Wow! I love the analysis!
It's about time we read something in depth from someone, as far as I know, outside the community. I can't wait to read that book! Here is something he wrote on SH already:
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Restless Dreams in Silent Hill: Approaches to Videogame Analysis
Dr Ewan Kirkland
Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
ekirklanduk@yahoo.co.uk
In this paper I will be discussing the Silent Hill videogame, a successful survival
horror franchise which began in 1999 with the first game of the series. The most
recent release was Silent Hill 4: The Room in October 2004. My aim is to
illustrate the ways in which traditional academic approaches to film, media and
cultural studies can be productively applied to the audio-visual videogame text in
a way which does justice to its complex nature. Despite the varieties and
complexities of player engagement, it is my contention that there is a clear
videogame text which can be deconstructed, This text includes traditional audio
visual media characteristics such as characters, locations, virtual camera
movements, narrative, mise en scene, sound effects and music, as well as
interactive components such as physical and cerebral puzzles, multiple narrative
pathways and multiple-endings.
A semiotic approach helps to illustrate the operation of the videogame text and
the limitations of videogame interactivity.
As Steven Poole says: ‘videogames talk to the player in a special sort of
language, one which the experienced user knows by heart… Videogames talk to
us in signs’ (Poole, 2000, p189). Videogames can be understood as collections
of visual and aural codes designed to illicit a response from the player. These
might include the use of colour coding, arrows and targets directing the player’s
movement, lights illuminating areas to be moved towards, or the monstrous
growls of enemies, distinguishing them from more harmless characters. These
are amongst the visual and aural codes of the videogame. Successful playing
involves reading these cues correctly and responding accordingly in order to
meaningfully engage with the game text: to achieve a high score, to vanquish the
enemy, to progress to the next level.
Players are free to ignore, misinterpret or defy these videogame cues. But the
existence of such formal systems of signification points to the way games
structure the seemingly unstructured interactive gaming experience. In this
respect we may think of the videogame text as having a preferred playing, a
version of the preferred reading which usefully incorporates a high score table.
So, how specifically might we unpack Silent Hill as a media text?
Generic types and categories are strongly present in videogames,
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a point made by numerous writers on the subject. The Silent Hill series is located
in the ‘survival horror’ videogame genre. The term ‘survival horror’ was first
coined in the famous Resident Evil game. Other examples of the genre include
Clock Tower, Project Zero, Forbidden Siren and Obscure. The genre might be
understood as an action adventure game type, drawing on horror film
iconography, in which a third person character must be led through a maze of
streets and buildings, solving puzzles and fighting off monsters with limited
ammunition, energy and means of replenishing it.
True to generic type, in the Silent Hill series various characters find themselves
trapped in the town of Silent Hill. In the original game Harry Mason searches the
town for his daughter. In its sequel James Sutherland comes in search of his
dead wife Mary. In Silent Hill 3 Heather comes to the town looking for her father’s
killer. In order to achieve their goals and escape the town, these characters must
solve cryptic puzzles and fight of flee various grotesque monsters. Supplies of
ammunition and health drinks are sparsely scattered throughout the game, and
must be strictly conserved in order to succeed.
The series can be understood in terms of its relationship with other survival
horror videogames, but also horror film and television texts. Aesthetically, Silent
Hill is clearly rooted in horror and suspense, combining heavy use of shadows
and darkness (often the only light is provided by the pocket torch all playable
characters carry), and a sinister soundtrack (provided by the transistor radio all
characters also possess which crackles and screeches with static whenever a
threat is present). This creates a very expressionistic visual and audio
experience. However, more specific cinema references include the Romero
zombie films, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), Texas Chainsaw
Massacre’s (1974), Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Psycho
(1960), Les Diabolique (1955), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and David
Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977). The town of Silent Hill bears traces both of Blue
Velvet’s (1986) Lumbertown, and Twin Peaks (1990), and other small town texts
such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
So, Silent Hill’s similarity to other audio visual texts helps us to situate the series
in relation to popular Western culture, and opens the series up to the same
considerations of cultural value, ideology and representation to which these more
established texts have been subjected.
The series may for example be considered in terms of representations of gender
and race.
Gender is a prominent critical framework within academic videogame debates.
Key criticisms concern the recurring narrative of male heroes rescuing helpless
female, the sexualised representation of female characters, and the
overwhelming masculinity of the implied game player.
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Both Silent Hill and its immediate sequel involve male protagonists rescuing non-
playable female characters: Harry’s daughter Cheryl and James’ wife Mary.
However, the fact James’ wife is dead puts a perverse spin on this narrative
formula. The fact Cheryl is a young girl also brings to bear additional meanings
concerning the function of children in Western narrative culture, as either figures
to be rescued, or an ambivalent threat. The children in Silent Hill represent both.
More importantly, Harry’s fatherhood and James’ husband-hood domesticates,
feminises and differentiates these male characters from their more traditional
hyper-masculine cousins. This is also reflected in the nondescript nature of their
avatars.
Heather from Silent Hill 3 also differs from the fetishised female figures of Soul
Calibre or Grand Theft Auto in her androgynous appearance and narrative
centrality. Cassell & Jenkins apply Carol Clover’s discussion of the slasher
movie’s ‘final girl’ to video game heroines. As Clover suggests, male identification
with an imperilled female protagonist produces a greater sense of anxiety in male
spectators, while not threatening traditional masculine qualities of strength and
courage, so Cassell & Jenkins claim Lara Croft allows male players to flirt with
danger without compromising their masculinity. While Clover’s argues that horror
movie heroines’ tomboy characteristics appeases male resistance to trans-
gender identification, Cassell & Jenkins note this is at odds with the hyper-
femininity of Lara Croft (Cassell & Jenkins, 2000, p30-1). It could be argued,
Heather’s androgynous design successfully combines both the imperilled and
masculine femininity of videogame and horror cinema.
More problematic is the femme fetale character of Maria a woman described in
the Silent Hill 2 manual as such:
On the surface, Maria looks exactly like James’ late wife, however Maria’s hairstyle and
taste in clothing are completely different. Her personality, cheerful and energetic, is also
the exact opposite of Mary’s. When James first meets Maria, he is shocked by the
resemblance as well as the intimacy of their conversation, as if they had known each
other for years. After learning of his purpose in Silent Hill, Maria is interested in his
search form Mary and decides to accompany him
(Silent Hill 2: Director’s Cut manual, 2003, p3)
As Mary’s sexualised counterpart or doppelganger, Mary and Maria reproduce
the virgin/trollop dichotomy attacked by many feminist critics. Maria’s repeated
violent death and resurrection throughout the game, and the revelation James
murdered Mary who was suffering from a fatal illness, reflects a profound
ambivalence towards women. in this instalment of the Silent Hill series. This is
also emphasised in the monstrous femininity of the game’s creatures: the female
nurses and Legs monsters, and the final boss: a medusa-like creature
transformed from a bedridden Mary which James must kill to escape.
Both Mary and Maria are variously coded as visual spectacle. Throughout the
game the dead Mary appears only on a photograph carried by the protagonist,
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and as a videotape found in a hotel room. In both photo and film, James is the
implied spectator. The flashlight, a key object in Silent Hill, allowing the player to
see their way through interior spaces, is discovered on a tailor’s dummy wearing
Mary’s clothes, thereby connecting Mary with the visual. Maria’s to-be-looked-at-
ness is emphasised in her provocative attire, in her employment as an exotic
dancer, and in the way James’ gaze is drawn to Maria, his avatar turning towards
her as she dutifully follows him in the playable sections where they are together.
While gender is a well-explored area of videogames and videogame culture, race
is less frequently considered. In this final section I will consider the Silent Hill
series in relation to Richard Dyer’s discussion of racial and ethnic whiteness.
There are reasons for labelling Silent Hill a very white text. The streets of Silent
Hill may first be understood as a distinctly white space. The fictional American
small towns upon which Silent Hill draws are exclusively white districts. To this
generic whiteness, the series adds a visual whiteness in the ever-present mist
which shrouds the towns streets and alleyways.
Silent Hill, both town and game, are also white insofar as they contain no non-
white characters. All four protagonists are Caucasian, as are all non-player
characters. This includes Lisa Garland, the nurse from Silent Hill, Laura, the
young girl from Silent Hill 2, and Claudia, the religious fanatic from Silent Hill 3,
as blonde haired blue eyed women representing the whitest of whiteness. The
whiteness of the characters’ skin is exaggerated by the game’s aesthetics. The
pale, grainy, bleached-out pallet of the series gives its characters’ skin a
blanched, sickly, colour-less appearance.
In his study of Western pictorial representation, Dyer illustrates white people’s
special relationship with light (Dyer, 1997, Ch3). Illumination is central to the
Silent Hill series. The flashlight is an essential object within the game. Silent Hill
protagonists characteristically move through space casting light on their
surroundings. Dyer’s also discusses the blonde white woman’s significant
position in discourses of visual whiteness (Dyer, 1997, p124), and the
relationship between blonde femininity and light is apparent in the Mary dummy’s
possession of the flashlight in Silent Hill 2.
Finally, Dyer speaks of white people’s special relationship with death which
resonates throughout the game. Silent Hill contains clear suggestions that its
protagonist is dead, extending to supporting characters in Silent Hill 2. This game
opens with James staring at his reflection in a toilet mirror, contemplating the
futility of his quest: the search for a dead woman. In both Maria and Angela
(another woman James meets) we have characters contemplating suicide while
similarly staring into mirrors. At one point, James finds a room containing the
graves of all the games’ characters, himself included.
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The characters’ pallid complexions, their disorientated behaviour, even the
ethereal, misty, deserted streets of Silent Hill contribute to an impression that the
town represents a kind of limbo or afterlife, where dead white people come to
relive the pain of their guilty past.
Cassell, Justine & Jenkins, Henry (eds) (2000) From Barbie to Mortal Combat:
Gender and Computer Games Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The MIT
Press
Dyer, Richard (1997) White London: Routledge
Poole, Steven (2000) Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames London:
Fourth Estate
If you would like a more detailed exploration of the issues raised in this paper, or
to discuss any of its contents, feel free to contract me at the above email
address.
Dr Ewan Kirkland, February 2005
SHF Co-Gamemaster '10
It's about time we read something in depth from someone, as far as I know, outside the community. I can't wait to read that book! Here is something he wrote on SH already:
