Silent Hill 4’s Henry Townshend prepares to defend himself
with a typically typical ly makeshift weapon. © Konami Computer Computer Entertainment Tokyo
Masculinity in Video Games: The Gendered Gameplay of Silent Hill Ewan Kirkland
Ending Silent Hill 2
It s the clmactc clmact c scene. scene. Step by step James Sunerlan clmbs the ruste re re escape nt the r the erelct Lake Vew Htel. Once there, he encunters an ncarnatn Mary, hs ea we, wh passe pa sse away thre three e years yea rs ag llw l lwng ng a prlnge llne llness. ss. James has un un hmsel he here re at the en a trtu trtuus us jurn jurney ey that began when he receve a mysterus letter letter rm Mary Mar y tellng hm h m that she was watng wa tng r hm n ther “specal place.” place.” The battle has been lng an aruus, thrugh abanne apartment blcks, a zmbe-neste hsptal, hsptal, a ecayng prsn, an a labyrnth labyr nth crawlng wth evl ev l creatures. Ater A ter an angry angr y cnrntatn cnrntatn n the r, r, Mary transrms nt a grtesque mnster, strappe t a metal cage, hverng hverng n the ar, a r, wth blsuckng blsuckng mths swarm sw armng ng rm her muth muth an a n vcus tentacles falng. fal ng. James struggles t estry the creature wth what lttle ltt le ammuntn remans n hs nventry. Fnally, the mnstrus Mary alls t the grun, her brken by lyng pathetcally n the fr, muthng the same wr ver an
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over: “James . . . James . . . James . . . James.” There is nothing else the protagonist can do. He is alone with this twisted mutation o his dead wie, who pleads or release. The only action available is one that repeats the murderous act that terminated Mary’s lie all those years ago, the same act that has haunted James ever since and driven his hopeless search through the apartments, streets, and buildings o the deserted lakeside town o Silent Hill. James raises his rife or, i no ammunition remains, his oot, and — or the second time in his lie — he puts the pathetic creature out o her misery. The above describes the ending not o Silent Hill , the 2006 eature lm (dir. Christophe Gans, Canada/France), but o Silent Hill 2, the video game developed and released by Konami ve years previous. The ranchise belongs in the category o “survival horror,” a game genre combining horric imagery, gothic narrative, and baroque puzzles in an oten psychologically wearing yet compelling interactive experience. Silent Hill is a particularly intriguing, and long-running, example o the cycle, and the ending to its second installment is one o the most ambiguous and disturbing o recent video games. Through a combination o nonparticipatory digital lm sequences (e.g., the argument between James and Mary, Mary’s transormation, and her all upon deeat) and sections in which players control the action (e.g., James’s ascent, the battle with monster Mary, and her nal execution), the ending to Silent Hill 2 raises complex questions concerning player agency, the structuring o gameplay, and the gendering o the role that video-game players are invited to perorm. Encapsulating the game’s ambiguity is this nal moment when no other option but to kill the crippled gure o James’s dead wie is given. Throughout the preceding hours o gaming, attentive players will have come increasingly to suspect that the protagonist, who appears so devoted to his dead wie, constitutes the video-game equivalent o an unreliable narrator. Numerous clues suggest James’s implication in Mary’s death ollowing a long illness, even i the character himsel appears oblivious to
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horror video game’s nal challenge — little opportunity is allowed or refection, but the reduction o the monster to a prone, immobile gure, one blow away rom death, provides players time and space to ponder the signicance o their actions. Killing Mary in such a deliberate manner, thus orcing James to reenact the source o his guilt and shame, is the only way to nish Silent Hill 2. O course, just as a spectator may quit the cinema, a player may reuse to play the game, choosing instead to switch o the console and to leave James’s ate unresolved. But, i done so, many hours o oten grueling game playing will be rendered meaningless. That degree o investment, i nothing else, tends to compel participants — however aware, however uncomortable — to complete the game’s narrative circle. Depending on the perspective adopted, this may be a moment o video-game misogyny in a title that eatures a male protagonist dispatching numerous creatures o monstrous emininity, o which mutant Mary is just one. Or else this game critically engages with such images and actions, presenting a perverted world analogous to the psychological interior o a tortured man consumed by bitterness, resentment, and conficting eelings o love and hatred toward a woman whose lie he elt orced to end. Crucial to either reading is the extent to which players are implicated in James’s actions. This is a amiliar issue within lm and media studies, in which, or example, the meaning and impact o lms like A Clockwork Orange (dir. Stanley Kubrick, UK, 1971) or Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese, US, 1976) or Natural Born Killers (dir. Oliver Stone, US, 1994) are oten seen as contingent on viewers’ relationship with Alex or Travis or Mickey and Mallory — one seemingly intensied in video-game play by participants’ physically active role in controlling the central protagonist. Are players eectively interpellated into James’s acts o violence? Or do they stand outside the character’s narrative, repulsed by the brutal violence the game requires, appreciative o the character’s inner turmoil, and horried by the action implicated in the nal button depres-
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the series, ocusing on the games’ construction o masculinity as a gender position that the player perorms. The above description o the second installment’s fnal scene suggests the extent to which the series raises complex questions concerning identifcation, characterization, narrative, violence, and agency in video games, complicating common assumptions concerning the simplicity o the medium. The meanings o video-game texts can be seen as located in the intersection between audiovisual design, gameplay, and context. The varying degrees o import placed by players and critics on these areas — the way a game looks and sounds, the actions involved in playing the game, the narratives that situate gameplay as symbolic actions through cut scenes, box covers, and instructions — have central signifcance to the ideological readings that video games are understood to produce. Currently in its fth installment (Silent Hill: Origins [Climax Studios, 2007]), the Silent Hill series appears on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and PlayStation Portable and in arcades (as Silent Hill: The Arcade [Konami, 2007]). The ranchise has been adapted into a comic book series, digital art, an fction, and a eature flm. The games’ penetration o other media orms indicates Silent Hill ’s status as a brand, part o an emerging video-game canon that includes Tomb Raider , Resident Evil , and Final Fantasy . As survival horror, the series has many intriguing parallels with horror cinema and cinema in general, suggesting productive theoretical and methodological questions that are similar to, and also dierent rom, those raised by flm and flm studies. 3 And consistent with horror cinema, the construction o gender across the Silent Hill video game presents many challenges to received understandings concerning the operation o representations and identity ormations in popular media.
Masculinity and Video Games
In the introduction to their collection From Barbie to Mortal Kombat , subtitled Gender and Computer Games , Justine Cassell and Henry
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masculinity, their collection similarly ocuses largely on representations o women in video games and on the experiences o emale gamers.4 More recently, Diane Carr notes the paradox within video-game scholarship: “While the majority o players are reputed to be male, most o the critical attention directed at questions o gaming and gender has ocused on girls and women.” A cursory survey o the titles available in games stores, or a brie overview o the imagery, language, and implied readership o most popular video-game publications, reveals a masculinity that appears rooted in the traditional iconography o action, guns, and violence. The very stereotypical nature o this brand o machismo might explain why critics, keen to present video games as a cultural orm worthy o serious academic consideration, have largely avoided interrogating the models o manhood presented in contemporary video games. Much work discussing video-game representations and constructions o masculinity — admittedly as a sideline to the more usual ocus on constructions o emininity — emphasizes the pervasiveness o dominant modes o male gender and sexuality, comparable to the excessive stereotypes o superhero comic books or action-hero cinema. For example, in an early study analyzing video-game packaging, among stereotypical representations o women, Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. notes many muscular-chested males armed with huge weapons, wearing torn clothing, and posed in dominant, aggressive stances. Games, Provenzo argues, encourage dependence in women and dominant gender roles in males. Similarly, Nola Allo way and Pam Gilbert note how video games and their attendant culture associate masculinity with power, aggression, strength, and competition.7 Alloway and Gilbert see this regressive masculinity refected in video-game magazines and their oten sexist and homophobic reviews, advertisements, and editorials. Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheord, and Greig de Peuter use the term “militarized masculinity” to describe the video-game industry’s tendency to construct gameplay around gender-coded violence and
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lm and video tie-ins acilitating a perormance o a violent, sexist “boyhood” structured around killing enemies and saving (largely inconsequential) emales in a macho display that parallels many recent popular constructions o white masculinity. As suggested by James Sunderland’s ambivalent dispatching o a pathetic and helpless incarnation o his dead wie in Silent Hill 2’s climactic conrontation, this is a series that deviates rom the uncompromisingly macho, triumphantly aggressive, and uncritical narratives and expressions o masculinity with which video games are associated. In the rst Silent Hill (1999), players control Harry Mason, a widowed husband and single parent searching or his lost daughter through the mist-shrouded streets and houses o the titular town. In Silent Hill 2, as discussed above, James Sunderland comes to town seeking his dead wie. Silent Hill 3 (2003) is the only game to eature a emale protagonist, Heather. Silent Hill 4: The Room (2004) stars Henry Townshend, a man inexplicably trapped in his own apartment, who escapes into a series o nightmare worlds, in a narrative involving a serial killer, a sinister religious cult, and the near death o his neighbor Eileen Gavin. With its emphasis on unremarkable, ordinary-looking, morally fawed male characters, the series refects the more nuanced assessment o Geo King and Tanya Krzywinska, who observe alternative versions to the video-game “macho template” in the melodramatic lm noir protagonist o Max Payne (Rockstar, 2001), the eminized hero o Prince of Persia (Ubisot, 2003), and the parodied hypermasculinity o Duke Nukem (n-Space, 2000). Examining Silent Hill as another alternative to usual male characterizations, rather than considering the wider construction o masculinity in video games, has many benets. The observation made by Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter — that distorting conclusions can be reached by writers extrapolating small uncontextualized samples, not appreciating contemporary video games’ complex gender constructions, and employing passive models o the ways players attribute meaning to depictions o emininity and masculinity are undoubtedly amiliar to theo
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game genres and representations o violence in the contemporary games market.” This study, in ocusing on Silent Hill , addresses such a necessity, presenting a detailed interrogation o the series’ various constructions o masculinity. Aspects interrogated include character design and characterization, weapons, maps, game goals, tactics, monsters, beginnings, endings, and optical perspectives, indicating the range o considerations involved in comprehensive video-game textual analysis. As a horror series, the masculinities these games evoke oten contrast with the confdent, dominating, assured masculine identities observed within other genres. Silent Hill ’s male characters are variously amiliarized and domesticated, persecuted, unstable, and tortured by guilt and emotional turmoil. While in some respects conorming to amiliar gender ormations, the games requently complicate, undermine, or interrogate such stereotypes. At times, the series actively engages with gender issues identifed by video-game critics: the construction o inallible onedimensional heroes, the male-rescue-emale game goal cliché, and the suturing eect o frst-person perspective. As such, Silent Hill represents a ascinating site or an academic analysis exploring the construction and deconstruction o white masculinity in contemporary video games.
Gendered Gameplay in Silent Hill
Gender and identity are complex and contentious issues within video game studies. Some critics argue that the audiovisual dimensions through which avatars — the fgures that players manipulate and control — are gendered, classed, and raced are irrelevant to video gamers’ engagement. For example, Espen Aarseth, a vocal critic o flm and media studies’ involvement in the feld, dismisses the visual aspects o video games’ most analyzed character, claiming that “the dimensions o Lara Crot’s body . . . are irrelevant to me as a player, because a dierent-looking body would not make
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when choice is available, a gamer’s decision about which character to play is based not on traditional identications but on “gameplay-aecting characteristics.” For instance, in the case o Princess Toadstool, Super Mario Bros 2’s only emale character, gamers privilege the character’s ability to foat to areas inaccessible to other avatars, irrespective o their — or her — gender (129 – 30). Again, according to such arguments, gender signication, representation, and construction become irrelevant in the unctional interactive world o video games. Similar arguments might be applied to the rst game in the Silent Hill series. It begins with a digital video sequence — or cut scene — depicting Harry Mason emerging rom his car, having crashed on the outskirts o the titular town, to discover that his daughter Cheryl is gone. Players almost immediately take control o Harry’s movements, ollowing Cheryl into the misty lakeside resort. Events are thereore structured around the aims and activities o a white, heterosexual, male gure, whose body occupies the screen’s center, whose movements direct the virtual camera, and whose masculinity is evident through avatar design and accompanying literature, and requently reiterated through progressive cut scenes. Yet video-game critics might still argue that the genders o Harry or James or Silent Hill 4’s Henry are not important to the game o Silent Hill . From this perspective any discussion ocusing on the identity o the protagonist imposes an inappropriate critical ramework derived rom lm and literature, which does not account or video games’ crucial dierence rom these more established cultural orms. Video games may use narratives and orms o representation to situate action, contextualize play, motivate players, and shit units, but these texts are primarily games, not stories. Consequently, these gures are not characters in a narrative; they are avatars in a game whose visual details soon become unimportant as players engage in the more pragmatic abstract processes o spatial navigation, weapons triangulation, and puzzle solution that the games demand. However, ormal approaches to video games do not con-
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ciated with emininity (grace, lightness, and delicacy) suggests that it is gameplay itsel, when playing as Princess, that becomes eminized. The gendered video-game experience is not solely — or even primarily — an issue o visual representation but is expressed through game mechanics, structure, and goals, irrespective o or potentially working in opposition to character or avatar design. For example, Pacman (Namco, 1980) was reportedly designed to attract women gamers, producing a perceived emale-coded gaming experience ounded on the pleasure o eating, at odds with the avatar’s evident masculinity.4 Conversely, J. C. Herz — in a point reminiscent o arguments surrounding emale action heroines — questions the progressiveness o emale avatars who eature only in “masculine” video games played by male gamers.5 The criticism o video games’ dominant and hegemonic masculinity is not only that games — like the Silent Hill series — eature disproportionate numbers o male playable characters but that certain modes o masculine gameplay alienate emale gamers. Situating Silent Hill 3’s central character, Heather, within debates surrounding emale protagonists in horror cinema and video games illustrates how a emale avatar can acilitate masculine gameplay. Particularly appropriate to considerations o Heather’s unction or male gamers are connections that Cassell and Jenkins draw between Lara Crot and Carol J. Clover’s concept o the “fnal girl.” One purpose o horror flm heroines, Clover argues, is to displace male spectators’ experiences o ear and imperilment onto a emale fgure. Fulflling this fnal girl iconography, rom the opening sequence Heather resembles the archetypal “boyish knie-wielding victim-heroes o slasher flms,” while the mode o exploitative 1980s horror is urther evoked through a digital eect simulating videotape distortion used throughout the game.7 In the case o Tomb Raider , Cassell and Jenkins argue that Lara Crot’s exaggerated emininity precludes male spectator/gamer identifcation with a masculinized emale character, conounding urther parallels between Clover’s horror heroines and the emale video-
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Indicating the extra dimension that player participation adds to such critical assessments, in applying Clover’s ideas to horror video games, King and Krzywinska suggest that the participatory element — whereby players know threats encountered by game characters might be overcome by their own skillulness — constitutes, or male players, “a reassertion o masculine identity” through mastery o game systems.9 In presenting such a game environment to be dominated, Silent Hill 3 provides a traditionally masculine space or the rehearsal o traditionally male activities. By involving the mapping and navigation o complex architectural spaces, the destruction o aggressive monsters, the solution o problems, and the overcoming o obstacles, the game seems to reproduce what have been seen as typically male drives to kill, conquer, and colonize. I this desire personifes the “masculine” within video games, Silent Hill 3’s gameplay remains consistently male orientated, and dismissing the visually gendered dimensions o the game’s avatar — as would Aarseth and Newman — enhances rather than diminishes such claims. Additional eminizing touches o audiovisual representational design (such as the antirape device ound in Heather’s bedroom, the girlish squeal that the avatar emits when placed too close to a precipice, or puzzles involving nail polish remover) do little to compromise the masculine sensibilities that govern the series’ gameplay.
Masculinity in Silent Hill
I masculine gameplay overrides Silent Hill 3’s emale protagonist, this masculinization clearly extends beyond the gender o its three male characters. Play, involving the participants battling increasingly challenging environments and conronting increasingly malevolent creatures, embodies the combination o “violent action” and “exploration o space” identifed by Cassell and Jenkins as defning the masculine disposition o many video 2 Throughout the Silent Hill series, there is a clear empha-
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guns, pistols, and revolvers. Repeat play o Silent Hill 2 aords players an extremely eective chain-saw weapon, evidence o the series’ not irony-ree location in popular horror cinema. Progression through many game stages depends on the deeat o “boss” creatures.2 Levels o Silent Hill 3 conclude with battles between Heather and the “Missionary,” a speedy creature wrapped in dirty rags and brandishing long rusty blades; “Leonard,” a subterranean sewer dweller, part human and part lizard; and the “Memory o Alessa,” a series o bloodied versions o Heather hersel. Nevertheless — and here the traditional model o masculine gameplay becomes more problematic — the Silent Hill series diers rom the standard “militarized masculinity” described by Kline, Dyer-Witheord, and de Peuter as “run through labyrinthine settings, evade death, hunt down enemies, and kill them at high speed in lavishly detailed ways.”22 The frst signifcant point o departure is the characterization o the games’ male protagonists. Belonging to the previously noted survival horror genre, defned by Nic Kelman as “games in which the player usually takes the role o a normal human being in an environment overrun by demons, zombies, ghosts, etc.” (emphasis mine), Silent Hill ’s male heroes are nondescript individuals, denied the muscular body, supernatural powers, or fghting skills typically bestowed on video-game protagonists.23 For instance, Henry Townshend is described by the game booklet as “a rather introverted young man in his late twenties.”24 A reluctant and cripplingly domesticated male, Henry is unable to leave home, his ront door being inexplicably laced with padlocks and chains. Similarly, other men in the series are depicted as not particularly masculine by the standards o action adventure game heroics. Silent Hill ’s Harry, according to Carr, “is resoundingly normal. He’s a regular guy and an average shot. He doesn’t know kung u. He even trips over on his way downstairs,” while Silent Hill 2’s main character appears, at the beginning o the game, to be on the verge o lovelorn suicide.25 The unremarkable nature o Silent Hill ’s main characters
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that avatars handle in a clumsy and chaotic manner, resulting in similarly clumsy chaotic battle at odds with the elegant gunplay and precision targeting systems boasted by more militaristic game systems. Avatars grunt and fail, swinging wooden boards and broken bottles in a desperate attempt at sel-preservation. Since it is statistically impossible to shoot all creatures, with limited ammunition and supplies littering the game space, players must requently adopt a particularly unmanly strategy: running away, an approach recommended by most Silent Hill strategy guides.6 Concurrent with the survival horror genre, gameplay evokes a particularly unmasculine sense o helplessness, entrapment, and vulnerability — rather than the mastery and control o more militaristic series and genres. Heather might most easily t Clover’s ormula, but Silent Hill ’s emphasis on “survival and victimization,” like the generically comparable Resident Evil discussed by Sara M. Grimes, means both emale and male protagonists unction as “nal girl” gures. Within video games, movement through space is a central theme, on which Helen Fuller and Jenkins provide particularly insightul commentary. Identiying parallels between the “heroic metaphors o discovery” in popular discourses surrounding both cyberspace and colonial travel accounts, Fuller and Jenkins suggest that video games are organized around a similar colonizing heterosexual masculinity.8 Yet i spatial progression within video games satises traditionally male ascinations with expansion and conquest, Silent Hill repeatedly rustrates such pleasures. Progress across the town is oten slow and rustrating, as the avatars’ deault mode is a leisurely stroll rather than a run. Protagonists are incapable or unwilling to jack abandoned vehicles in the style o the antiheroes o Grand Theft Auto , a video-game ranchise with a more assured and traditional masculine identity. Indeed, both Silent Hill and Grand Theft Auto initially present maps detailing expansive game spaces, but while Grand Theft Auto ’s cities increasingly open up to successul players, as Silent Hill progresses, participants encounter torn-up stretches o tarmac, roadblock barricades, and
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restrictive, until a single narrow pathway emerges through the streets, buildings, and alleyways. In a comparative critique o the game, Carr describes the sparse linearity, clear sequentiality, and directed gameplay o Silent Hill 1 that “maintains a tidal pull on the player.”29 Male characters and players might entertain “masculine” belies in ree will, sel-determinism, and heroic individuality, as well as aith in the video-game’s player-centered interactivity, but these prove illusory. Indeed, player progress is manipulated by game structure in a manner that parallels game characters’ manipulation by supernatural orces. Discussing the horror video-game genre, Krzywinska talks about the experience o “being acted upon by the game’s deep structure,” an assessment that corresponds with lm critic Peter Hutchings’s description o male horror cinema spectatorship as “an experience o subjection, o having things done to you by particular lms.”0 This dynamic is exemplied in the rst game’s opening level. Following the introductory digital sequence, the player is compelled, through a combination o cut scenes and dead ends, to ollow Cheryl into a narrow alleyway. Traveling this unidirectional route, participants may become increasingly uncomortable, as darkness suddenly alls, sirens sound, and the walls and ground become splattered with indeterminate animal remains. This one way path ends in a bloody enced area, and, as with the end to Silent Hill 2, there is no way out. The gate locks behind the protagonist, trapping him in a conned space with several snufing monsters that inevitably eviscerate the hero even beore his story has begun — upon which Harry wakes in the booth o a diner, the previous sequence having been merely a disturbing dream. It is an introduction repeated in Silent Hill 3, in which Heather breathes her last breath while trapped within a grotesque amusement park, only to wake in a burger restaurant at a shopping mall, and, more extensively, in Silent Hill 4, in which every monstrous location is structured as an ambiguous dream. A amiliar horror cinema device used to unsettle audiences, these alse openings here serve
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thematic content. Not only is the male protagonist the subject o brutal, chaotic, disorientating orces, but, rom the outset, he has already ailed in his quest.
Damning Masculinity in Silent Hill 1, 2 , and 4
Failure is a requent theme across the Silent Hill series, particularly regarding one o the most amiliar play-motivating devices within video games. From Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981) to Shadow of the Colossus (Team Ico/Sony, 2005), the male-hero-rescuing-helplessemale trope endures, structuring all three o the male-centered Silent Hill games. The original Silent Hill sees Harry searching the town or his adopted daughter, a quest that reinorces patriarchal power relations defning men as responsible or the protection o both women and children. In Silent Hill 2, James returns to the town to rescue his wie rom the underworld in which she is trapped. The entire second hal o Silent Hill 4 sees Henry retracing his steps through the game environment, leading to saety his dependent next-door neighbor, Eileen Gavin, whose injuries leave her less physically capable than the hero. Unable to climb ladders, Eileen is urther limited to fghting with a handbag and riding crop, unlike Henry, who is equipped with frearms, swords, and broken bottles. Each game, in its way, enorces the mythology o male as protector o the emale, and, arguably, each player, in perorming the role o Harry, James, or Henry, is structured into adopting a similar ideological position. Yet, as previously noted, these are not traditional heroes, as they are variously eminized through narrative, design, and location. And while these individuals might adopt the stance o heroic masculinity, it is a position that is constantly problematized and rustrated. Silent Hill 2’s James, or example, is depicted as a pitiul romantic character according to the game manual, “wasting away in empty, lieless days o mourning” beore receiving a mysterious letter rom his wie. The act that Mary is dead casts James in the Max Payne mode o tortured masculinity while perversely
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scenario suggests James has little belie in nding Mary, his quest being hopeless rom the start, thereby subverting the common video-game structure in which invulnerable heroic males embark on achievable quests to rescue incapable emales.3 In this way, Silent Hill can requently be understood as presenting a critical discourse on masculinity, rather than an enorcement o traditionally male narratives. The creature design in Silent Hill 2, or example, recalls Barbara Creed’s discussion o gendered imagery in horror lms, with creatures embodying a kind o “monstrous emininity” recurring throughout both game and series.32 “Mannequins,” animated shop-ront dummies with two legs protruding where their heads should be; “Bubble Head Nurses,” shufing automatons that patrol the hospital level; and “Lying Figures,” creatures straitjacketed in embryonic sacks — all these Silent Hill gures, along with monstrous Mary, can be seen as grotesque refections on emale sexuality and reproduction. But a monstrous masculinity also eatures in the game, or example, in the phallic “Mandarins” (with their long feshy legs and protruding spikes), the “Abstract Daddies” (human gures trapped on walking doors that are explicitly linked to incestuous rape), and “Pyramid Head” (an executioner gure who drags a huge phallic/castrating knie in his wake).33 Moreover, an understanding o the game as expressing a straightorward antagonism toward emininity is complicated by Silent Hill 2’s oten surreal and expressionistic landscape, which is strongly connected with the protagonist’s mental state, implying a more critical disposition inherent in the game’s imagery. Various impossible and unsettling objects, spaces, and characters — a tailor’s dummy dressed in Mary’s clothes, grati addressing James by name, and a grave eaturing the protagonist’s tombstone into which the player must leap — suggest that play exists in a psychotic zone constructed rom the wie killer’s guilty conscience, a postsuicide hallucination nightmarishly combining James’s most intimate and distressing memories, or a grizzly purgatory in which other dead people also relive their darkest m ts.
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Similarly, i Silent Hill 2 represents a critique o misogyny, Silent Hill 4 can be understood, among other things, as an examination o the power dynamic associated with the male gaze. The main development o this installment is the introduction o frst-person perspective. While the game’s strange worlds are navigated using a traditional survival horror third-person view, whenever the player is trapped within the titular room, play is seen through the protagonist’s optical perspective in a manner similar to that o frst-person shooter (FPS) games like Quake , Half-Life , and Doom . Comparing the FPS apparatus to that o cinema, Sue Morris parallels this continuous visual subjectivity with the cinematic point-o-view shot, arguing that video games’ impression o agency and interactivity produces an even greater sense o identifcation. Here the gaze o the player, the avatar, and the virtual camera become one. Morris writes, “I primary identifcation is the cinematic subject’s identifcation with the act o looking, then the FPS player is unequivocally the one doing the looking. He or she is invisible in the game, just as one’s own body is mostly invisible rom one’s point o view in real lie. The player is placed in the scene not only by the frst-person point o view but also by his or her total control over this point o view.”34 Although Morris careully avoids gendering the FPS player, gameplay personifes Kline, Dyer-Witheord, and de Peuter’s “militarized masculinity” in being generically ounded on military combat, competitive violence, and an assertion o spatial mastery through the eradication o enemies. Observing close connections between video-game and military industries, Claudia Herbst also illustrates the gaze’s signifcance in technologies o war, heterosexual male eroticism, and video-game culture.35 I the cinematic optical perspective that Morris reerences is, as Laura Mulvey amously argued, largely male, sadistic, and controlling, a ft exists between FPS’s masculine themes and its visual interace.3 However, contrary to conventional theories, the ability to see while remaining unseen within Silent Hill 4 evokes not mastery
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yet the player can only watch, unable to interact despite the medium’s interactivity. This rst-person perspective moreover rames a critique o visual power dynamics running throughout the game. Silent Hill 4’s third level, or example, takes place in a panopticon. The gaming goal — to occupy the tower’s center, rom which all prison cells are visible — structures play around the achievement o optical authority, but realizing this aim entails investigating many rooms surrounding the controlling hub, which testies to the debilitating infuence o the authoritative gaze. Elsewhere, a lonely photographer, who takes illicit pictures o his nurse neighbor, suers a grizzly and humiliating ate. As the titular room becomes a haunted space, a disturbing voice chants, “I’m always watching you.” The most chilling critique o male voyeurism implicates the protagonist in the brutal assault o Eileen, aligning the player with a vicious serial killer through a shared sadistic male gaze. In the game’s rst hal, players are encouraged to look through the hole in the apartment wall at Eileen perorming various activities: watching television, laughing, sitting alone. Peering at Eileen — a direct reerence to Psycho (dir. Alred Hitchcock, US, 1960) in a game series steeped in movie reerences — makes the player uncomortably complicit in her subsequent attack by the game villain, a position enhanced ollowing her hospitalization by the presence o a disturbingly incongruous bloodied toy rabbit in the space she used to occupy.
Conclusion
Despite the male-centered nature o the video-game industry, in terms o game genres, playable protagonists, and gameplay, there has been curiously little in the way o detailed analysis o the kinds o masculinities contained within contemporary video games. Academic studies o video games and gender, like early eminist criticism o lm, television, and popular culture, are largely concerned with analyses o representations and constructions o emi-
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ity to women. The masculinity o video-game culture, pervading broader game structures and goals, results in the predominance o violence, conquest, and militaristic action as the preerred mode o interactive engagement. All, it is argued, contributes to the reinorcement o hegemonic masculinity. Broadly speaking, this may be a air assessment o the games industry as a whole, although it does ignore the appeal to children, women, and “amily” gaming evident in more recent games and console promotions. More important, such analyses do not acknowledge the complexities and contradictions in the images o masculinity on the screen, the narratives o masculinity in which they are situated, or the masculine positions game players adopt in relation to specic games, genres, or ranchises. This essay, in its concentration on representations and constructions o masculinity and in its detailed ocus on a single video-game series, aims to contribute to the developing eld o video-game studies. As this ocused textual consideration indicates, video games contain the possibility o alternative masculinities that challenge prevailing stereotypes o the medium. The Silent Hill series proves an interesting — albeit atypical — case study, indicative o the richness and ambiguity o a game ranchise unusual among video-game titles in many respects. Admittedly, masculinity remains Silent Hill ’s dominant mode o game play. Three o its our protagonists are heterosexual men. Spatial exploration, military combat, and patriarchal rescue goals undeniably eature throughout the games. Yet, notwithstanding such eatures, the men o Silent Hill requently contrast with the assured, unquestioning, militarized hypermasculinity regarded as standard across the industry; instead, they are ordinary, fawed, even neurotic to the point o psychosis. Throughout the Silent Hill series, many aspects associated with video-game masculinity are undermined. Spatial expansion is rustrated by impassable barricades, domestic incarceration, or a deterministic game structure. Military activity is curtailed by meager resources, modest weaponry, and the protagonists’ own shortcomings. Heroic
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in these games are variously vulnerable and helpless, plagued by their own inadequacies, manipulated by unseen orces, tortured by their pasts, and unable to interact with the outside world. The landscape o Silent Hill refects the guilt, anxiety, and misogynistic ears o these imperect men. I the games industry is currently in its inancy, game scholarship is only in embryonic orm. It has not yet been a decade since Aarseth declared 2001 “year zero” in video-game studies, and there remains considerable debate concerning suitable methodologies to be applied in the analysis o games, the nature o video games as texts, and appropriate approaches toward issues o representation in a medium in which the consumer has a signicant participatory role in dening the audiovisual experience being consumed.3 The video-game orm itsel continues to be derided and ignored, as Newman observes in the introduction to his recent study o the medium and its culture, “Everybody Hates Videogames.” 38 Certainly, criticisms that contemporary video games indulge players in a particularly unreconstructed mode o masculinity, which rewards violent action over imagination, emotion, or empathy and which actively excludes, marginalizes, or objecties women, do have clear oundation in recent blockbuster titles. But a distinction must be acknowledged between the video-game industry, with its current emphasis on macho combat, and the medium itsel, the potential o which has yet to be ully realized or appreciated even by those most closely involved in its production. The Silent Hill series is notable in this respect: a commercial ranchise that works within generic and industrial constraints, yet manages to challenge traditional models o masculinity and their implication in conventions o video-game characterization, representation, and play. Despite the many horrors it contains, Silent Hill indicates the challenging potential o this emerging art orm.
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character who has to get out o some enclosed place solving puzzles and destroying horric monsters along the way.” See Simon Egeneldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca, Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction (London: Routledge, 2008), 184. 2.
These titles shall be excluded rom this analysis. Silent Hill: The Arcade was available only in Japan, while Silent Hill: Origins had only just been released ater this article was submitted.
3.
Steven Poole observes the extent to which the “cinema-quality” o cut scenes was emphasized in Konami’s publicity or the original game. Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames (Burry St. Edmunds, UK: Fourth Estate, 2000), 78. Bernard Perron observes that in terms o advertising, game literature, and academic analysis, horror video games are most readily compared to cinema. Bernard Perron, “Coming to Play at Frightening Yoursel: Welcome to the World o Horror Video Games,” in Aesthetics of Play Conference Proceedings , ed. Rune Klevjer (Bergen, Norway: University o Bergen, 2006), www .aestheticsoplay.org/papers/perron2.htm.
4.
Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 5.
5.
Diane Carr, “Games and Gender,” in Computer Games: Text, Narrative, and Play , Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2006), 162.
6.
Eugene F. Provenzo Jr., Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 100.
7.
Nola Alloway and Pam Gilbert, “Video Game Culture: Playing with Masculinity, Violence, and Pleasure,” inWired-Up: Young People and the Electronic Media , ed. Sue Howard (London: UCL Press, 1998), 97.
8.
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheord, and Greig de Peuter, Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (London: McGill-Queen University Press, 2005), 247.
9.
Derek A. Burill, “ ‘Oh, Grow Up 007’: The Perormance o Bond
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10. Geo King and Tanya Krzywinska, Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 177 – 79. 11.
Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter, “Killing like a Girl: Gendered Gaming and Girl Gamers’ Visibility,” in Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conerence Proceedings , ed. F. Mayra (Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2002), 246.
12. Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art o Simulation,” in First Person: New Media as Story, Perormance, and Game , ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 48. 13. James Newman, Videogames (London: Routledge, 2004), 129. 14. Chris Kohler, Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Lie (Indianapolis: BradyGames, 2005), 22. 15. J. C. Herz, Joystick Nation: How Videogames Gobbled Our Money, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (London: Abacus, 1997), 182. 16. Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfeld, “Computer Games or Girls: What Makes Them Play,” in Cassell and Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat , 46 – 67. 17.
Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (London: BFI, 1993), 6; Dan Birlew, Silent Hill 3: Ofcial Strategy Guide (Indianapolis: BradyGames, 2004), 35.
18. Cassell and Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat , 30 – 31. 19. King and Krzywinska, Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders , 216. 20. Cassell and Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat , 8. 21.
James Newman defnes the boss as “an end o level, or sometimes inter-level, guardian that must be deeated in order to progress to the next level” (Videogames , 77).
22. Kline, Dyer-Witheord, and de Peuter, Digital Play , 251. 23. Nic Kelman, “Yes, but Is It a Game?” in Gamers: Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasures o Pixels , ed. Shanna Compton
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25. Diane Carr, “Space, Navigation, and Aect,” in Carr, Buckingham, Burn, and Schott, Computer Games , 71. 26. The ollowing all suggest fight as an important game tactic: Silent Hill 2: The Ofcial Strategy Guide (Piggyback Interactive, 2001) 22; Birlew, Silent Hill 3: Ofcial Strategy Guide , 43; and Silent Hill 4: The Room — the Ofcial Guide (Piggyback Interactive, 2004), 23. 27.
Sara M. Grimes, “ ‘You Shoot like a Girl!’: The Female Protagonist in Action-Adventure Video Games,” in Level Up Conerence Proceedings , Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) (Utrecht: University o Utrecht, 2003), www.digra.org/ dl/db/05150.01496.pd.
28. Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins, “Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue,” in Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community , ed. Steve G. Jones (London: Sage, 1995), 59. 29. Carr, “Space, Navigation, and Aect,” 63. 30. Tanya Krzywinska, “Hands on Horror,” in King and Krzywinska, ScreenPlay , 216; Peter Hutchings, “Masculinity and the Horror Film,” in You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies, and Men , ed. Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumim (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993), 86. 31.
Silent Hill 2 instruction manual (Konami, 2001), 12.
32. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993). 33. Creatures named in Silent Hill 2: Ofcial Strategy Guide , 24 – 30. 34. Sue Morris, “First-Person Shooters — a Game Apparatus,” in King and Krzywinska, ScreenPlay , 89. 35. Claudia Herbst, “Laura’s Lethal and Loaded Mission: Transposing Reproduction and Destruction,” in Action Chicks: New Images o Tough Women in Popular Culture , ed. Sherrie A. Inness (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 26.
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Espen Aarseth, “Computer Game Studies, Year One,” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (2001), www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html.
38. James Newman, Playing with Videogames (London: Routledge, 2008).
lectures in media and cultural studies at Kingston University, London. Specializing in the textual analysis o video games, he also writes on popular cinema, antasy television, and children’s culture. In the eld o game studies, he has written on psychoanalysis and game-space design, sel-refexivity in Silent Hill , and remediation in horror games. Ewan Kirkland
James Sunderland rom Silent Hill 2: A nondescript man in a claustrophobic domestic space. © Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo
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Ewan Kirkland>
This article explores construction and representation of masculinity in the “survival horror” video-game series Silent Hill. Noting the dominance of traditional male characters and masculine themes within the video-game medium, the Silent Hill franchise is seen as deviating from this assured, aggressive, and unexamined machismo. The series’ protagonists are instead nondescript, flawed, domesticated men—unstable, angst-ridden, and unreliable in a manner that interrogates the dominant mode of masculine gameplay. The problematic nature of video-game interactivity and identity, the extent to which gameplay can exist independent of playable protagonists, and the gendering of video-game goals and objectives are considered. Despite conforming to certain masculine activities—fighting, collecting weaponry, exploring and dominating space—Silent Hill complicates such aspects through the game avatars’ unremarkable abilities, limiting supplies, frantic combat styles, frustrating spatial progress, experiences of entrapment, and a pervading sense of helplessness, exemplified by the games’ often deterministic linear structures. Overall, this article argues that the games encourage critical distance from the male game characters, the rescue missions they attempt and often fail, the monstrous images of femininity they imagine, and the voyeuristic practices in which they engage.
