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The group discusses the gendered disparity in the various deaths of the
characters in What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as key points of symbolism that aid
in the game’s narrative.
A podcast by students enrolled in Film Studies/Gender Studies 404. Students will discuss topics of gender and identity in In Sound Mind, What Remains of Edith Finch, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
All right. Hello, everyone, my name is Elias. I'm
Johnny. My name is Nathan Dillon and Eve. And my
name is Kate. Today, we are going to be talking
about the game, what remains of Edith Finch. And
we are going to be talking more generally today
about death, more specifically, gender disparity
in death, how male characters in the games have
clear and violent deaths, whereas the women of the
story or male characters who exhibit more feminine
traits have less violent, more secretive deaths.
We're also going to be talking about general
symbolism within the game, since many parts of the
game contain symbols that aren't usually seen
ahead of time. So our first topic is gender
disparity in death and we'll open it up. Yes. So I
would like to reference Chris Southwick's
interview with the developers. And the article is
the making of what remains in the fridge. And it's
all about we get to see some of the viewpoint the
developers were going in when depicting the
Manning depth in the game, for example, to
describe Gregory, the baby who ends up drowning in
the bathtub. They explain how they got a lot of
pushback from the publisher on that death for
being a violent for being so violent. So we had to
see an example of a very violent male death that
even shocked the publishers elsewhere. We also get
to hear about the death of Alpha and how they have.
And they took inspiration for the comic book Tales
of the Queen from the Queen and the John Competent
Halloween movies and then A.F. and mysteriously
mysterious as we find. And at the end of the comic
book, you playing, she's eaten by monsters. So you
don't really get a true answer to that. And so we
get an example of a mysterious female death. So in
general, we get to see in general, the developers
took a lot of focus into making EAF. I think it's
very interesting to the way that aside from their
being like the disparity in death, there's also
still mystery that shrouds the death to. So just
like from our previous podcast, looking at how
E.T. and the kind of mystery surrounding the curse
still kind of encroaches, that's the right word.
But on how the characters die, which I think is a
very interesting thing. Yeah, absolutely. And so
just kind of getting right into some of those
character deaths right away. If you remember from
the last podcast, I focused on Lewis's character
in general and the relationship that he had with
the curse. And I want to talk more about his death
now. The death that he gets is extremely violent.
It also sheds light on the mental health aspect,
though, for males, especially in videogames and
outside, there's often an overlooking and a
thought that often male characters, because of
their power dynamic, can often have these mental
burdens on themselves. But I think Edith Finch
actually does highlight that and shows what some
element of that program that promised future, as I
was talking about in the previous podcast, can
happen when there isn't that realization moment,
but something that I wanted to talk about
specifically. I have two articles for you today,
sort of Wiliams when a woman looks and more visual
pleasure in narrative cinema. So thinking about
that death, again, how violent that is. Lewis
works in a factory. And what we know and what we
are alluded to from the game is that he chops his
head off with the fish cutter in that he has been
using his for his daily task and everything like
that. And the point of the articles that I'm
bringing up right now is to demonstrate that the
looks that we have when we are gazing again with a
male gaze upon women characters in video games and
how we often want to present them in a better
light, we don't want to give them the violent. We
don't want to show them in the same way that we
are comfortable showing with some of our male
characters because there is a certain protection
that must exist. There's a certain element to if
we do this to a woman, it's going to be that much
more terrible and it's going to have that much
more of an effect on our audiences. And that also
is perpetuated in the deaths of more feminine,
masculine characters within the game. Absolutely.
Especially Melton's, because there is mystery that
surrounds his death, but he's also a little bit
more feminine. And so there is that kind of
protection around his death as well. Yeah,
absolutely. And again, just thinking just real
quick of how one female character in the game, we
have Molly, who eats a bunch of food. And again,
it's very clear what happens to Molly. She has
food poisoning, but we don't actually see any of
that. Again, we're given a sort of dream sequence
in order to kind of ease our suffering, to ease
her suffering as well while we're playing the game.
Yeah, just to reiterate, there is a giant
disparity in the deaths in the game. If you were
to say Molly, who presumably died of food
poisoning in her sleep, Dawn died from an unknown
illness, we're not really sure what. While the
male characters in the game like Sven, he fell to
his death due to the slide and then fell off a
cliff when he was swinging. And also Sam was
knocked off a cliff by being kicked by the deer.
And so I just wanted to mention that this is all
sort of realistic in some weird way that the
gender discrepancy of the cause of death in the
game accurately reflects the choices that men and
women make when taking their own lives. According
to the research article Method, Choice, Intent and
Gender and completed suicide by Dunning Connoting
and Cox quote, Women who commit suicide use less
violent methods such as drugs and carbon monoxide
poisoning than do men who often do more often use
violent methods such as guns and hanging. And so I
think that was accurately represented in the game.
The men are given sort of in your face of violent,
traumatic death while all of the women are sort of
expected to go quietly off screen, as well as
being shrouded in mystery right now. And to your
point, I think it's even more interesting that
they're totally comfortable doing this with male
children, too. It doesn't actually matter the age
or anything like that. It really is just a gender
aspect to it, because, again, that character goes
off a cliff. I mean, that is terrible. And I mean,
there's a lot of violence there surrounding that
and everything like that. But again, the other
characters are given a lot more of a fantastical
or less absurd or more absurd image around that to
comfort the audience. And these deaths also kind
of tie into the personalities of the characters
that are in the game as well. And I think that
this kind of moves us into the general symbolism
of the game. I wanted to talk about Sam's
attention to discipline as a father. You can even
tell just as saying that, you know, Sam was young
and as a teen, he was clearly influenced by the
war. I'm right now referencing an article by
Malindi Hatfield in Eurogamer where she talks
about how Sam, as a child, came to love the army,
came to love, you know, this kind of disciplined
nature. And then when he grew up, he raised his
children in something that was akin to barracks.
They had, you know, lists of chores and individual
lockers and that kind of symbolism, this
militaristic style room, therefore symbolizing his
personality in the future as somebody who is very,
you know, type A, very akin to someone who is a
soldier, kind of perpetuates these gender
disparities as well because he feels the need. You
know, I mean, the game developers kind of felt the
need to portray him in a way that was a lot harder
than other female characters. Similarly, there is
a symbol of Holly. We were just talking about
Molly's stuff. She eats berries that are on her
windowsill. And this is Holly. Holly, berries are
generally meant to symbolize eternal life or the
blood of Christ, which is they're both very
interesting takes, but both related to, you know,
the kind of thing that the developers want to put
across. What do we think about that? Well, I do
think in terms like Sam's like military lifestyle,
I do find it so ironic that you taught his
children the sort of military lifestyle, but it's
still kind of facing death at a young age as well.
In the case of one of them disappearing. Yeah,
like no amount of control can control that kind of
thing. And he wanted. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean,
the whole game is very much a fable like, you know,
death comes to all of us at some point. And in the
same sense, it's like they were going to grow up,
they were going to become their own as their own,
have their own identities eventually. Um, I do
think it's very interesting, though, if you look
at all of the rooms and the way they are kept by
their specifically, they're golden, like the
golden years of each child and each person.
Barbara, it's Barbara as a child when she was very
popular and very successful, um, the the twins as
children. So it's very much easy, like keeping
what she wants to preserve and not the children
and the people in the house, how they actually are.
I thought that was a very interesting that's more
that's definitely a lot more fun than the death
disparity. But, um, you know, it just like it's,
again, going back to that whole. Thing where Ed is
very much controlling the narrative and she's
still controlling their lives even after they're
gone. She's controlling how they're remembered,
how how their rooms are kept up. Um, and so and
how the rooms are kept up. It also perpetuates
parts of their personalities. I mean, she writes
in what she thinks is, are they main truths? And
they end up growing up to be like that if they end
up getting past the age children, which is really
interesting. Another really cool piece of
symbolism that also ties into gender disparity in
death, maybe not gender, but disparity in death is
at the beginning of the game. We see Christopher
Lee, the son kind of spoiler alert, is reading the
journal that she gave to him and he's holding
flowers. And those flowers are calla lilies. And
evidently those lilies express the idea of life
and fertility. Well, they also are a well known
symbol of death, which I think is a really fitting
example to add to that. And he's also wearing a
cast which could be foreshadowing that he has come
close to the curse himself. That's true. He is
wearing a cast. Yeah, I yeah.
So it looks like we're running out of time. But so
throughout this podcast, just to reiterate, we
talked about gender disparity and death and the
difference between the violent nature of the male
deaths versus the kind of mysterious, non explicit
deaths of the female characters and the more
feminine characters. And I think that's something
that definitely doesn't subvert stereotypes at all,
which also leads into more of the fun, general
symbolism, like we see with how Eddie remembers
the children, how she will oftentimes write
specific descriptions that oftentimes kind of
perpetuate how they live their lives and then
smaller symbolism like peaches representing life
and rebirth as well as, you know, the calla lilies.
So
thank you for listening to our podcast and what we
have to say about this lovely game. Again, I was
Nathan, Dylan & Eve, Kate, Elias, Johnny, and
thank you again.