Restless Dreams and Shattered Memories: Psychoanalysis and Silent Hill

Ewan Kirkland

doi:10.5565/rev/brumal.182

Resells Dreams and Shattered Memories: Psychoanalysis and Silent Hill

Autores/as

Ewan Kirkland University of Brighton

PDF (EN)

Resumen

En el presente artículo se aplica el marco de estudio psicoanalítico a la serie de survival horror Silent Hill, ella misma basada en temas psicoanalíticos. Entre los asuntos tratados cabe mencionar la construcción del espacio del juego como un vientre materno, las secuencias cinemáticas como fantasías originarias (Urphantasien), así como la representación de la memoria durante las partidas en un contexto psicoanalítico. El interés del género de terror por las figuras maternas monstruosas es evidente en los adversarios que combate el jefe, en la descripción de los espacios del juego como sangrientas «cuevas maternales» y en los relatos sobre la búsqueda que emprenden los personajes para hallar su ascendencia. Distinguiendo entre secuencias jugables de videojuegos y secuencias cinemáticas como aspectos conscientes e inconscientes, las cinemáticas son analizadas como reproducciones de fantasías originarias que sirven para explicar el pasado de los protagonistas y emplazar el juego en contextos narrativos. Tales elementos irrumpen en la partida, señalando el paso del mundo ordinario al abyecto Más Allá (y viceversa) o anunciando la aparición de monstruosas criaturas de resonancias psicoanalíticas que el protagonista debe destruir. Finalmente, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories es estudiado como un juego que, incluso más que otros, pone en primer plano las referencias explícitas de la serie a cuestiones psicoanalíticas, entroncando con las interpretaciones contemporáneas acerca de la relación entre la memoria, los medios y la fantasía.

Palabras clave

Silent Hill, horror, psicoanálisis, videojuegos, memoria.

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Biografía del autor/a

Ewan Kirkland, University of Brighton

Ewan Kirkland completed his PhD at the University of Sussex on the subject of children’s cinema. Since then his work has been largely focussed around videogames, particularly Konami’s survival horror franchise Silent Hill. Examining the series in terms of genre, gender, narrative, marketing and publicity, and traditions of Gothic literature, Ewan’s work has been published in Games and Culture, Convergence, Camera Obscura and Gothic Studies. Ewan has also explored issues of represented in popular culture, writing about racial whiteness in vampire series such as Twilight, Buffy and The Vampire Diaries, gender politics in Battlestar Galactica, and sexuality in romantic comedy and science fiction cinema. More recently Ewan has returned to issues of children’s culture, organising the first international academic conference on Hasbro’s My Little Pony series at the University of Brighton in June 2014. He is currently working on a book exploring connections between children’s literature, film, television and digital media.