Use two films studied on the module to discuss how elements of gameplay
are used to convey a sense of historical trauma.
Pans Labyrinth, Silent Hill
Video games are no longer a new media phenomenon, but they are one of the
youngest mediums. The definition of remediation outlined by J. David Bolter
and Richard A. Grusin in their book ‘Remediation: Understanding New Media’
is the act of new digital media remediating its predecessors such as television,
radio and print journalism. Video games such as Max Payne use slow motion or
‘bullet time’ effects that directly remediate the cinematic effects within ‘The
Matrix’. ‘The Matrix’ remediated this from cyber punk anime such as ‘Ghost in
the Shell’. Video games such as ‘Gears of War 3’ remediate films in their use of
cinematic cut-scenes. In ‘GOW 3’ ‘there is 90 minutes of cut-scenes (Dee
Majek. 2015. P.3).
‘Silent Hill’ is a perfect example of a franchise that reverses the regular pattern
of film refranchised as games. ‘Silent Hill’ actually migrates the use of cut
scenes from its videogame counterpart into its film. Nods to the videogame are
numerous and what this allows for is a far greater inter-textually between the
ludic structure of the narrative and the film.
In Pan’s Labyrinth the choice given to Ofelia in the gameplay element mirrors
the way the viewer has to choose between what is real and what is fantasy.
Guillermo intertwines the narrative with the logic of a little girls fairy-tale
‘imposing its own laws of versilitude’ (Fernandez. 2013. P.212). One way of
viewing the story is to see the labyrinth world as a product of Ofelia’s
imagination. However Guillermo complicates this reading at the end of the
film. When Vidal finds Ofelia talking to the magical faun the camera switches
to his viewpoint and the faun is not there. Initially this would give the viewer
the construct that the fantasy world is purely a fabricated reality used by Ofelia
to deal with her trauma. However, previous to this encounter Vidal drinks a
heavy sleeping medication which destabilizes our trust in Vidal’s view giving us
the realisation that perhaps the faun is real.
This puts the viewer in the position of a gamer, the goal is to work out the
puzzle, what is real and what is fantasy? We are the algorithm constructing our
own version events through the database of hyperealities.
(Pan’s Labyrinth. 2006)
Guillermo defies the patriarchal and conservative value systems that were
engrained by Disney. Disney films were keen to authentically copy fairy-tales
but in doing so they inherited their old fashioned ideologies. Guillermo goes
against this by re-contextualising fairy-tales. Drawing from a range of contexts,
whilst not giving them precedence over each other. References include nods to
child eating monsters such as Cronos the Greek god. Cronos devoured his god
children and in a similar way Vidal kills Ofelia to prevent the young from
flourishing. Ofelia’s red shoes link with the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and the 1948 film by
Powell and Pressburger. Piles of shoes reference the piles of clothes in Nazi
concentration camps. This results in a competing interplay between copies of
copies to create meaning. This plethora of sources in conjunction with a
heavily remediated structure points to the idea of the hypereality.
Storytelling has featured ludic structure throughout history. The Greeks were
in favour of a level-like approach to their stories. Homer’s the ‘Iliad’ is full of
stages and levels which the hero ‘Achilles’ has to make his way through, to be
victorious. There are also certain monsters and people that he has to defeat on
his quest, such as Hector, much like in videogames where there are bosses
who you have to defeat to complete the level. There are certain artefacts that
Achilles has to retrieve such as the golden bough which is the key to the
underworld. Other characters only let him go forward if he is able to complete
their riddles.
Lord of the Rings offers similar ludic narratives with the inclusion of Gollum’s
riddles. Both of these texts deal with the issue of historical trauma and perhaps
the sheer volume of ludic narratives provides evidence that they are the best
format of exploring the subject. Arguably ‘Lord of The Rings’ is an analogous
epic about World War One and many say that the writer J.R.R Tolkien wrote it
as a way of dealing with the traumatic events that he experienced during the
war. The Iliad consciously goes about documenting the violent history of
ancient Greece in a highly glorified and fantasized way, perhaps as a way to
subvert the depressive nature of a time consisting mainly of war and hate.
Guillermo Del Toro hints at both of these approaches to dealing with historical
trauma in his film ‘Pans Labyrinth’.
Both ‘Lord of The Rings’ and ‘Pans Labyrinth’ have the same fairy-tale quality.
However in ‘Pans Labyrinth’ the fairy-tale nature is different because it is both
contained within a strand of the story and at the same time encapsulates the
story completely. The fairy-tale element of the labyrinth that Ofelia descends
into is shown to be her creation, despite a few ambiguous plot points that
would suggest otherwise. This is perhaps represented most potently at the
start of the film as it begins with the camera going into Ofelia’s. This gives the
sense that the viewer is about to see the story from a childish fairy-tale
perspective. This is a ludic device putting the viewer into a first person
perspective like in a first person shooter.
Much like how J.R.R Tolkien wrote ‘Lord of The Rings’ arguably as a way of
coping with his Post-Traumatic Stress. In ‘Pans Labyrinth’ we are presented
with the idea that this fantasy world created by Ofelia is a way of both
escaping but also ultimately dealing the violent political turmoil that is present
in her reality.
The topic of ‘Pan’s labyrinth’ is 1944 post civil war Spain in which Vidal a brutal
fascist leader has come to power and is hunting down the Spanish rebels. This
is a topic of Spain’s history that is seldom addressed due to its horrible nature.
Spain, and other once Fascist countries such as Germany are understandably
trying to forget their turbulent past.
The non-prejudiced people of Nazi Germany at the time of WW2 would have
been aware of the genocide that their leaders were responsible for. However
they would be conditioned to look away and focus of their own economic
benefits and improvements to lifestyle that came with Hitler’s rule. This theme
of looking away is prevalent in both ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘Silent Hill’, the
theme of choice to see or forget the harsh truth.
‘Pans Labyrinth’ captures the antagonist Vidal’s mentality of glorifying his rule
and forgetting the evil sentiment of fascist Spain. This mirrors the way that the
‘Iliad’ subverts its story’s painful nature into a celebratory piece and the way
that the Puritans in ‘Silent Hill’ subvert sin onto innocent people who they label
witches. One way of dealing with sin is by repressing it and blaming it on
someone else. However buried sin always rears its gruesome head which often
effects the innocents. The innocent children in both films are the ones that are
sacrificed for others sins.
One of the reasons that Spain has not addressed this topic is because of the
man and the regime that the film is all about. This is like how America’s history
books were rewritten to cover over their horrible treatment of Native
Americans. ‘As one of the spoils of victory, Franco the leader of the fascist
Spanish regime was able to control and manipulate representations of the past
to create a paradigm of National Catholic Spanish history that would be taught
in schools and universities’ (Fernandez. 2013. P.212)
In ‘Pans Labyrinth’ Ofelia’s completion of the levels within her magical world is
seen as a way to deal with her trauma as well as Spanish national trauma. The
release of her brother into the world alongside the death of their mother
symbolises the turning over of a new leaf. This mirrors how in ‘Silent Hill’
Alessa uses her child Sharon ‘the good part of Alessa’ as a clean slate. In ‘Pans
Labyrinth’ Ofelia is an analogy for Guillermo Del Toro. Where she is trying to
deal with her emotional trauma, Guillermo Del Toro is trying to deal with his
country’s national trauma. In a twisted way Ofelia is also an analogy for Franco
as he goes on to manipulate the past into a fake fantasy version with the
illusion of it being real. Again this manufacture of an unauthentic past is
prevalent in the untruthful ramblings of the head puritan in ‘Silent Hill’.
‘Silent Hill’ practices the same subject of confronting our fears, emotions and
most importantly trauma. The main theme running through ‘Silent Hill’ are
people’s sins and traumas and how characters deal with it. The town of Silent
Hill is an alternate reality nightmare dimension that is an area of dark energy
created from one traumatic event. Everyone that lives in Silent Hill is subject to
punishment from this dark energy that pulsates in and out like a tide. It brings
with it devilish monsters and that are only unable to encompass one area: the
church.
(Silent Hill. 2006)
The event that brings about this dark presence is the burning of a child named
Allessa by a cult of puritan Christians who believes that she is a witch. This is
because she has been made impure by the molestations of a janitor. During
the witch burning ceremony the device of her torture breaks allowing her to
survive, albeit severely burnt. In hospital Allessa is visited by the devil in the
body of a dark doppelganger of herself. The devil offers Allessa the opportunity
to reap revenge by giving her dark powers over the town and gifting her with a
child. I believe that the devil enables Allessa to transform the town of Silent
Hill into a game in which the people who tortured her are trapped and exposed
to her revenge.
The town is an embodiment of Alessa’s mind, at times it’s a metaphor for other
character’s mental anguish such as in the case of Rose. In the original video
game this is made clearer by the ‘malevolent power native to Silent Hill, which
materializes human thoughts’ (Wiki. 2015) into monsters and scenery. Visual
motifs are included denoting the national trauma of America and Japan. The
viewers of the film and players of the game are made to deal with the fallout
of the trauma from horrible events such as Hiroshima and the holocaust. The
fog world has a very post- apocalyptic feel to it.
(Silent Hill. 2006)
A child born of the devil and the hate filled Alessa is adopted from an
orphanage outside of Silent Hill by the main character Rose. The viewer follows
Rose as she tries to track her lost child down after she disappears. After
learning that her child, Sharon is in Silent Hill she must descend into its hellish
layers of nightmarish levels. The film certainly does borrow a level-like design
from its video-game counterpart. Survival is the goal in all these levels, the
main goal of any traumatised mind is to escape the trauma so the survival
gameplay is heavily emblematic.
The contest is a form of human experience that we are shown from an early
age even with the contest to leave the womb alive: ‘from parenting to
courtship to war, and as a cognitive structure it may have evolved as a survival
mechanism in the original struggle of predator and prey in the primeval world.’
(Janet Murray, 2004). In Silent Hill the gameplay element of flight or fight is in
favour of fight because humans often tackle trauma head on. However some
trauma is too intense to combat so we must flee. If you are to make the wrong
choice between the two in the game and in life then this can be fatal.
As I mentioned before the main theme to ‘Pans Labyrinth’ is choice and this is
strengthened by the game-like nature of Ofelia’s fantasy world. The labyrinth
that Ofelia descends into is full of puzzles and levels that she has to complete
through making choices. The Faun presents Ofelia with a magic book with
three tasks that she must complete before the next full moon. She must
retrieve a key from the stomach of a giant toad that lives in a rot infested
womb-shaped tree by feeding it three magic stones. This scene symbolises her
brother killing her mother in child birth and Ofelia’s task entails killing the toad
which would save the tree. In the game-like world the motives that characters
cannot act out in reality become realised. Later she is told by the faun that her
second task is to retrieve a dagger before the last grain of sand falls.
(Pan’s Labyrinth. 2006)
Both ‘Silent Hill’ and ‘Pans Labyrinth’ copies the level-like formula from its
video-game counterpart alongside its narrative structure. In ‘Silent Hill’ the
level-like sections are even joined by a black screen at the end of one and the
beginning of another. There are also cut-scenes between the action with
different filters on the screen: ‘whenever cut-scenes feature, atmospheric
ambiguity, narrative complexity, and personal relationships are foregrounded’.
(Kirkland. 201. P.320) There will be an action scene followed by a scene where
the story is explained often by a character or a cut scene. In ludic structures
there will often be some kind of narrator that will guide the player through the
levels adding explanations to the action. In ‘Silent Hill’ this narrator is Cybil, in
‘Pans Labyrinth’ it is the faun and the fairies.
Often without these narrators players are left just fighting enemies for no
reason. This kind of interplay between action and dialogue alongside the type
of guide-like behaviour from some of the characters reinforces the isolated
goal structure of the survival missions. You must just stay alive, nothing else. If
we view each level as an ordeal with trauma then only before or after the
action do we fully have time to reflect and understand it. Cybil makes Rose
understand her daughter’s trauma because Cybil is un-burdened by the panic
and confusion that Rose is in. This is the same feeling that the player has in the
case of survival games.
Rose’s development within the fantasy world of Silent Hill mirrors her
daughters development. This is evident in the first scene where she is dressed
in infantile attire and holding a stuffed toy. There is also a plethora of sexual
imagery often in the form of doors that Rose must go through to get to the
next stage. This action of leaving a door is a metaphor for leaving the womb
and reaching the next stage of development. These motifs are prevalent in the
video game ‘Dark Souls’ that symbolically documents the player’s journey from
escaping the womb to contesting with monsters with far bigger swords than
them. Pyramid Head is a boss monster in Silent Hill with a big sword whose
murder of people is a metaphor for sex or rape. Rose and Sharon are
vulnerable to him as they have yet to reach the next pycho-sexual stage. Just
like how in a video-games the aim is to reach the next level, in ‘Silent Hill’ the
next level is the next stage of development.
(Silent Hill. 2006)
Silent Hill features an ever-changing ludic environment that creates new zones
that Rose must navigate through. The map that Rose sees on the road
symbolises this database of Alessa’s traumatised mind. The map is reminiscent
of the ones used in video games, particularly ‘Silent Hills’ video-game
counterpart. This ludic library of zones must be navigated through by the
algorithm. The structure of a database and an algorithm that navigates its way
through the stages contradicts the standard narrative of a guided path. It
enacts the way that we often visit our own trauma: with no pattern or logic.
The monsters that the characters have to defeat are presented much like
targets or chess pieces, not characters that a non-ludic narrative would have.
(Silent Hill. 2006)
If we look at the database of ‘Silent Hill’ as the mind of Alessa the visual motifs
fit her trauma. Silent Hill is burnt to a crisp like Alessa herself. She faced
molestation by the Janitor symbolised by the sexually charged Pyramid Head.
Alessa is both the child and an analogy of Sharon. Her needing to confront
these demons is Alessa needing to confront her trauma.
Sharon trying to escape Pyramid Head is Alessa’s psyche playing out the
scenario of actually escaping the molestations of the Janitor. The Janitor has
stunted Alessa’s sexual development because she hadn’t reached the next
stage yet. Sharon and Rose’s trip through ‘Silent Hill’ is a metaphor for Alessa
repeated attempts to reach the next stage. ‘Replay is an aspect of gaming, one
of the most pleasurable and characteristic structures of computer-based
gaming in particular, which is usually accomplished by saving the game state at
regular intervals’. (Murray. 2004) This is another ludic feature, the replay of
stages to try and complete them. In a sense ‘Silent Hill’ is analogous of itself
because it is a town that has been made a game for Alessa’s mind to work at
and a videogame for us to play. If we recognise visual motifs that symbolise
nuclear wastelands such as the very Chernobyl-like abandoned playgrounds
and ash then we are playing through the trauma that nuclear fallout left.
Ultimately Alessa’s repeated catharsis of her own trauma is symbolised by the
ludic pattern. A never-ending stream of monsters comes out to kill the cult,
then they go back to the darkness and the act is repeated. There are parallels
between Alessa’s creation of a game world and the Japanese man Keiichirō
Toyama creating the video-game. Has Keiichirō Toyama manufactured a gamelike
world for a catharsis of his national trauma?
In ‘Pans Labyrinth’ there is no mistaking the similarities between tasks such as
escaping increasingly sand filled rooms and the tasks in games such as ‘Tomb
Raider’. Ofelia has to make certain choices with the tasks such as should she
eat from the table of the pale man? This mirrors the way that other characters
have to choose between seeing the evil of the regime or not and following its
laws or acting against them. Ultimately the film is about obedience or
disobedience. The pale mans table is an almost direct copy of the table that
Vidal dines at with his friends earlier on. When Ofelia eats from the table she is
breaking the rules and this symbolises the contradiction of Vidal’s orders. The
choices that Ofelia needs to make are paralleled with the viewer’s choice to
decide what is real and what is fantasy.
I will end this essay with the idea that ‘Silent Hill’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is about
hyperealities. Hyperealities are virtual worlds that the occupant is unable to
distinguish from reality: ‘the generation by models of a real without origin or
reality: a hyperreal’ (Baudrillard. 1981) Baudrillard presented the idea that
with the existence of a mass of references and symbols we are creating so
many copies of copies that we cannot distinguish which one is the original. Just
like the idea of Hyperealites the characters in ‘Silent Hill’ and ‘Pans Labyrinth’
start to fixate on their traumas. They see these worlds not as copies, but as
reality: Vidal’s blind glorification of his regime, the Puritans glorification of
their order and Ofelia’s aspiration to live in her fantasy world forever.
Bibligraphy
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Films
The Matrix. 1999. Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski. America. Village
Roadshow Pictures. Groucho II Film Partnership. Silver Pictures
Pans Labyrinth. 2006. Guillermo Del Toro. Spain. Telecinco Cinema.
Estudios Picasso. Tequila Gang
Silent Hill. 2006. Christophe Gans. Cananda. Davis Films. The Wizard of
Oz. 1939. Victor Fleming. America. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Games
Gears of War 3. (standard edition). 2011. Xbox 360. Epic Games: Cary,
North Carololina.
Tomb Raider. (standard edition). 2006. Xbox. Crystal Dynamics:
Redwood City, California.
Dark Souls. (standard edition). 2011. Xbox 360. Namco Bandai Games:
Tokyo
Silent Hill. (standard edition). 1999. Playstation. Konami. Tokyo
