legal debate over "expression" and what constitutes the "conveyance of ideas" reveals not only the cultural importance and prevalence of video games as forms of "entertainment," but also their relative novelty as a mode of communication and, perhaps as a consequence, the lack of informed critical and academic discourse surrounding them. As Geoffrey Rockwell notes, it is precisely the lack of "critical attention paid to [video games] as forms of fiction" (§ 4) that positions video games as cultural artifacts demanding immediate and sustained theorization. Existing critical texts, however, treat games and the act of "gaming" very seriously. One need only reflect upon the arguments advanced by game theorists such as Clifford Geertz to recognize that games of all sorts are texts that convey volumes about not only the politics of personal investment in the games' results, but also the function of games as delivery systems for cultural norms and values. In "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cock Fight," Geertz specifically illustrates how games (and, by extension, competitions in general) can be considered "interpretive" in that they provide "a metasocial commentary" (448). In other words, games allow those who play them to attain "a kind of sentimental education" in which one "learns" what one's "culture's ethos" and "private sensibility...look like when spelled out externally in a collective text; that the two are near enough alike to be articulated in the symbolics of a single such text" (448). Games, then, can be understood as narratives on several levels. Like most literary, visual, or theatrical texts, games almost invariably consist of a struggle (or, at times, multiple struggles) moving inexorably towards resolution, even if the resolution takes the form of failure or "loss" on the part of the game player. But, as Geertz astutely points out, one can understand games as narratives that have the potential to "tell" (emphasis mine) a culture "about themselves" (448). They are texts that can be read and analyzed; video games, contrary to the assessment of Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, not only "convey ideas," but do so in a way that "speaks" volumes to those prepared to listen.
<5>Among the various games at the epicenter of this recent legal debate was Resident Evil [1], a Survival Horror video game that, like other representatives of the Survival Horror genre, and, indeed, many Role Playing Games in general [2], contains not only a discernable plot (like many forms of fiction), but depends upon a player's intellectual engagement with and navigation through said plot in order for him/her to successfully complete, or "beat," the game. Of course, endeavoring to define the parameters of the Survival Horror video game genre (or any genre for that matter) contains its own perils. However, given its relatively recent origins, one can distinguish certain "key" features that differentiate it from other, at times apparently similar, video game genres. For example, as the term "Survival Horror" implies, the premise and storyline of these games revolve around horror-related themes and tropes. Indeed, game designers consciously create these virtual worlds in an attempt to echo the experience of watching a horror film. Unlike so-called "First-Person Shooter" games like Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, the House of the Dead series, and Clive Barker's Undying, which also have plots drawn from nightmarish conceits, events in "Survival Horror" video games are "viewed" primarily from a third-person perspective framed in high-angle long shots intended to intensify the sensation of vulnerability, isolation, and, in certain "key" moments, shock. Also in keeping with the desire to foreground a frightening atmosphere in an explicitly cinematic fashion, game designers illuminate the game's action through the application of low-key lighting that capitalizes upon shadow and perpetuates a tone of menacing gloom. Only rarely does the player "see" through the eyes of the central protagonist, and these moments are generally reserved for important "plot points," such as the revelation of clues and details that lead directly to a furthering of the game's overarching narrative.
<6>Also linking the game playing experience with the "feel" of watching a film is the increase in the frequency, quality, and duration of animated sequences over which the individual playing the game has no control. A familiar trope in many video game genres, third-person plot-intensive role playing games use these scenes extensively as a means of not only framing the entire game, but also as a guarantee that the larger narrative unfolds as planned. In "Hands-On Horror," Tanya Krzywinska discusses this convention at great length, recognizing it as a feature that contributes to "a resonant rhythm between self-determination and pre-determination" (13). "This rhythm," she argues, "takes on a generically apposite resonance within the context of horror because it ties into and consolidates formally a theme often found in horror, in which supernatural forces act on, and regularly threaten, the sphere of human agency" (13). Largely expository in context, the best of these animated sequences are often visually stunning, resembling and, at times, even rivaling spectacular live action film sequences in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters.
<7>As one might expect, the application of these animated and blatantly cinematic passages to establish and further the plot of narrative-intensive video games has increased as computer graphics technology and the quality of digital animation has become more sophisticated. Game players have no control over these scenes, an aspect of the video gaming experience that has not gone unrecognized by players and reviewers longing for more influence over the games' progression. Consequently, their level of engagement changes as their roles shift from that of interactive participant/spectator, to that of simply (or, perhaps not so simply) spectator [3]. The impact of these cinematic in-game sequences, however, is perhaps best evidenced when one considers the role that these filmic moments play in the marketing of the games themselves. Several franchises, including the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, go so far as to present these sequences in a letter-boxed format, thus furthering the correlation between the video game as an interactive video-based entertainment and the video game as cinematic event. In recent years, the best of these sequences inevitably find their way into the televised commercials for the games, all but transforming what might have been a thirty-second demonstration of game play into the equivalent of a mini-trailer. The creepy and highly effective television spots for Silent Hill 2, for example, contained a montage of striking visuals culled from the game's animated sequences and virtually no shots of actual game play.
<8>The feature that most separates Survival Horror video gaming experience from other, similar genres, however, is the methodical, and exceedingly cinematic, development of dramatic tension. Thus, while other video game genres, like "First-Person Shooters," may unfold within traditionally frightening environments ("haunted" houses, fog-enshrouded paths, etc.), Survival Horror video games differ significantly in their application of "realistic" physics and lighting effects to evoke a progressively disturbing tone. Atmosphere is privileged over action, and although games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill contain plenty of violence, the carnage that players are capable of creating is substantially limited by available weaponry, a scarcity of ammunition, and, as is most conspicuously the case in Silent Hill, the central protagonist's relative "ordinariness." Although the player's character may discover better and better weapons throughout the course of the game, rarely do players have the luxury of discharging their weapons indiscriminately; in the world of Survival Horror, given the limited ammunition at one's disposal and the less than marksman-like aim of the player's character, "discretion" is frequently "the better part of valor." Unlike many first person shooters, players are often best served avoiding confrontations or "running away," a gesture that further heightens dramatic tensions informed by cinematic motifs.
III. Towards a Cinematic Theory of Video Gaming
<9>Given the emergence of hypertext fiction [4] as an increasingly popular mode of discourse and a "recognized area of literary studies" (Rockwell, § 7) it is perhaps not surprising that initial forays into video game theory have attempted to understand these electronic and interactive texts within a framework informed by the rubrics of literary analysis. After all, many video game genres, including "Survival Horror," present players with at least the illusion of navigating their way through a veritable "garden of forking paths" (to borrow a term from Borges), and even the postmodern literary pioneer Robert Coover claimed in a New York Times Book Review article that computer games constitute many people's initial experiences with hypertext fiction. Jørgen Kirksæther's essay, "The Structure of Video Game Narration," likewise notes a connection between video games and the rhizomic narrative avenues that typify numerous works of hypertext fiction. However, although Kirksæther acknowledges the ease with which computer games "can...be viewed as hypertexts" (§ 5), other critics, like Julian Kücklich, ultimately recognize that the "theoretical import of literary criticism to the field of computer games is not without its difficulties" (§ 12). The veracity of this observation becomes increasingly apparent once one realizes that video game players who immerse themselves within highly cinematic virtual environs are more often than not presented with merely the "semblance" of choice and the pretense of multiple paths. Indeed, it is the prevailing linear trajectory of these video games, coupled with their often very cinematic "look" and "feel," that distinguishes them from conventional hyperfictions and reveals the limits of literary studies as a mode of analysis for this predominantly visual medium.
<10>This is not to suggest that all third-person video role-playing games are unilaterally linear or likely to remain that way. With the emergence of complex "three dimensional" online worlds accessible through Internet-based role playing games like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI, for example, third person perspective role playing games are steadily becoming less overtly linear. Although the paradigm of "the quest" still imposes a form of narrative closure, if only on a more modest scale, players can develop fully-realized and unique characters that may engage in a myriad of multifaceted relationships with characters controlled by players from around the world [5]. However, in the case of the majority of computer- and console-based video games, which are driven by conventional plots and dynamic viewing angles informed by the visual logics of traditional cinema (camera position, lighting and sound, etc.), players are only "seemingly free to go wherever they want" (Finn, § 10, emphasis mine).
<11>Frequently, in an effort to allow players of heavily plot-based video games to have more control over the development and destiny of their characters, optional and mandatory "mini-games" and "sub-quests" are included. Too often, though, these activities leave players feeling as though they have entered either a realm of perpetual errand running or, in some cases, a poorly designed or repetitive game-within-a-game. Thus, these "innovations" provide only the appearance of control over the larger narrative's development. Consequently, even in video games that contain the most blatantly linear story lines, the progression from one plot point to another is rarely achieved in a conventionally "straightforward" sense. Jørgen Kirksæther illustrates this, explaining that:
game designers put obstacles into the game. They force you to replay game segments until you master them, which in turn moves the game forward...This underlying structure results in something interesting: games are almost never played in [a] straight line, plot-wise. Instead, you move through them in circles. (§ 13)
Mark Finn likewise recognizes this convoluted, yet ultimately linear "reading" strategy, which video games perpetuate, when he notes that "while players are free to dictate the narrative flow at the level of the...sub-game, completion of the overall game (and therefore narrative closure) requires players to follow a rigidly pre-established path through the game's levels" (§ 10).
<12>This experience of an elliptical, yet forward progression may at first seem like a considerable, or perhaps even a radical, departure from traditional reading or viewing practices. However, this seemingly circuitous mode of "reading" - coupled with the fact that video games ultimately consist of a series of carefully articulated, edited, and "projected images" (§ 5) -- further supports the value of a film studies approach to understanding the cultural importance of video games in general and, more particularly, the experience of playing plot-based video games, including those in the "Survival Horror" genre. As Kirksæther posits in a passage that borrows heavily from film theorists like Seymore Chatman and David Bordwell, the notion of the spectator as a passive or exclusively receptive vessel is, at best, a problematic formulation. The spectator comprehends, or "reads," the projected images through a process of analysis in which she/he must first "decode" or "interpret the film" to "discover what is already there" (§ 6); more specifically, as Bordwell has consistently claimed, spectators construct, not discover, meanings [6]. Consequently, a reader/viewer's progression through a text consists of a process of continual "interpretation," "problem solving," and "decoding."
<13>In addition, scholars who acknowledge the conventional and, at times, frustrating linearity of many video game genres regularly point to "Survival Horror" games like Resident Evil when elaborating upon their theses. For example, in echoing Mark Finn's previously cited observations about the linearity of video games like those that constitute the "Survival Horror" genre, Christina Demaria and Antonella Mascio claim that in games like Resident Evil, "the logical course of the characters' actions follows the rules of the genre the particular game is based on...slotting into a partly predetermined plot" (§ 3). Not surprisingly, these "partly predetermined" plots are almost exclusively informed by, or based directly upon, events that transpire within popular mass-culture texts, most notably movies. It has practically become a matter of course that a successful action film is accompanied by, or soon inspires the creation of, a video game; needless to say, this "growing trend in crossover production" has also resulted in Hollywood studios transforming popular video game franchises into films [7]. This generic cross-pollenization would not occur nearly as regularly were it not for the tremendously cinematic character of many contemporary video games.
IV. Seeing is Believing (?): Spectatorship and the Politics of "Survival Horror"
<14>In a paper delivered at the Fourth European Feminist Research Conference, Christina Demaria and Antonella Mascio remarked that "cyberculture is often described as being laden with hatred of the human body -- a hatred which originates from its imperfections, its dirtiness, its mortality" (§ 5). While this may be true, cyberculture is also permeated by a profound (and profoundly premature) nostalgia for corporeality and recognizable genders, an acute longing for a model of embodiment that is far from extinct [8]. Building upon an expansive, Foucauldian notion of "technology" as a discursive construction that includes and exceeds notions of the traditionally mechanical, Anne Balsamo makes this same point when she states that, "[n]ew technologies of communication such as virtual reality and computer networks literally serve as cultural stages for the performance and enactment of gender identity" (161). This panicked, symbolic reification of the physical is but one "manifestation" of the philosophical and cultural dilemmas posed by a developing cyberculture. One need only note the simultaneous emergence around the mid 1980s of the literary and film subgenres of cyberpunk [9], with its focus on virtual realities and the human form as anachronistic, and splatterpunk [10], with its focus on monstrosity and the human form graphically disintegrated, to realize that the human body has once again become the location upon which a myriad of emerging cultural anxieties converge. The body is, after all, the most obvious "space" or "form" into which we are born, as well as the site upon which disciplinary power most immediately exerts its influence. When one's perception of corporeal integrity is threatened by a menacing physiognomy -- whether it takes the form of the living dead, that quintessential icon of indeterminacy, or the unsettling infinity of that "consensual hallucination" (Gibson 51) known as cyberspace -- most people tend to assume a defensive posture. Even if the threat is far more theoretical than actual, many people squirm in their seats, cover their eyes, rage against the loss of an illusory "wholeness," and, as evidenced in the legal battle discussed earlier, deny others their freedom of speech.
<15>Given its visceral impact upon its audiences and its blending of the technological and the corporeal, it is to the much maligned - and increasingly popular - video game genre of "Survival Horror" that I again turn my attention. Of all of the video game genres, "Survival Horror," with its cinematic presentation and consistent blurring of the already negotiable distinction between player and spectator, provides a most valuable model for discussing how many video games position players/spectators as participants in the creation/reification of cultural norms, while also providing them with potential avenues for imagining social resistance.
<16>Building from Bordwell's premise that the act of viewing images is anything but a passive experience, one can argue that "the interactive format of videogames" actually deepens the role of the video game player as spectator in that the practice of making choices (no matter how limited those choices may be) "permits greater identification with the characters and stronger relationships with the images" (Demaria & Mascio, § 2). Given the potential intensity of this mode of spectatorship, it makes sense that much of the popular and academic discourse on videogames addresses the perceived threat that these interactive texts pose to not only those who "play" them, but to the proper functioning of the larger social body as well [11]. This cautionary stance is a familiar refrain; similar concerns over the impact of projected images have long informed debates within the discipline of film studies [12]. As such, several "key" theories regarding the politics of spectatorship in cinema prove invaluable in any projectthat endeavors to map the player/spectator's role in third-person role playing games, particularly within the "Survival Horror" genre, and the modes of identification it allows.
<17>Tracy L. Dietz contends that video games "present an overwhelmingly traditional and negative portrayal of women and that the development of gender identities and expectations among youngsters may be affected by these portrayals" (§ 2). While gender stereotyping in video games is certainly common, the representation of variously gendered characters and its impact upon game players/spectators is far more intricate than Dietz's formulation suggests, especially when the characters are those with which the game player most identifies. This process of identification is especially intense when one considers the profound "interactive format of videogames" ("Little Women..." § 2), as well as its impact upon the player's investment in the "fate" of the game's main character irregardless of the protagonist's "sex." In a number of ways, this correlation between representations of gender and the politics of game playing/spectatorship in Survival Horror (and other third-person/role-playing) video games mirrors the processes of identification that horror movie audiences undergo when witnessing the nightmarish events and monstrous, indeterminate bodies endangering the lives of the characters on the screen. Indeed, recent film criticism pertaining to the politics of spectatorship in genre cinema has focused extensively on the relationship between the "gaze" of film audiences and the heroes, heroines, and villains with which, to various extents, they are compelled to identify.
<18> For example, in her extremely influential treatise Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover explores how horror films, particularly the "slasher film" genre, a cinematic tradition renowned for its largely female heroines, "may in fact be the premier repository of one-sex reasoning in our time" (15). Proceeding from the premise that young males constitute horror cinema's primary audience, Clover understands the resourceful and appropriately aggressive "female victim-heroes" (7) or "final girls" as figures that allow male spectators to identify with the protagonist's struggle to defeat representations of monstrosity. Many horror films, for Clover, are texts "in which the categories masculine and feminine, traditionally embodied in male and female, are collapsed into one and the same character -- a character who is anatomically female and one whose point of view the spectator is unambiguously invited, by the usual set of literary-structural and cinematic conventions, to share" (61). In other words, assuming that traditional, essentialist notions of gendered behavior inform the expectations of horror film audiences, Clover proposes that by presenting the "final girl" as a quasi-androgynous construction, a form of cross-gender identification occurs that confounds previously held notions of horror cinema as predicated almost exclusively upon a sadistic male gaze or narratives of male violence enacted upon distinctly female bodies.
<19>A similar process of cross-gender identification is at work when players grab their controllers and navigate their way through the gruesome world of the Resident Evil video game series, in which players identify with both male and female characters that not only perform similar functions and move with a conventionally masculine gait, but are also capable of fighting off their undead adversaries through the use of deadly force. In the midst of the game's action, primarily framed -- as mentioned earlier - in high angle long shots that further obscure anatomical differences, the game player/viewer loses him/herself in the character despite the character's sex. This does not mean, however, that these female characters escape male objectification entirely. As is the case with the depiction of popular "scream queens" in genre cinema publications like Femme Fatale and Draculina , polygonal divas like Resident Evil's Claire Redfield are often overtly feminized and fetishized on multiple web sites, as well as within the pages of popular video game magazines [13]. This dual and, to some extent, seemingly contradictory representation of the "female victim/heroine" across multiple, yet ultimately related, mediums certainly raises some very important questions for both film theorists and the increasing ranks of academics -- myself included -- who elect to theorize about video games and, as a result, "provide players...with the theoretical tools with which to think critically about them" (Rockwell, § 8). For instance, if the female character with whom the game player/spectator identifies transforms, via magazines and other media, into an explicitly feminine "sex symbol" (Demaria and Mascio, § 1), to what extent might this seemingly contradictory gendering impact the way in which the game player/spectator comprehends their relationship to the game's main protagonist? In other words, if the game player is exposed to this exaggerated and overwhelmingly sexist conceptualization of "femininity," does the immediacy and interactivity of game-play/spectatorship still provide an atmosphere in which avid players can overlook these alternative representations of the female protagonist. Or might this aspect of the game playing experience then constitute, as Anne-Marie Schleiner proposes in her study of Lara Croft (the heroine of the popular third-person adventure video game series Tomb Raider), a type of "drag" performance, in which "rigid gender roles are broken down, allowing young boys and men to experiment with "wearing" a feminine identity" (§ 7)?
<20>Before one can begin to answer such questions -- or perhaps because such questions can be raised in the first place -- it is important to recognize that the politics of identity in video games, like the politics of spectatorship in film studies, is a complex issue that reveals quite a bit about not only the dominant ideologies at work in Western culture, but also the possibility for resisting operant social codes. Whether video game players, like the horror film viewers explored in Clover's text, engage in a form of cross-gender identification or assume a subject position akin to "drag," analysis of the role of, and the roles assumed by, the video game player reveals identity as flexible and performable rather than naturally determined and fixed. In addition, while the audiences for many video game genres, including Survival Horror, are largely composed of males, there is an ever-increasing female audience that may very well identify with the embattled protagonists -- be they coded as male or female -- in radically different ways. As film critics like Isabel Pinedo, Mark Jancovich, and Harry Benshoff illustrate, media and genre studies that assume a uniformly male or, more explicitly, straight male audience necessarily overlook a multiplicity of perspectives that may not only shed new light upon the motifs and conventions of a certain form of popular entertainment, but also challenge the social constructions that buttress the status quo.
<21>If, for instance, we acknowledge Isabel Pinedo's excellent points that the audience for horror films is by no means exclusively male, and that female viewers may gain "pleasure" from witnessing "however partially or temporarily the overturning or disintegration of the symbolic order" (67), then we can also posit that women who play Survival Horror video games may achieve a sense of empowerment in witnessing, as female game players/spectators, the actions of an assertive and "violent female" (68). Likewise, if we elaborate upon the notion of game play/spectatorship as a mode of drag that exposes the artificiality of sexuality and gender, we can understand video games as dynamic cultural artifacts that simultaneously reflect the values and precepts of the dominant culture and provide a portal through which one can engage in a kind of philosophical "free play," reveling in the virtual mantel of yet another imagined persona. Thus, like the Balinese cock fighters Clifford Geertz describes in "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," Survival Horror video games (and third person role playing games in general) allow the game player/spectator to identify "not just with his [or her] ideal self...but also...with what [s/]he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by (420). In this sense, what is at stake in Survival Horror is not the "fate" of the virtual hero/heroine with which the game player/spectator identifies, but the very politics of cultural affiliation and logics of personal identity. Furthermore, if, as Geertz claims, the appeal of games demonstrates that "every people...loves its own form of violence," uniting through "their involvement with rage and the fear of rage" into a "symbolic structure" that "at once contains them and allows them play" (449-450), then Survival Horror video games, with their focus on the horror and promise of indeterminacy, have much to teach us about the narratives we tell ourselves to placate our uncertainties and quiet our fears.
V. Conclusion
<22>Whether applied to the study of specific video game genres like "Survival Horror," or to the development of a theoretical framework from which to discuss video games as a cultural phenomenon, a film studies approach has its limitations. Certainly video games have become increasingly cinematic and are, at the very least, "motion pictures" in the absolute literal sense of the term. At the same time, video games are complex interactive entertainments and, consequently, not "films" as "films" have come to be understood over the first one hundred years of cinema. Even if the limited flexibility of the games' plots disallow the game player/spectator the absolute freedom to explore their virtual surroundings and engage in an extensively nonlinear experience, players can nevertheless manipulate the activity on the screen in ways that far exceed the abilities of conventional film audiences. As Tanya Krzywinska notes, this "interactivity, with its concomitant emphasis on doing, affects the shape and pleasures of horror-based videogames," thus differentiating game-playing from the experience of viewing works of "cinematic horror" (12).
<23>In short, although, as Bordwell has demonstrated, spectatorship is never a passive activity, the degree of player interaction often required in third-person persepective games pushes the usefulness of film studies as a mode of critical inquiry to its limits. Perhaps, then, given the decrease in critical distance constituted by the video game player's ability to control (to varying degrees) their characters' actions, the analysis of video games requires, as Julian Kücklich proposes, "the development of independent aesthetic criteria, i.e. independent of... the criticism of other media" (§ 3). Or, perhaps by recognizing "what is different about [video] games" (Rockwell, § 11), namely the extent of interactivity required on the part of the game player/spectator, an ever-more effective mode of analysis may develop that both builds upon the obvious strengths of a contemporary film theory approach while also considering the insights of other related (or seemingly unrelated) disciplines.
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Notes
[1] The official court documentation (available on-line at http://pacer.moed.uscourts.gov/opinions/ INTERACTIVE_DIGITAL_SOFTWARE_ASSOC_V_ST_LOUIS_COUNTY-SNL-36.PDF) actually refers to Resident Evil as "Resident of Evil Creek," a miscue that, as Henry Jenkins points out in a May 6th, 2002 Salon.com article by Wagner James Au (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/06/games_ as_speech/index1.html), raises serious questions as to how well-informed the Judge's decision actually was. As Jenkins states, "the judge even manages to misidentify or mangle the titles he cites, suggesting that he didn't look at them very closely." [^]
[2] The term "Role-Playing Games" (or "RPGs") refers to any game (live-action, paper and pen-based, video, etc.) in which the player assumes the "role" of a particular character. In the most popular "Role-Playing Games," like Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, and the Final Fantasy video game series (to name just a few), players gain levels, assume roles, and engage in contests or interchanges with other characters. Many of these confrontations can have dramatic impacts upon the "fate" of the player's character and, as a result, the development of the game's action. . [^]
[3] As Krzywinska notes, the cinematic cut-scene "wrests control away from the player and reinforces the sense that a metaphysical 'authorial' force is at work, shaping the logic of the game" (16). [^]
[4] For valuable introductions to hypertext narrative, see George Landow's Hypertext (2.0) (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), Janet H. Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: The Free Press, 1997), and Hyper/Text/Theory, edited by George P. Landow (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). [^]
[5] In this sense, these on-line role-playing games come closer to resembling the "old school" pen-, paper-, and dice-based role playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, upon which these many of these technologically-enhanced games are based. [^]
[6] For a thorough exploration of this phenomenon, see Bordwell's 1989 book, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). [^]
[7] The most recent example of this is the film Resident Evil (2002), based directly upon the celebrated -- if infamous -- video game franchise. Interestingly, the Resident Evil franchise itself draws upon a multiplicity of classic zombie films, most notably George Romero's Dead trilogy (Night of the Living Dead [1968], Dawn of the Dead [1978], and Day of the Dead [1985]) and its many imitators. In fact, early in Resident Evil's pre-production, Romero was slated to write and direct, but unspecified creative differences led him to abandon his role in the project. [^]
[8] As Johan Fornäs points out in "Digital Borderlands: Identity and Interactivity in Culture, Media and Communications," without bodies there can be no interaction with technology: "in spite of all ideologies of the pure incorporeality of computer-mediated communication, the body remains an inescapable element. With tools and technologies, we can reach further away, but our physical bodies still remain the first and the last step of each communicative act" (§ 46). [^]
[9] For a cross-section of compelling studies of the cyberpunk genre, see (among other texts) Larry McCaffery's edited collection Storming the Reality Studio (Duke University Press, 1992), Scott Bukatman's Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Duke University Press, 1993), and Dani Cavallaro's Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson (Athelone Press, 2001), [^]
[10] For in-depth analysis of splatterpunk as a genre, see Jay McRoy's "There Are No Limits: Splatterpunk, Clive Barker, and the Body in-extremis" in Para*doxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, No. 17 (2002). [^]
[11] Numerous texts address cultural perceptions surrounding the potential impact of video games. Some of the more interesting analyses include Gillian Skirrow’s “Hellivision: An Analysis of Video Games” in MacCabe, Colin (ed.) High Theory/Low Culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film (Manchester University Press, 1986), Kristen Drotner’s “Modernity and Media Panics” in Skovmand, Michael and Schrøder, Kim Christian (eds.) Media Cultures: Reappraising Transnational Media (London & New York: Routledge, 1992), J.C. Herz’s Joystick Nation: How Video Games Gobbled Our Money, Won Our Hearts and Rewired Our Minds (London: Abacus, 1997), and Alloway & Gilbert’s “Video Game Culture: Playing with Masculinity, Violence, and Pleasure” in Howard, Sue (ed.) Wired Up: Young People and the Electronic Media (UCL Press, London, 1998). [^]
[12] For an overview of theories of spectatorship and their impact upon contemporary film studies, see such seminal volumes as Linda Williams (ed.) Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (Rutgers University Press, 1995), Richard Allen’s Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Isabel Cristina Pinedo’s Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997) Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.) Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 5th Edition (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds.) Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences (British Film Institute, 2001). [^]
[13] Given the extent to which the Internet provides a space for the sharing of certain (socially sanctioned) interests and ideas, independent fan, as well as corporately-sponsored sites dedicated to both video game genres, like Survival Horror, and specific video games, like the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, continue to emerge As Demaria and Mascio note, “a real culture has emerged in the world of video games (culture of play – pixel culture), made up of groups who share a passion, language, and habit. Those who belong to this culture sometimes create a virtual community – gathered around several media (particularly specialist magazines) – which can be found on the net” (§ 1) [^]