When considering final project ideas this past week, I kept thinking of Mary Flanagan’s mobilization of Michel de Certeau and Judith Butler in Chapter 6 of Critical Play to illuminate the purpose and power of subversive games and their “implication for activists.” Flanagan centers and paraphrases de Certeau, who she says “note[s] that power must be changed in fundamental, internal ways.” But she adds that lasting intervention cannot end there. Flanagan builds on de Certaeu by adding Judith Butler. She summarizes Butler: “…it is only through changing the logic of traditional relationship categories–in Butler’s specific case, categories such as gender– that larger systemic changes can be affected.” (221/222)
So, I take this to mean that effective subversive interventions distinguish themselves by showing a keen awareness of a) entrenched social hierarchies and b) the narratives that keep those hierarchies in place by reiterating their particular logic.
With Flanagan’s piece on my mind, I began to wonder what and who is rarely represented in online game/story spaces. What are stories not told and people not appealed to? What are omissions I can notice — as a middle-aged, queer, white, immigrant to this culture? What wedges its presence into almost everything I do at the moment but frequently feels under-articulated? Well: Peri/menopause.
Precisely because middle-aged women are not frequently represented in the online game space, and peri/menopause is a topic I experience as associated with societal disinterest or even disgust –I mean, it’s not like entering the crone stage is thematized or, heaven forbid, celebrated in our culture. When do we ever hear about JLo’s peri/menopause? Never. When do we hear about JLo’s still slammin’ body in a bikini, even in her 50s? Re-gu-lar-ly.– I feel that it is a topic ripe for playful and tender examination.
Therefore, this proposed game/exploration is primarily for middle-aged people who experience the hormonal shifts of peri/menopause and frequently wonder: What is happening? Why did I enter this room? Is it hot, or is it me? Is this normal? Does this pass?
Not that I think I can single-game-edly change larger systems and the relationship that this US/Western society has with aging and specifically women aging. Still, a continued refusal of the dominant invisible logic, in which aging is equated with a kind of failure and a woman’s “Prime” is equated with dewy youthful fertility (thanks for the reminder, Don Lemon), would be a fundamental aspect of my approach.
The game I envision dramatizes, via webbed observations and interactive prompts, the liberation, sadness, joy, loneliness, and confusion these years can bring. I imagine the game’s paths will lead through recursive experiences/symptoms (written in prose) that are hard to make sense of, explore the lack of reliable information from many medical providers as well as the relative lack of public discourse, and consider the complex ways in which those affected go about gaining knowledge and dealing with symptoms.
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Shelley Jackson’s Wunderkammer is an obvious inspiration and example of a subjective narrator’s self-exploration. At this point, I imagine Peri/menopause similarly webbed, recursive, and meandering, although I think it could (or will) contain distinct multiple-choice, short pathways (as in Nicky Case’s Coming Out Simulator 2014.)
Caveat: One limiting issue will be my lack of programming savvy. I have some experience with twine, which I plan to use for the project. So, as part of creating the exploration, I’ll likely devote a substantial amount of hours to mastering the platform, and still, Peri/menopause might end up as a game that prioritizes (verbal) content over complex tech & structure.TBD.
