Playing the Father in Post-Apocalyptic Survival Horror Games Michael Fuchs and Klaus Rieser

Dad Rising? Playing the Father in Post-Apocalyptic Survival Horror Games Michael Fuchs and Klaus Rieser Accepted manuscript of a chapter in Gender in Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia, edited by Robert Shail, Samantha Holland, and Steven Gerrard (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2019), 69–80, DOI: 10.1108/978-1-78769- 107-020191008. Accepted manuscript published Green Open Access in accordance with publisher’s OA policies. In Dead Rising 2 (Blue Castle Games, 2010), former motocross rider Chuck Greene finds himself in the midst of a zombie outbreak. Five years prior, in another epidemic, Chuck’s wife was killed and his daughter Katey bitten by one of the undead. The zombie infection cannot be cured, but it can be stopped from spreading in the victim’s body by a drug called Zombrex. Katey needs a dose of the medication every single day. While the video game’s ludic dimension centres on Chuck fighting off zombie hordes, its rather convoluted narrative boils down to a simple goal for Chuck: to keep his daughter from mutating. Chuck sports the chiselled physique of a stereotypical, manly Hollywood hero, which visually highlights the rampant protectionist paternalism at play in the game. Fittingly, in the closing minutes of the game, Chuck not only outsmarts thousands of undead and overcomes his main human adversary but also saves Katey and his girlfriend-to-be Stacey from certain death. In the end, the three walk away, holding hands, symbolising the re-establishment of the heteronormative nuclear family. The game’s hackneyed and overly clichéd finale confirms Eugène Provenzo’s early observation that, in video games, male characters ‘assume dominant gender roles’ (1991, p. 100), while female characters are depicted as ‘dependent or under control of another figure’ (1991, p. 108). More recently, Leo Braudy has concluded that ‘[c]ultures and individuals hang on to outmoded styles of masculinity […] built on simple masculine myths’ (2005, p. 86), among which ‘take control’, ‘be physically strong’ and ‘do not be afraid to kill’ still play a key role (Walker, 2004, p. 4). Video games, in particular, continue to tap into this repertoire of traditional masculine positions. Indeed, a cursory survey of the titles available in games stores, or a brief overview of the imagery, language, and implied readership of most popular video-game publications, reveals a masculinity that appears rooted in the traditional iconography of action, guns, and violence. (Kirkland, 2009, p. 165) Similarly, Derek A. Burrill has argued that video games allow men to remain in eternal ‘digital boyhood’, a place that emerges from escapist fantasies and offers a safe haven against ‘feminism, class imperatives, familial duties, as well as national and political responsibilities’ (2008, p. 2). However, in this contribution, we will suggest that the two titles discussed in the following – the first season of The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, 2012) and The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) – significantly alter the ‘uncompromisingly macho, triumphantly aggressive, and uncritical […] expressions of masculinity’ (Kirkland, 2009, p. 166) considered typical of video games. Part of the counter-hegemonic value of these two games lies in a gender ambiguity common in the horror genre. As Rhona J. Berenstein has argued, horror functions ‘as a site of ideological contradiction and negation’ (1996, p. 10). In particular, ‘the figure of the monster’ is ‘fraught with ambiguities’ in relation to ‘historically constructed […] gender attributes’ (Berenstein, 1996, p. 29). Indeed, monstrosity is frequently ‘defined in terms of gender deviance or sexual deviance from a hegemonic masculine ideal’ (Rieser, 2001, p. 380). More importantly, perhaps, male characters in horror are recurrently emasculated through their encounter with, and subsequent fear of, deadly forces, and female protagonists often assume masculine traits when they come to face the monster (Clover, 1992). These transformations, ambiguities and contradictions make ‘the genre […] so troubling to conventional assumptions regarding gender’ (Berenstein, 1996, p. 18). Beyond these gender-bending conventions of their genre, The Walking Dead and The Last of Us are noteworthy for the particular masculine position of their primary player-characters – they are (surrogate) fathers. Throughout its history, the entertainment industry has been ‘supportive of fathers’, as ‘it is a patriarchal institution and it respects the patriarch’ (Bruzzi, 2005, p. xviii), but has rarely featured fathers as protagonists. Recently, however, as Hannah Hamad has pointed out, ‘[f]atherhood has become the dominant paradigm of masculinity’ in the media (2014, p. 1). Whereas scholars such as Hamad see the role of the father almost universally imbricated in a ‘conservative cultural logic of paternal protectionism’ (Hamad, 2014, p. 55), we will highlight moments of resistance to these tendencies. To be sure, the two games analysed here partake in a deeply masculinist/patriarchal discourse, manifested, for example, in the obliteration of mothers and the attendant perpetuation of ‘paternal protectionism.’ However, we would like to stress aspects which counter a totalising reading of these two games. After all, despite its alignment with patriarchy, (engaged) fatherhood is a liminal masculinity that fits uneasily in traditional conceptualisations of masculinity. For example, in the two games, the father figures, despite their aggressive acts (which are simultaneously demanded and sanctified by the survival narratives), are in tune with their feelings. They also nurture, listen to, and, ultimately, make way for their (surrogate) daughters. In other words, they exhibit traditionally feminine traits. Whereas scholars such as Hamad have suggested that ‘postfeminist fatherhood props up the renegotiation of more traditional and conservative models of masculinity’ (2014, p. 55), in this chapter, we will showcase some of the ways in which The Last of Us and The Walking Dead subvert (or at least question) the dominant fiction of paternal culture. Accordingly, we will suggest that in these two games, the father figures are not only protectors but also nurturers and that the daughter figures are not only symbols of vulnerability, but repeatedly assume control. Video Games and Gender Before moving on to the examination of the games, we need to briefly address two medium specificities of video games: the relationship between the player, the character and the avatar, on the one hand, and the connections between gameplay and gender, on the other. Put simply, avatars are the players’ representatives in the gameworld. The underlying code of the game transforms players’ inputs into actions in the virtual world, as it kinaesthetically maps the pushing of buttons, movement of the mouse, or, more recently, movement of the player’s body onto the avatar. Consequently, the player experiences agency in the digital world, which facilitates both immersion in the gameworld and identification with the player-character. This strong connection between players and their virtual stand-ins bridges the difference between the real world and the gamespace. Jonathan Boulter has thus observed that ‘when I am alone with my game console, […] I assume the role, the identity of the avatar’, as ‘[t]he avatar […] extends my identity and my space’ (2015, p. 8). The avatar allows players to extend their bodies into the game space from the physical space outside, since it remediates the player’s agency in the virtual world. The avatar thus ‘becomes […] part of the player’s “I can”’, as ‘[t]he player is […] re-wired and re-directed […] through the integrated prosthetic apparatus of controller and […] avatar’ (Klevjer, 2012, pp. 27–28). As a result, players interact not only with the virtual environment, but, more importantly, also their avatars. While playing, the player thus exists ‘as a composite of flesh and technology’ (Klevjer, 2012, p. 34), thereby becoming ‘more’-than-human. In this way, video game avatars may epitomise post- and transhuman utopian fantasies, as avatars ‘allow players to loosen the ties to their molar identities’ and liberate themselves from the ‘rigid categories of class, race, gender, and species structured by unequal power relations’ (Fuchs, forthcoming). Consequently, similar to the ways in which post- and transhumanism have embraced emerging technologies, scholars such as James Newman have celebrated the purported gender- blindness of video games. Players – if given the choice between gendered characters – would not focus on the character’s gender, but rather on ‘game-play-affecting characteristics’, such as certain powers or abilities, he has suggested (2013, p. 125). Indeed, Newman has even stated that since ‘the pleasures of video game play are not principally visual, but rather […] kinaesthetic’ (2002, para 5; italics in original), the visual representation of a character is irrelevant (2002). However, this optimistic appraisal of technology is far from undisputed. Rather than obliterating gender, digital technology arguably reinforces gender and other social hierarchies, since ‘technology […] fundamentally embodies a culture or set of social relations made up of certain sorts of knowledge, beliefs, desires, and practices’ (Wajcman, 1991, p. 149). Indeed, the visual representation of avatars and non-playing characters influences and is influenced by heteronormative gender norms; this ‘set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal

Load more