AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Psychological horror has long existed in books and movies, but it blew up in video games with the Silent Hill franchise. Silent Hill F, the latest game in the series, tells the story of a teenage girl in 1960s Japan. And as Vincent Acovino reports, that setting takes video game storytelling to new places.
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BRENT MUKAI: (As Shimizu Kanta) Hinako.
VINCENT ACOVINO, BYLINE: It begins in a dining room. Hinako hasn't finished her meal yet, but her father is angry and drunk. Beer bottles are tipped over at his feet.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "SILENT HILL F")
MUKAI: (As Shimizu Kanta) How dare you speak to your parents like that?
ACOVINO: Hinako storms out of the house.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "SILENT HILL F")
STEPHANIE SHEH: (As Shimizu Kimie) Hinako, don't go. Your father's just worried.
SUZIE YEUNG: (As Shimizu Hinako) I'm going to go see my friends.
SHEH: (As Shimizu Kimie) Come home soon, OK?
ACOVINO: The journey she sets off on is a grim and despairing one, taking her through a town overrun with monsters and decaying red flowers.
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ACOVINO: In Silent Hill's version of psychological horror, the monsters are manifestations of personal trauma. But in Silent Hill F, that trauma is more deeply shaped by society and history than ever before. Hinako is battling against her mind and the rigid patriarchal expectations of the time, namely a marriage that promises to pay off her father's debts at the expense of her own freedom.
JULIA BULLOCK: So if you think dating and relationships are difficult and confusing, try being a woman in the 1960s in Japan.
ACOVINO: That's Julia Bullock, professor of Japanese studies at Emory University.
BULLOCK: Probably every generation thinks that it invented dating, but in this case, it was actually true.
ACOVINO: After World War II, Japan was under the Allied occupation. The Allied powers put forward a handful of reforms that gave women new freedoms, but that soon changed.
BULLOCK: And in 1955, the conservatives take over, and they begin trying to roll back these postwar reforms. And they specifically focus on issues associated with marriage, gender roles and the family.
ACOVINO: Which brings us to the 1960s, when Silent Hill F takes place.
BULLOCK: Relations between men and women still, I think, are very much bound up with conventional gender roles.
ACOVINO: These conventions are wound up in the dark and mysterious other world Hinako is pulled into. She sacrifices pieces of herself, her friends, and leading the way is a mysterious figure donning a fox mask.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "SILENT HILL F")
CALEB YEN: (As Fox Mask) I shall save your soul by claiming the life of your own self.
MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER: People are tricked by foxes or deceived by foxes.
ACOVINO: Michael Dylan Foster is a scholar of Japanese folklore at University of California Davis. He notes that there are many interpretations of the fox across Japanese history and literature, one of which is a devious and sometimes deadly trickster.
FOSTER: Sometimes there's cases where it takes on the guise of a man and tricks women into bad situations.
ACOVINO: In past Silent Hill games, the monsters took the shape of the main character's fears. But in Silent Hill F, the monsters represent the fears of a generation.
KINITRA BROOKS: There are so many ways in which we work out the problems of society by creating monsters.
ACOVINO: Kinitra Brooks is a scholar of race, gender and genre at Michigan State University. She says horror stories like this don't just scare an audience. They also empower by allowing us to confront an abstract and sometimes even systemic fear in a more understandable way.
BROOKS: Sometimes you are relieved when you see the monster that you have to fight because what you were imagining was far worse. And you're like, OK, this is the monster. I can defeat them. It may take me a couple of tries, but there's actually a possibility of winning here.
ACOVINO: Oftentimes, our greatest fears are shaped by things that are bigger than us or beyond our control. And a game like Silent Hill F asks us to face those fears head on, even as we struggle to make sense of them. Vincent Acovino, NPR News.
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing in Japanese). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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