Silent Hill 2 by Mike Drucker

Author:Mike Drucker [Drucker, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Games & Activities, Video & Electronic, Literary Criticism, Horror & Supernatural, Computers, Programming, Games
ISBN: 9781940535272
Google: jmQREAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1940535271
Goodreads: 54555315
Publisher: Boss Fight Books
Published: 2020-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Does Pyramid Head Matter?

You see the name of the chapter, so let’s cut right to it.

Marketing wise, he—if Pyramid Head even is a “he”—definitely matters to Konami. With his bloody butcher’s outfit, pointy metal head, and massive sword, Pyramid Head’s head looks like the dream of every teenage goth. He’s the perfect fit for merchandise: Intimidating and iconic, he’s video games’ version of horror mainstays like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th or Michael Myers from the Halloween movies.

In Silent Hill 2, he’s also a violent rapist—one that just happens to be available on a shirt and in a kart racing game.

In his first appearance, Pyramid Head is standing on the other side of a passage from James in an apartment building. The passage is blocked off by bars and Pyramid Head himself doesn’t react to the player. It’s an unsettling sight that reflects what Kevin F. Steinmetz in “Carceral Horror” calls the “representations of prisons and punishment [that] are evident in many entertainment genres, perhaps the most visceral are found in horror.” We can’t tell if we’re the ones behind bars or he is—are we being protected or trapped?

While many of the enemies in the game tend to crouch into their own bodies and painful shapes as a sign of trauma and pain, Pyramid Head stands tall above James. His calm demeanor draws our focus directly onto him. We wait because we expect him to act. His passivity creeps us out; enemies are made to attack. Instead, he waits—establishing a power dynamic by looking evil and doing, well, absolutely nothing.

This all changes with Pyramid Head’s infamous “rape scene.” Later in the apartments, James comes across Pyramid Head assaulting two struggling Mannequin enemies. The Mannequin enemies consist of two pairs of plastic, feminine-looking legs stacked on top of each other to form “arms” and “legs” with no head. It’s a sexual image, one made only more disturbing when the legs of both halves move.

During this sequence, Pyramid Head corners both Mannequins in the kitchen, seemingly holding one down as he grotesquely thrusts into them. Meanwhile, James hides in a closet like a scared child. But he’s also watching—especially watching from a place of cliché perversion. Whether or not James is enjoying it, he is watching an assault while we as players lose any control. We can’t make James stop the rape. We can’t make him turn away.

This moment throws a lot at us. If the game’s designers wanted to spook the player, they could have Pyramid Head just chase James down a hallway like they do with most of the other enemies. He could be a direct danger to us. Instead, Pyramid Head violently assaults another monster while we have to do nothing.

In “Gothic Videogames, Survival Horror, and the Silent Hill Series,” Kirkland refers to Pyramid Head in this scene as a “castrating father,” adding, “The father’s assault on the mother is presented in Pyramid Head’s introductory cutscene, where he is spied either murdering, raping, or giving birth to a female-coded mannequin creature.

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