A Queer Little Story: Orgasms,
Heteronormativity, and Video Game
Narrative
Shira Chess
The University of Georgia
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Over the last decade-and-a-half of video game studies, many have theorized on the
complex relationship between video games and narrative (Aarseth 2004; Juul, Raessens,
and Goldstein 2005; Koenitz et al. 2013; Murray 2004). These conversations have been a
productive means of situating a complex new medium into the parameters of older forms
of storytelling. This paper playfully pushes at the margins of this conversation by
suggesting, in part, that the conversation of whether video games are narratives is entirely
subsumed in masculine, heteronormative concepts of what a narrative is in the first place.
Building off of the works of Teresa DeLauretis (De Lauretis 1984) and Judith Roof
(1996), I would like to suggest a reconceptualization of the video game narrative, by
illustrating how narrative, itself, builds off of masculine and heteronormative
conceptualizations of the climax. Roof, in particular, asserts that “Narrative and sexuality
operate within the reproductive and/or productive, metaphorically heterosexual ideology
that also underwrites the naturalized understanding of the shape and meaning of life”
(1996, xxvii). By borrowing the same terminology – the expectation of climax, for
instance, there is a masculine heteronormativity that underwrites the cultural
understanding of what narrative means. We expect certain things: buildup, climax,
catharsis, in a way that allows it to run parallel to masculine, heterosexual orgasms and
pleasure. Roof explains that these predilections guide how we judge and interpret all
narrative form: “Without the expectation of an ending, we have difficulty discerning a
story, its pleasures, terrors, lessons, its making sense of things, its usefulness as catharsis
or panacea” (1996, 6). The narrative that does not emulate heterosexual orgasm is simply
not recognizable as a narrative.
This paper complicates Roof’s important work by applying it to the (already complex)
space of gaming narratives. If Roof is correct and our expectations of narrative
structure are entirely contingent on the masculine heterosexual orgasm, then it becomes
necessary to rethink how we conceptualize the notion of video game narrative. Gaming
narratives, of course, are difficult (in part) because they are incomplete, lacking
traditional climax or catharsis. As explained by Espen Aarseth (2004), “The gameworld
is its own rewards, and the end, if and when it comes, does not offer dramatic
satisfaction, but a feeling of limbo. There is no turning back, and no going forward.
You are no longer employed by the game. Time to buy another” (p. 51). Given the
often non-linear, often fragmented style of storytelling present in many video games,
and a focus on small points of completion – rather than one specific climactic focus –
Proceedings of DiGRA 2014: <Verb that ends in ‘ing’> the <noun> of Game <plural noun>.
© 2014 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of
this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
the video game becomes a ripe space for considering how alternative pleasures can be
achieved in narratives. In other words, the video game is not about climax – it is about
the pleasure that exists in the middle spaces the spaces where, Roof contends, queer
narrative thrives. She explains that just as heterosexual narrative is dependent on
climax and literary orgasm, queer narrative exists in the never-ending middle that is
dependent on alternative pleasures.
In many ways, this shift of focus from the traditional understanding of narrative to a
queer and feminist narrative also provides a new lens for scholars studying the
pervasiveness of masculinity embedded into gaming culture. While scholars have studied
the inherent masculinity of the video game industry (Consalvo 2008; Fron et al. 2007),
game culture (Burrill 2008; Salter and Blodgett 2012), and the games themselves (Cassell
and Jenkins 2000), I posit that it is equally useful for feminist, queer, and intersectional
scholars to study the structure of the very narrative form of video games.
In my paper, I postulate that the video game narrative, and the accompanying debates
are forever bound in this pre-established conception of the narrative, vis-à-vis
heteronormativity, climaxes, and the pleasure of an orgasmic end. Instead, I propose
that the video game might be so difficult to understand as a narrative because it exists
(as Aarseth claims) in a space of “limbo” – a space equivalent to Roof’s queer narrative
“middle.” The paper reconsiders the video game narrative from this lens, in order to
discuss ways that feminist and queer scholars might use narrative theory to appropriate
video game narrative and shift it from it’s typical identification with heterosexual
culture.
Keywords
Narrative, video game, queer, feminist
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