Psychoanalyzing Resident Evil and Silent Hill 67
The Game Career Guide site has up a piece doing a psychological examination of horror games. The uber-successful series Resident Evil and Silent Hill go under the microscope, giving readers a look at the psychological archetypes the games elicit, while also discussing the titles from a gameplay standpoint. It is the author's contention that the RE series is the 'standard' for the genre, while Silent Hill games shake up the gamer's viewpoint with 'avant-garde' elements. An interesting, and thoroughly academic look, at the modern face of gaming horror.
Article (Score:5, Informative)
A, Resident evil 4 (an action game more than survival horror)
B, A complete and utterly incorrect comment
I have to wonder if I want to read an "indepth" article by these people. I mean how difficult is it to get that Resident evil 4 has ZERO Zombies? There are NO Zombies in RE4.
If you're going to do an indepth article at least make a note that the living dead tend to be... well dead.
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Perhaps you need to expand your definition of "zombie."
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Thanks for the spoiler, jerkoff.
wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's psychology... (Score:5, Funny)
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There once was a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud's index...
'Cause he.. loved his mother
From "Oedipus Rex" by Tom Lehrer [wikipedia.org]. Check out his work, he's fantastic.
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A tentacle can be just a tentacle if you're a biologist. But this is a horror scenario: what is it about tentacles that makes them fitting in a horror scenario? Not necessarily an easy question to answer.
The gpp is quite right that the article is talking nonsense about this, though: it's got nothing to do with blurring boundaries in Kristeva's sense, or abjection. Probably lots of people will have different views on what it is about tentacles that make them "horror"-fic; what do Cthulhu, Saddler, Demogorg
They worked hard... (Score:5, Interesting)
RE4 wasn't really the same sort of game as previous RE games, not really scary at all, just an action game for the most part. That said, RE has never struck me as being a particularly deep game series, for the most part simple resource scarcity and 'boo!' moments for relatively cheap suspense/horror. Extensive psychoanalysis of that series, particularly trying to pull in desire for a womb/sexual desire, comes off as a huge piece of bullshit to me.
Silent Hill's creators obviously very much buy into and intentionally incorporate every psychoanalysts dream smorgasbord of refrences/meaning. It ultimately makes it easy for psychoanalysts to roll through and point out the obvious things put in by the creators. Problem, for me at least, was the whole womb/room/umbilical cord thing just didn't strike me really. In fact, it kinda softened the impact of the whole thing because even as they tried to integrate it, it just seemed out-of-place, and not out of place in an eerie way, just in an almost funny 'reducing suspension of disbelief' sort of way. It was just so painfully obvious a psychological theory planted into the game that I've never took stock in. The fact that I didn't buy into it reinforces to me the decreased merit of 'everyone wants to be back in the womb' theories that pervade psychology. However, to me, Silent Hill *does* make good use of some deeper psychology to evoke deeper suspense and fear that is more persistant than anything in the Resident Evil series, so net Silent Hill's strategy of using more complex psychology works for them. To this end I was able to look past the parts that bugged me and enjoyed the overall game.
When I observe psychological archetypes that I do not believe have real meaning in a game, for me that's generally the point where I'm convinced (it fits so well, leaves my suspension of belief intact, and I can identify with the situation), or proves to myself that I'm not just being skeptical. Maybe it varies from person to person, but it seems most psychoanalysis is no where near as universal as the writers would have you believe.
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BUT, fun!
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Silent Hill and Resident Evil (Score:2, Insightful)
Resident Evil is a stupid action game with cheap OH-I-NEVER-EXPECTED-DOGS-WOULD-SUDDENLY-BURST-OUT
I'm not going to read this article because even somebody that actually likes RE will agree that RE and SH are completely different games.
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It has its points (Score:2, Interesting)
The meaning meter is reading dangerously low! (Score:2, Funny)
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I think I may have to agree with you. There are few things in this world I'm more interested in than psychology, and the subject of this article/paper/whatever got me excited.
But it's almost unreadable. I couldn't force myself to read it. If it actually is serious, it's very poorly written. There are no arguments for the statements - and many of t
Not to mention... (Score:2)
Uh-huh (Score:1)
Lacanian analysis. (Score:3, Funny)
Now I will get chills every time I have received a Word document as an email attachment or any time a potential employer requests my resume in Word format. Wow, this Lacan guy is spot-on.
Gammar exception. (Score:1)
Yes, I just noticed where I forgot to change from past to future tense and I am smacking my forehead now. Thank you.
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For the win. (Score:1)
Please hire me.
Gymkata (Score:1)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089243/ [imdb.com]
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/gymkata/ [i-mockery.com]
19 comments so far ? Do I sense... (Score:1)
Because yes, RTFM=big pain here, no doubt.
hmm... one word makes me want to read this article (Score:1)
the fact that this article is citing lacan for support makes me think that there has to be something more to it that a lot of you are not seeing.
how many of you watched Blue Velvet and saw anything worth paying close attention to?
slavoj zizek?
michel foucault?
i think the reason that you have a hard time picking anything worthwhile out of this article could be because you're not looking at it in the right way. when you're part of the gang of skin-heads beating up a jew, you don't see it as out of the ord
Horror games are terrifying,.. for me. (Score:3, Interesting)
For some reason, unknown to me I have nothing short of a fantastic suspension of disbelief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbel
I don't know why, it could be my upbringing, I might have trouble telling from real and fantasy, I could have deep mental issues, who knows.
What I do know is that I totally and utterly am scared easily, be it movies / games etc, it's fantastic - because I can enjoy some games more but it's terrible because I can be frightened so much.
Here's some examples of games I have quit due to fear.
Aliens vs Predator 2 demo, quit on the second level, not seeing a single alien, scared the shit out of me.
System Shock 2, lasted 5 minutes into the demo, quit - terrifying
Ultima Underworld 1 (yes UW1) I quit when I reached level 5, the ghosts, paranormal stuff, demons and darkness - I high tailed it back to the dos prompt.
Space Hulk (again an old one) - not a chance in hell.
Doom 1, I finished it but I distinctly recall playing it on
Silent Hill 3, lasted about 10 minutes, iirc it was foggy - quit.
Call of Cthulu, made it to the town, got into some kind of store and stole a liquor bottle, couldn't escape before the guy caught me - fear was too intense anyhow and quit.
I couldn't watch Disney's the black hole because Maximillion scared the shit out of me
I watched the exorcist recently for the first time and made a conscious mental decision to simply switch my mind off - I "observed" without listening, otherwise I'd totally shit myself.
Devils advocate, didn't know what it was about, when the "evil wives" faces morphed demonically, well I finished the movie but it scared the shit out of me.
Funny enough though I also get embaressed when watching some movies, I put myself in the shoes of the actor / actors, I find some humour difficult to watch and awkward, Borat for example makes me cringe, I see the humour but I can't watch it, nor can I watch someone make a fool of themselves on youtube, I feel embaressed for them - I don't feel the disconnect from the situation that others do, so it makes things quite awkward.
So, to get back on topic, scary games can be an amazing experience, because well - I feel like I've experienced it somewhat, for real, myself - and I've survived, it's fantastic but such a burden too.
The more you know.
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Have you seen the yellow sign?
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M
Not Psychoanalysis (Score:1)
Lacan was a student of Freud. IIRC my psych prof. dismissed Lacan because he doesn't like to provide integral scientific data to support his conclusions.
Anyways... yeah... pretty pointless.
Overanalyze much? (Score:1)
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Confused yet? Yeah, me too. This article is an example of psychoanalytic literary criticism [wikipedia.org]. A postmodern [wikipedia.org] mish-mash of psychoanalyisis, and literary criticism [wikipedia.org]. It uses deconstruction [wikipedia.org] as a tool to analyse the implicit assumptions in a text. One tenet of this school of philosophy is that it doesn't matter whether or not the author thought about, or intended to communicate these ideas. They "trust the tale, not the teller". You may consider this "reading things into" the story, but that's rather the poi
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Another barrier to understanding, at least on my part, is the fact that this type of thinking has its roots in the humanities, not in the sciences. As a result, it is unconstrained by experiment, fact, or logic. In fact, postmodern philosophy is far more interested in the "metanarrative", the stories we tell ourselves, rather than logic. Some even claim that logic should not have a privileged position over the narrative. A cynic would say that proposition is some extremely self-serving logic, coming from literary professors.
Touche. But let me say that the basis of postmodern philosophy, and its interests in metanarratives, stems from a primary postulate: that not everything "true" is empirically verifiable, that many things (but especially desire), never can be constrained by experiment, fact, or logic. The postmodernist begins (and this is not meant to be a dig) by questioning the desire for fact and logic, and the seeming stability they offer.
I wanted to respond because I appreciated the quality of your response--and co
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Ah, it does make more sense in that light. Most video game writing is either embarassingly superficial or poorly disguised advertising, and I for one was glad for a new perspective. I wrote that response primarily fo
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I wasn't aware of the mathematical reference--I'll have to look into that. Mark C. Taylor's recent book on Complexity Theory [amazon.com]is an excellent book--a work that not only summarizes postmodern theory, but integrates it with recent developments in the sciences and with technological changes (in a sense, he puts technology, science, and philosophy in a feedback loop within which it is impossible to identify what leads to what). Taylor is an exceptional Derrida scholar (though I disagree with him on a few points)
Today's a Good Day (Score:1)
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I must say, I wholeheartedly enjoyed your article. I found it to be very well thought out, well-argued, and just yummy. ;)
Your topic was well-chosen. It has always seemed to me that if you are going to lever the boom of psychoanalysis on any part of the gaming body o' work, Resident Evil and Silent Hill are your best initial candidates. No other games carry their Freudian complexes quite so close to the surface as those games, and their long-standing success speaks, I think, to how effective the combina
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Agreed.
Have you considered the narrative & psychological substructures of other games? You describe the impact of that narrative moment in Silent Hill for you... and this brings to mind the equivalent moment for me: the penultimate cinematic sequence in the Soul Reaver series. The conclusion of Raziel's quest (and Kain's, for that matter) stands as one of the greatest story moments I've ever experienced, for reasons that I'm not entirely clear on. [SPOILER ALERT!] How does the psychology of a destro
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I've never played the Soul Reaver series (though I played the original Kain on PS1!); though the act of sacrificing oneself could likely be read pyschoanalytically... of course, one would want to ask, why sacrifice? Is the goal to save a glorified sense of self? Or is the only option to sacrifice the self, since to be "whole" would negate exisitence? Does the hero sacrifice himself as a return to the mother? In defiance of a father? Does his sacrifice castrate the father's power (thus making it an Oedipal a
Life's Short. Think Hard. (Score:1)
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