Critical Synthesis of Rhetoric of Horror and Disability Representation in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017)
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The purpose of this research article is to identify and analyze the rhetoric of horror employed in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017), and to examine how it portrays individuals with mental disorders. Adopting Thomas G. Couser’s concept of the “rhetoric of horror” as its primary analytical framework, this research study utilizes a qualitative methodology involving close textual and audiovisual analysis of selected gameplay sequences, narrative structure, character representation, visual imagery, and sound design. The findings reveal that Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice presents many tropes of the rhetoric of horror through its depiction of mental disorders as grotesque and terrifying, as well as through the maltreatment of individuals with mental disorders by able-bodied characters. The study argues that while this game still reinforces some negative stereotypes of mental illness through its representation of Senua, it also moves beyond mere sympathy to evoke deep empathy by placing the player in the shoe of protagonist with mental disorder, effectively using the rhetoric of horror as a tool for social critique and mental health awareness.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright is that of the journal any reproduction must be permitted by the editor of journal
References
Antoniades, T. (2018, October 10). Hellblade: Senua’s Psychosis Mental Health Feature [Video].YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31PbCTS4Sq4&has_verified=1
Austin, J. (2021). “The hardest battles are fought in the mind”: Representations of mental illness in Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Game Studies, 21 (4). https://gamestudies.org/2104/articles/austin
Steam. (2017). Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice [Banner]. Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/414340/Hellblade_Senuas_Sacrifice/
Carr, D. (2009). Textual Analysis, Digital Games, Zombies. Presented at DiGRA 2009, Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory (London, September 2009).
Carr, D. (2014). Ability, Disability and Dead Space. Game Studies, 14 (2). http://gamestudies.org/1402/articles/carr
Couser, G. T. (2009). Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir [Review of Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir]. In Signifying bodies : disability in contemporary life writing (pp. 32–44). University of Michigan Press. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Couser_Signifying_Bodies.pdf
Couser, G. T. (2017). Signifying Selves: Disability Life Writing. Cambridge University Press. https://www.academia.edu/9137321/Signifying_Selves_Disability_Life_Writing
Esposito, N. (2005). A Short and Simple Definition of What a Videogame Is. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221217421_A_Short_and_Simple_Definition_of_What_a_Videogame_Is
Groves, C. L., & Anderson, C. A. (2016). Negative Effects of Video Game Play. Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies, 1297–1322. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-50-4_13
Hester, B. (2017, November 14). “Horizon Zero Dawn,” “Zelda,” “Mario” Top List of Game Award Nominees. Rolling Stone. https://web.archive.org/web/20171114185939/http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/horizon-zelda-mario-tie-for-most-game-award-noms-w511742
Houghton, N. F., & Crimson Staff Writer. (n.d.). An Interview with Dominic Matthews of “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.” Arts The Harvard Crimson. Www.thecrimson.com. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/8/8/interviewwithdominicmatthews/
IMDb. (n.d.). Hellblade: Senua’s sacrifice. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4674622/awards/
Lowood, H. E. (2024). Electronic game. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-game
Metacritic. (2017, August 8). Hellblade: Senua’s sacrifice reviews. Metacritic. https://www.metacritic.com/game/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice/
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice .(2017). (PC version) [Steam]. Ninja Theory.
Ninja Theory. (2018, October 10). Hellblade: Senua's Psychosis Mental Health Feature .[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31PbCTS4Sq4
N. U. Abdul Aziz, R. Ibrahim and F. Abdullah (2024). Review of Game Features to Develop a Serious Game Model for Mental Health Awareness," 2024 International Conference on Computing Innovation, Intelligence, Technologies and Education (CIITE), Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia, (pp. 1-6). doi: 10.1109/CIITE62244.2024.10987762.
Rowan, K. S. (2015). Review essay: Towards a disability literacy in writing center studies [Review of the books Signifying bodies: Disability in contemporary life writing, by G. T. Couser; Mad at school: Rhetoric of mental disability and academic life, by M. Price; & Tell me how it reads: Tutoring deaf and hearing students in the writing center, by R. D. Babcock]. The Writing Center Journal, 34 (2), 175–190. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43442809
Shell, J. (2021). What Do We See: An Investigation into the Representation of Disability in Video Games. ArXiv:2103.17100 [Cs]. https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.17100
Steam (n.d.). Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice on Steam. Store. steampowered.com.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/414340/Hellblade_Senuas_Sacrifice/
Takahashi, D. (2017, October 22). Game boss interview: Tameem Antoniades’s journey into madness with Hellblade. Games Beat. https://gamesbeat.com/game-boss-interview-tameem-antoniades-journey-into-madness-with-hellblade/
TIGA Games Industry Awards 2017. (2017). TIGA. https://tiga.org/awards/2017-winners
Turner, A. (2018). "You May Look like a Motion Picture Dreamboat, but You Are the Biggest Freak of Them All": Understanding Disability in American Horror Story [Master's thesis]. California State University, Northridge. https://scholarworks.csun.edu/handle/10211.3/123456
Wendell, C. (2023). Rated T for Therapy: How Video Games Portray Mental Illness and Their Effects on Social Stigmas. Clemson OPEN. https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4036
