제목 : Liminal Rhetoric in Girlhood Games: Developmental Disruption in Night School Studio’s Oxenfree
저자 : Stephanie Harkin
초록 :
The increased presence of adolescent girl protagonists in popular videogames calls for deeper analysis into their representational potential. Drawing on anthropological accounts of ritualistic rites of passage and on feminist appropriations of those accounts, this paper theorises what I call “girlhood games” as liminal spaces that have the potential to evoke transformative play. To illustrate this, I take Night School Studio’s Oxenfree (2016) as a case study for it offers a transgressive presentation of developmental linearity. I propose that Oxenfree disrupts the frequent narrative of “overcoming” adolescence when its heroine Alex's conclusive reincorporation to normative society is denied. Oxenfree achieves this through its use of playful temporal disruptions projected through the game’s supernatural timeslips and its cyclical conclusion that repeatedly transports its heroine back to the beginning of the game. Oxenfree’s remote island setting is a liminal space where the teenage characters are free from institutional authority. Within this playful setting, its teen girl protagonist is able to move and lead in a manner that is comparatively difficult for adolescent girls in the regulatory “real world.” This freedom has the potential to extend to girl players who are likewise experimenting with comparable freedom from their regulated realities when occupying the liminal fantasy of the game space.
URL : https://gamestudies.org/2103/articles/harkin
제목 : Liminal Rhetoric in Girlhood Games: Developmental Disruption in Night School Studio’s Oxenfree
저자 : Stephanie Harkin
초록 :
The increased presence of adolescent girl protagonists in popular videogames calls for deeper analysis into their representational potential. Drawing on anthropological accounts of ritualistic rites of passage and on feminist appropriations of those accounts, this paper theorises what I call “girlhood games” as liminal spaces that have the potential to evoke transformative play. To illustrate this, I take Night School Studio’s Oxenfree (2016) as a case study for it offers a transgressive presentation of developmental linearity. I propose that Oxenfree disrupts the frequent narrative of “overcoming” adolescence when its heroine Alex's conclusive reincorporation to normative society is denied. Oxenfree achieves this through its use of playful temporal disruptions projected through the game’s supernatural timeslips and its cyclical conclusion that repeatedly transports its heroine back to the beginning of the game. Oxenfree’s remote island setting is a liminal space where the teenage characters are free from institutional authority. Within this playful setting, its teen girl protagonist is able to move and lead in a manner that is comparatively difficult for adolescent girls in the regulatory “real world.” This freedom has the potential to extend to girl players who are likewise experimenting with comparable freedom from their regulated realities when occupying the liminal fantasy of the game space.
URL : https://gamestudies.org/2103/articles/harkin