Exploring the roles of gender performance through the experience of digital gaming provides an arena for discussing the power of fear and anxiety as cultural tools for counterhegemonic forces. The power and function of gender performativity in its varied and multiplicitous forms is a newer branch of game studies research. In this article, fear and anxiety are explored as a game procedure and cultural tool used by the character Alice Angel in Kindly Beast's Bendy and the Ink Machine. By enacting Barbara Creed's uncanny gaze and the monstrous-feminine, Alice Angel calls attention and visibility to the function of the abject as a form of visibility for the oppressed. The monstrous-feminine as a theoretical concept for horror media texts provides a framework to explore the posing, behaviors, and actions of game characters and their relationships to the player and culture at large.
BlomquistG. (2021). Postmodern medusa: The monstrous-feminine in Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Games and Culture, 16(7), 885–906.
2.
ButlerJ. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.
3.
CarrollN. (1990/2020). Fantastic biologies and the structures of horrific imagery. In The Monster Theory Reader. (pp. 136–147). Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
4.
ChristopherD.LeuszlerA. (2022). Horror video games and the ‘active-passive’ debate. Games and Culture, 1–20.
5.
CreedB. (1993). The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
6.
CreedB. (2005b). The end of the everyday: Transformation, sexuality, and the uncanny. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 19(4), 483–494.
7.
CreedB. (1999/2020). Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection. In The Monster Theory Reader. (pp. 211–225). Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
8.
CreedB. (2005a). Phallic panic: Film, horror and the primal uncanny. Australia: Melbourne University Press.
9.
CrutchfieldM. (2017). Girl next door: The girl next door heroine trope in romance novels. In Unsuitable: Conversations about Women, History & Popular Fiction. Durham, N.C: Duke University. https://sites.duke.edu/unsuitable/girl-next-door/
10.
DoaneM. A. (1991). Femmes fatales: Feminism, film theory, psychoanalysis. United Kingdom: Psychology Press.
11.
DunnT. R., & MyersW. B. (2020). Contemporary autoethnography is digital autoethnography: A proposal for maintaining methodological relevance in changing times. Journal of Autoethnography, 1(1), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2020.1.1.43
12.
FreudS. (1990). The uncanny. In The Penguin Freud Library, Volume 14- Art and Literature. (pp. 339–376). London, United Kingdom: Penguin Books.
13.
FreudS. (1955/2020). The uncanny. In The Monster Theory Reader. (pp. 59–88). Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
14.
GroszE. (1996/2020). Intolerable ambiguity: Freaks as/at the limit. In The Monster Theory Reader. (pp. 272–285). Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
15.
HarkinS. (2020). The only thing you’ve managed to break so far is my heart’: An analysis of Portal’s monstrous mother GLaDOS. Games and Culture, 15(5), 529–543.
16.
Kindly Beast. (2022). Bendy and the Dark Revival. Kindly Beast. Ottawa, Canada [Video Game].
17.
Kindly Beast. (2017–2018). Bendy and the Ink Machine. Kindly Beast & Rooster Teeth Games. Ottawa, Canada [Video Game].
18.
KirklandE (2009). Horror videogames and the uncannyIn Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association. DIGRA, London, United Kingdom (pp. 1–4).
19.
KristevaJ. (1982/2020). Approaching abjection. In The Monster Theory Reader. (pp. 95–107). Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
PerreaultM.PerreaultG.P.JenkinsJ.MorrisonA. (2016). Depictions of female protagonists in digital games: A narrative analysis of 2013 DICE award-winning digital games. Games and Culture, 13(8), 843–860.
22.
RabidRetrospectGames. (2018). Bendy and the ink machine full game walkthrough full game- no commentary (episode 1,2,3,4,5). YouTube.Retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXnxuE_VIVk&t=4241s(accessed March 15, 2019)
23.
SkirrowG. (1986). Hellivision: An analysis of video games. In MacCabeC. (Ed.) High theory/Low culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film, (pp. 115–142). United Kingdom: Manchester University Press.
24.
SpittleS. (2011). Did this game scare you? Because it sure as hell scared me!’ F.E.A.R., the abject and the uncanny. Games and Culture, 6(4), 312–326.
