Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Special Issue Articles

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2023): Digital America

Videogames in Horror Movies: Remediation, Metalepsis, Interface Effects, and Fear of the Digital

Submitted
August 27, 2023
Published
2023-06-30

Abstract

This article discusses four movies in which transgressions between gameworlds and diegetic realities take center stage: Brainscan (1994), Stay Alive (2006), Livescream (2018), and Choose or Die (2022). By exploring the interactions between videogame worlds and "reality," these movies do not simply project anxieties onto digital games, but rather reflect on media-specific affordances of videogames, inquire into discourses surrounding videogames, and explore game cultures. I am particularly interested in the strategies and aesthetics of remediating videogames in the horror films and the conceptualizations of videogames and game cultures thus produced, as well as the larger cultural fears and anxieties (and hopes and dreams) that these representations evoke.

References

  1. Balanzategui, Jessica. "Creepypasta, 'Candle Cove,' and the Digital Gothic." Journal of Visual Culture 18, no. 2 (2019): 187-208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412919841018
  2. Balanzategui, Jessica. "The Digital Gothic and the Mainstream Horror Genre: Uncanny Vernacular Creativity and Adaptation." In New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror, edited by Eddie Falvey, Joe Hickinbottom, and Jonathan Wrooth, 147-64. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020.
  3. Barthes, Roland. La chambre claire: Note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard, 1980.
  4. Baudrillard, Jean. L'échange symbolique et la mort. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1976.
  5. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1981.
  6. Benson-Allott, Caetlin. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
  7. Black, Daniel. "Why Can I See My Avatar? Embodied Visual Engagement in the Third-Person Video Game." Games and Culture 12, no. 2 (2017): 179-99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015589175
  8. Blake, Linnie, and Xavier Aldana Reyes. "Introduction: Horror in the Digital Age." In Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, edited by Linnie Blake and Xavier Aldana Reyes, 1-13. London: I. B. Tauris, 2016.
  9. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999.
  10. Botting, Fred. "Technospectrality: Essay on Uncannimedia." In Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Technogothics, edited by Justin D. Edwards, 17-34. New York: Routledge, 2015.
  11. Botting, Fred. Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
  12. Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
  13. Brainscan. Directed by John Flynn. Culver City: Triumph Films, 1994.
  14. Brock, Jr., André. Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. New York: New York University Press, 2020.
  15. Brophy, Philip. "Horrality: The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films." Screen 27, no. 1 (1986): 2-13. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.1.2
  16. Caputi, Jane. The Age of Sex Crime. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987.
  17. Chan, Julia. "Something to (Not) See: Reading Whiteness Through Voyeurism in the Desktop Horror." Quarterly Review of Film and Video. OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2023.2172978
  18. Choose or Die. Directed by Toby Meakins. London: Stigma Films, 2022.
  19. Clasen, Mathias. Why Horror Seduces. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Kindle ed.
  20. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1993.
  21. Daniel, Adam. Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms: From Found Footage to Virtual Reality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
  22. Davison, Carol Margaret. "Southern Gothic: Haunted Houses." In The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic, edited by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow, 55-67. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  23. Denson, Shane. Discorrelated Images. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
  24. Domsch, Sebastian. Storyplaying: Agency and Narrative in Video Games. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013.
  25. Evilspeak. Directed by Eric Weston. Burbank: Warner Bros., 1981.
  26. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. Directed by Rachel Talatay. New York: New Line Cinema, 1991.
  27. Freud, Sigmund. "The 'Uncanny'." Translated by James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychology Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, edited by James Strachey, 217-56. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
  28. Fuchs, Michael. "A Horrific Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Simulacra, Simulations, and Postmodern Horror." In Landscapes of Postmodernity: Concepts and Paradigms of Critical Theory, edited by Petra Eckhard, Michael Fuchs, and Walter W. Hölbling, 71-90. Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2010.
  29. Fuchs, Michael. "Monstrous Writing—Writing Monsters: Authoring Manuscripts, Ontological Horror and Human Agency." In Terrifying Texts: Essays on Books of Good and Evil in Horror Cinema, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, 11-22. Jefferson: McFarland, 2018.
  30. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990.
  31. Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
  32. Galloway, Alexander R. The Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.
  33. Goddu, Teresa A. "The African American Slave Narrative and the Gothic." In A Companion to American Gothic, edited by Charles L. Crow, 69-83. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
  34. Goddu, Teresa. Gothic America: Narrative, History and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
  35. Grant, Barry Keith. "Digital Anxiety and the New Verité Horror and SF Film." Science Fiction Film and Television 6, no. 2 (2013): 153-75. https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2013.13
  36. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
  37. Hallam, Lindsay. "Digital Witness: Found Footage and Desktop Horror as Post-Cinematic Experience." In New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror, edited by Eddie Falvey, Joe Hickinbottom, and Jonathan Woot, 183-99. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020.
  38. Hancock, Michael. "Doppelgamers: Video Games and Gothic Choice." In American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion, edited by Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam, 166-84. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
  39. Hassler-Forest, Dan. "'When you get there, you will already be there': Stranger Things, Twin Peaks and the Nostalgia Industry." Science Fiction Film and Television 13, no. 2 (2020): 175-97. https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2020.10
  40. Jackson, Kimberly. Technology, Monstrosity, and Reproduction in Twenty-First Century Horror. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
  41. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism; Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
  42. Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
  43. Kirkland, Ewan. "Gothic Videogames, Survival Horror, and the Silent Hill Series." Gothic Studies 14, no. 2 (2012): 106-122. https://doi.org/10.7227/GS.14.2.8
  44. Kirkland, Ewan. "Remediation, Analogue Corruption and the Signification of Evil in Digital Games." In Promoting and Producing Evil, edited by Nancy Billias, 227-45. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011.
  45. Kirkland, Ewan. "Resident Evil's Typewriter: Survival Horror and Its Remediations." Games and Culture 4, no. 2 (2009): 115-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412008325483
  46. Kiss, Miklós. "Desktop Documentary: From Artefact to Artist(ic) Emotions." NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 10, no. 1 (2021): 99-119. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/16270
  47. Kittler, Friedrich A. Grammophon—Film—Typewriter. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986.
  48. Landrum, Jason. "Nostalgia, Fantasy, and Loss: Stranger Things and the Digital Gothic." Intertexts 21, nos. 1-2 (2017): 136-58. https://doi.org/10.1353/itx.2017.0006
  49. Lane, Kathryn E. "How Was the Nerd or Geek Born?" In Age of the Geek: Depictions of Nerds and Geeks in Popular Media, edited by Kathryn E. Lane, 1-18. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
  50. Lavender, Isiah, III. Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2019.
  51. Livescream. Directed by Michelle Iannantuono. Charleston: Octopunk Media, 2018.
  52. Lundemo, Trond. "In the Kingdom of Shadows: Cinematic Movements and Its Digital Ghost." In The YouTube Reader, edited by Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau, 314-29. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009.
  53. McCarthy, Kayla. "Remember Things: Consumerism, Nostalgia, and Geek Culture in Stranger Things." Journal of Popular Culture 52, no. 3 (2019): 663-77. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12800
  54. Miller, Cynthia J., and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. "Introduction." In Terrifying Texts: Essays on Books of Good and Evil in Horror Cinema, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, 1-8. Jefferson: McFarland, 2018.
  55. Morris, Susana M. "More Than Human: Black Feminisms of the Future in Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories." The Black Scholar 46, no. 2 (2016): 33-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2016.1147991
  56. Nightmares. Directed by Joseph Sargent. Universal City: Universal Pictures, 1983.
  57. Peters, John Durham. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
  58. Prawer, Siegbert Solomon. Caligari's Children: The Film as Tale of Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
  59. Prince of Darkness. Directed by John Carpenter. Universal City: Universal Pictures, 1987.
  60. Rathgeb, Douglas L. "Bogeyman from the ID: Nightmare and Reality in Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street." Journal of Popular Film and Television 19, no. 1 (1991): 36-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.1991.9944106
  61. Robins, Kevin. Into the Image: Culture and Politics in the Field of Vision. London: Routledge, 1996.
  62. Russ, Elizabeth Christine. The Plantation in the Postslavery Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  63. Sage, Victor, and Allan Lloyd Smith. "Introduction." In Modern Gothic: A Reader, edited by Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith, 1-5. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.
  64. Sconce, Jeffrey. "Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror." In Film Theory Goes to the Movies, edited by Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins, 103-119. New York: Routledge, 1993.
  65. Sconce, Jeffrey. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
  66. Shaviro, Steven. Post-Cinematic Affect. Washington, D.C.: Zero Books, 2010.
  67. Sicart, Miguel. The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009.
  68. Sivils, Matthew Wynn. "Gothic Landscapes of the South." In The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic, edited by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow, 83-93. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  69. Sperb, Jason. Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015.
  70. Stay Alive. Directed by William Brent Bell. Burbank: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.
  71. Taylor, Laurie. "When Seams Fall Apart: Video Game Space and the Player." Game Studies 3, no. 2 (2003). https://www.gamestudies.org/0302/taylor/
  72. Thoss, Jeff. When Storyworlds Collide: Metalepsis in Popular Fiction, Film and Comics. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
  73. Tietchen, Todd F. "Samplers and Copycats: The Cultural Implications of the Postmodern Slasher in Contemporary American Film." Popular Film and Television 26, no. 3 (1998): 98-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/01956059809602780
  74. Turner, Simon, and Stuart J. Murray. "Becoming Host: Zooming In on the Pandemic Horror Film." In Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic, edited by Irene Gammel and Jason Wang, 145-54. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
  75. Tymińska, Marta. "Avatars Going Mainstream: Typology of Tropes in Avatar-Based Storytelling Practices." Replay: The Polish Journal of Game Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 101-117. https://doi.org/10.18778/2391-8551.03.06
  76. van Elferen, Isabella. "'And Machine Created Music': Cybergothic Music and the Phantom Voices of the Technological Uncanny." In Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology, edited by Marianne van den Boomen, Sybilles Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer, 121-32. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
  77. van Elferen, Isabella. Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012.
  78. Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.
  79. Weheliye, Alexander G. "'Feenin': Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music." Social Text 20, no. 2 (2002): 21-47. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-20-2_71-21
  80. Wetmore, Kevin J. "Introduction." In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 1-5. Jefferson: McFarland, 2018.
  81. Wilderson, Frank B., III. Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
  82. Wolf, Werner. "Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon: A Case Study of the Possibilities of 'Exporting' Narratological Concepts." In Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality—Disciplinarity, edited by Jan Christoph Meister, Tom Kindt, and Wilhelm Schernus, 83-107. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005.
  83. Woo, Benjamin. Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018.
  84. Young, Paul. The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: Media Fantasy Films from Radio to the Internet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 80

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.