In the Playstation 2's chilling 2001 release, Fatal Frame, an ancient custom called the Strangling Ritual ensures that the gate to hell beneath the Himuro Mansion remains shut. When the ritual goes wrong, however, the consequences bring hell itself to life. To ensure success, the Strangling Ritual requires what come as no surprise for such a religious and superstitious practice: the passive, virginal bodies of young women.The central figure of the Strangling Ritual is the Rope Shrine Maiden. Chosen at age seven from a group of other young girls, the maiden is sequestered away from all human life for ten years. Even her attendants wear masks to hide their faces. When the day of the ritual comes, the maiden knows nothing but her own suffering, and, after purifying herself in the Moon Well, willingly submits to her own sacrifice. Her wrists, ankles, and neck are tied to wheels, and, as they are turned, her limbs and head are strangled from her body. The bloody ropes are used to bind the door to hell.
It isn't difficult to see the "virginity on a pedestal" themes in this ritual. First of all, the word "maiden" itself denotes an unmarried woman, implying virginity. Secondly, it is imperative for the success of the ritual that the maiden maintains her purity through her own isolation from anyone who could possibly corrupt her. The maiden is chosen as a child, and her imprisonment preserves this childlike purity by suppressing education, information, and relationships.
It's important to point out that the people overseeing this ritual are all men, particularly the Master of the Himuro family. The young girls do not choose to compete to be the next maiden; the maiden has no say in whether or not she wants to fulfill her duty. While the ritual requires the maiden's willingness and dedication to her duty, neither of these are necessarily genuine. They are coerced, brainwashed into a young woman who has spent more than half of her life in captivity, isolation, and suffering, making her a passive pawn rather than an active player. To underscore this passivity, it is not even the maiden's body -- secluded and abused -- that closes the gates of hell, but the grisly ropes that tore it apart.
The most notable shrine maiden, Kirie, is the one that defied this ritual long before the main plot of Fatal Frame takes place. When Kirie's ten years of confinement end and she is briefly freed, she meets a beautiful visitor to the Himuro Mansion and the two meet frequently in the garden to talk. When the Master discovers that she has formed this attachment to the living world, he becomes so furious that he has the unnamed visitor put to death. When Kirie is sacrificed, her heart is full of regret, tainting the ritual and cursing the mansion.Kirie's curiosity and love for the stranger figuratively deflower her, rendering her completely useless for the ritual. The current Master -- a male relative of hers in great power, possibly her father or grandfather -- is enraged at the idea that she finds favor in something other than her intended purpose. The unnamed lover, who deigned to show sympathy for a woman, particularly a woman whose body does not belong to her, dies for his transgression. It's a fantastic situation that, disturbingly, mirrors real life in more than one way.
An important trait of Kirie's character comes into play during Fatal Frame's multiple endings. Both Normal and Nightmare Mode endings involve Kirie's ghost assenting to her "duty" and tying herself to the ropes on the Hell Gate, closing it and freeing the souls trapped in the mansion. Ultimately, it is best for her to shun herself to protect the greater good, and while this can be seen as a noble example of self-sacrifice, it also coincides with the inevitability of female submission to male will.
However, the Xbox release of Fatal Frame has its own special ending. In it, Kirie's ghost is joined by that of her lover's, and, instead of Kirie tying herself to the gate, the two join together to seal the gate and free the lost souls. Admittedly, it's a cheesier, "they all lived happily ever after" sort of way out, but it also avoids the implication that it was Kirie's disobedience and not the cruelty of the Strangling Ritual itself that brought ruin to the Himuro family.
Fatal Frame is, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying experiences on the Playstation 2, beating its two sequels by a landslide when it comes to scares. Its estrogen-enriched cast is one of its many perks, and a storyline that details young women overcoming the cruelty brought upon them by old, superstitious tradition is a more than relevant parallel to the experiences of women today.
its a beautiful game to watch, too. still, i find the victimization of women as troubling; why's the 'maiden' gotta be a girl?
ReplyDelete@Razor: As she mentioned, it's kind of a (hopefully subconscious) expression of male power over women.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting is how different cultures have taken on the power of men and women in their rituals. Look at the Book of Leviticus in the Bible - there are whole sections on what is "clean" and "unclean". Unclean? A woman menstruating - if you even touch her, you were suppose to go through a whole purification process.
Sadly, a lot of the price of virginity is usually placed on the head of the woman. In evolutionary terms, the proof of virginity - the hymen - was a useful adaptation for humanity: it provided greater care of children by the man. Long story short: before the hymen, a man could never know if a child a woman gave birth to was his. After the hymen, he "knew" that baby was his, so he was more likely to stick around afterwards and ensure it was taken care of, or at least fed when he returned from the hunt. With big heavy brains to develop so longer gestation times needed for full maturation compared to other animals, this evolutionary trick of prizing virginity was essential to the development of mankind.
Sadly, like other evolutionary instincts, these big heavy brains went on to form pointless rituals keeping women's virginity as something important - hence like scenes in Fatal Frame.
Excellent article - I haven't played through the game yet, but your conclusions have an interesting ring to them.
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ReplyDeleteJust as an addition to what you wrote, I thought I'd consider the effects of language and translation on our interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese word for a "shrine maiden" is みこ [miko], and the kanji for miko is 巫女.
The first character, 巫 [かんなぎ - kannagi], refers to mediums and diviners.
The second character, 女 [おんな - onna], refers to women in a general sense--literally anything from a woman to a girl to a daughter.
It's interesting to me to note then, that a more direct translation of miko might be something like "medium woman," "divining woman," or "psychic woman." There's no explicit mention of one's status as a virginal maiden directly implied by the words.
What could this mean, then? I suggest that the conception of any holy woman automatically implies her virginity. Interestingly enough, this would appear to remain consistent in both Japanese and American culture.
I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to make, but I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts.
As a context note, I wonder if the automatic japanese association of "holy woman" and "virgin" comes from the tradition of celibate Buddhist monks, along with the Christian obession with Mary's virginity (read: Nuns, the Brides of Christ). Maybe I'm far off base here, but I think -if- the holy one was to be male, one could expect a certain level of purity as well, as a heritage of both cultures (Buddhist monks and Christian Monks, for example, to say nothing of Catholic Priests.)
ReplyDeleteWhile this is a great article and I thank you for writing it, I do feel that you could have elaborated on how this parallels the experiences of women today.
ReplyDeleteI can think of many ways, but I'd rather you had gone to such lengths.
Anyway, it's unfortunate that the game (sounds like it) reinforces and almost tacitly encourages such abhorrent practices, by which I don't mean the ritual itself, which is placed for the purpose of horrifying us, but the status quo between men and women in the world as it and always has been. I'm always disappointed when otherwise intelligent people/games/what have you fail in this way.
cola:
ReplyDeleteI suppose I felt that the parallels with women today were more than obvious -- that "good girls" are those that keep their legs shut, the whole virgin/whore dichotomy that serves men and harms women, the silence and obedience and naivety that's encouraged in women by our society, and so on. I decided to keep the focus on espousing how the ritual reflects these.
As well, I don't see Fatal Frame as upholding or encouraging these sexist views. The Strangling Ritual is almost the game's antagonist itself. You play as a young woman who ends up freeing those who were adversely affected by such a horrifying practice, and the game does more to advocate the destruction of harmful stereotypes and practices than to reinforce them.
But now that I think about it, I could have been clearer on that, yes.
I threw in "reinforces" or "encourages" when I should have said "reflect." I think the fault is mine for misreading the article.
ReplyDeleteI'm not criticising you for leaving it up to the reader to find specific examples, but I think it would have strengthened your point to use them to show these parallels. I still think you did a more than adequate job, though.