Feminine Horror: Body Autonomy and Ownership
Examining the fight to exist as a woman in the GCC, through Haunting Ground and Silent Hill 3.
Haunting Ground is a 2005 survival horror game produced by Capcom that is also dubbed ‘Dementio’ in other versions. Fiona Belli is the 18 year old protagonist of the game. She survives a car crash where she loses both her parents, and find herself stripped in a small cage. She is placed in what seems to be a butcher’s quarter in a large, victorian style mansion. This unknown location is the set up for Haunting Ground’s main map.
Haunting Ground’s lore revolves around alchemy and the pursuit of knowledge. Belli Castle, the mansion Fiona finds herself in, is hinted to have housed the entire lineage of the Belli name, made up of alchemists. Most notably, Aureolus Belli, an alchemist from the middle ages in search of the ‘Great Truth’ beyond the human realm and the gods that may exist in the universe, and how it came to be. Studying immortality and the ‘Azoth’. The Azoth being the ‘essence of life’ that allows him to live forever. Because of this, he has managed to clone himself through generations to follow his pursuit of the Great Truth. One of his descendants is Lorenzo Belli, the main antagonist and final boss of the game. Lorenzo seeks the alchemist truth, following his origins. When he was younger, Lorenzo created Ugo Belli, Fiona’s Father, and passed the Azoth onto him. However, Ugo escaped Belli castle to elope with Ayla, Fiona’s mother. Out of frustration and desperation, Lorenzo then created Riccardo Belli, an imperfect homunculus as he was created without the Azoth, making him age extremely fast and unable to understand emotions. Riccardo then subsequently drives out Lorenzo, his master, and holds power over the castle while Lorenzo operates stealthily through the castle’s housekeeper as he has grown older and is in a wheelchair. Riccardo is seen in the game’s first cutscene as the car Fiona and her parents are in crashes, and murders Ugo in search for the Azoth, only to find that he’s passed the Azoth into Fiona’s womb.
Fiona wakes up after being unconscious after the accident deprived of her clothes and valuables. She has to traverse the Castle’s grounds to find her way out. The game is set up with villains that operate on a stalker system with different speeds and visibility. The story follows Fiona Belli, who is revealed to be the last surviving heir of Belli Castle. In the first hour of the game, Fiona is given the option to rescue a dog named Hewie who she finds tied to a tree. Hewie then becomes her only companion and guard dog throughout the game who is able to assist her through a ‘training’ AI that tracks how you treat him.
Each of the game’s villains desires the same asset from Fiona for their own selfish or unwarranted needs. The first enemy, Debilitas, is a large, loud, and the most intention-blurred stalker that is shown to like and collect dolls. His adamant pursuit of Fiona is seen as a confused one, where he believes that Fiona is a large doll herself that he could add to his growing collection. It isn’t known whether or not he’s aware of the pain and panic he causes Fiona when he captures her, as he happily embraces her while crushing her captured body. He can not and does not realize that Fiona is a real person past his doll-belief. He just stalks her around the castle during the beginning of the game, calls her his ‘doll’ and proceeds to throw, crush, or break Fiona’s body when caught. Haunting Ground has different endings and slightly different paths. A decision that sticks out as a supposed ‘humane’ one happens in Debilitas’ boss fight, where you are able to either kill him, or trap him under a chandelier. This further incentivizes empathy with him.
The second enemy in Haunting Ground is Daniella, the Mansion’s housekeeper. Daniella doesn’t necessarily start by stalking like Debilitas, but her at-first helpful and cold demeanor follows an eerie vibe. She helps Fiona get dressed at the start of the game, but never answers any of her questions. It isn’t revealed until later that Daniella is deeply jealous of Fiona. This deep-set envy comes from Daniella not being able to physically feel anything or experience any emotions. She cannot experience happiness, joy, pleasure, sadness, or sense pain. She is also unable to carry children or breed. She stated that her creator has ‘made her the perfect woman’, but follows by saying, ‘I am not complete’. Daniella mourns her own loss of self and takes it out on Fiona. Daniella suffers abuse that can be viewed in an optional disturbing cutscene where Riccardo is seen repeatedly slapping Daniella. Her self hatred is also extended in gameplay prompts where her hatred of mirrors an in extension, the sight of herself, causes her to breakdown, physically harming herself to destroy the mirror in front of her, all the while giving Fiona time to escape this situation. Daniella pursues Fiona for the Azoth, as she believes that it will help her feel, fix, and make her ‘whole’. She goes after Fiona, seeking to demean, mock, and shame her for being so different, for containing ‘life’ and ‘pleasure’. She accuses Fiona of ‘luring men into her filthy body’ and calls her demeaning names while shaming her on several occasions during her pursuit of the Azoth. Daniella’s fate will always have her, as she claims, ‘incomplete’.
Fiona’s next pursuer is groundskeeper and incomplete clone, Riccardo, keeper of the house. Made by the same man her father was cloned from, making him somewhat of an uncle. Riccardo does not care about anything but his own life, and only sees emotion, compassion, and empathy as obstacles in his way from containing Fiona’s body for his own gain. He claims that Fiona is his property and that she should submit herself to him in order to become his partner, and the ‘lady of the castle’. Riccardo then decides he must impregnate Fiona and become ‘reborn’ as the bearer of the Azoth, making him a complete being. His desire then is to become the original and start a lineage of Riccardo clones instead of Aureolus.
Finally, Fiona’s last enemy and main antagonist lurking through this horrible entrapment is Lorenzo Belli, who only sees Fiona as his vessel to continue generations of the Aureolus line and needs her Azoth in order to do so. He does not view Fiona as her own person, rather he only wants the Azoth within her and acts as if Fiona’s free will, self righteousness, and will power as deterrents from his supposed ‘owned and owed’ Azoth. This way, he ‘helps’ Fiona escape Riccardo but lures her into his ploy and spies on her throughout the castle using peepholes to track her movements.
To reiterate, all of the Haunting Ground enemies are of varied and different motives and intentions towards Fiona, but they all seek to gain from her body in one way or another. Their unnerving and unrelenting pursuits and desires towards her womb and body serve a feminine body horror that many women face in their day to day lives. With family, strangers, and to some extents, ruling administrations governing what a women may or may not want to do with her body. The feminine horror of fighting for the right to control and own one’s own body does not pale in relation. The refusal to give into these predisposed lineages and unwarranted and unwanted traditions is evident in Fiona Belli, and is reflected in feminist movements to have the right to overlook a woman’s worth as something tied to her body and how she chooses to live in said body.
Fiona is a courageous teenage girl who is, in comparison to the world surrounding her in these grounds, normal. She is a kind and caring young woman who does not give up despite being pursued by her lineage, and suffers panic attacks in game as well. Her panic attacks are gamified used in-game as a panic meter. She is not a killer, unless you want her to be, and does not carry super-human strength. She does not possess or have access to weapons through the game. She is constantly put at a disadvantage towards every setting and everyone else in Belli Castle. Constantly being sexualized, stalked, and reduced to nothing but her body, a shared fear and reality of many women in the GCC. Having this fear amplified through a video game setting is a scary experience that unfortunately still hits home. The grotesque and perverse nature of Haunting Ground makes Fiona Belli’s fight for survival something to root for and relate to.
Haunting Ground subjects Fiona, and in turn, the player to themes of mental illness, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, gore, incest, and body dysmorphia, and body shaming. The game strips nuances of power from the player by making them the ‘eye-candy’ being pursued. The desire shown towards Fiona by all the enemies only serves to be fought against, rightfully reclaiming her body, and making her her own person.
When playing Haunting Ground as a woman, the similarities in how Fiona is pursued by these awful men is scarily accurate to the fear felt when navigating through harassment online and on real life. Wanting to escape or flee these situations always follows through whether they’ve been escaped or not, by living in the same body that was sought after. This results in either shutting off or shaming one’s own being in order to shield themselves from similar abuse. Being shunned from living how you’d like, in fear of what may come because of it.
Silent Hill 3 is a direct sequel to Silent Hill by Konami. The game follows our protagonist, Heather Mason, who is the reincarnation of Cheryl Mason and Alessa Gillespie. Alessa being the victim of abuse by a cult named The Order and was forced to carry the fetus of their god, and Cheryl being a part of Alessa’s soul who is searching for a life without pain and anguish. Cheryl was found and raised by Harry Mason, Silent Hill’s protagonist. Seven years later, Cheryl convinces Harry to take her to Silent Hill, which is the area where the first game takes place. When Cheryl is reunited with Alessa, the birth of the terrible god is prophesized and follows through. That’s where Harry Mason steps in and defeats this hellish god. Cheryl then reincarnates herself into another baby who Harry escapes with and raises as his child once again.
The events of Silent Hill 3 take place 17 years after Silent Hill. Harry raised the child as his own and at first named her Cheryl, but then changed it to Heather in order to shield her identity and keep the cult away from her as they may still search for her.
Heather is a 17 year old teenage girl. In the opening of the game we first experience a nightmare that leads her to a presumed death. This scene and the gameplay attached to it serve as a foreshadowing of her time at the Lakeside Amusement Park, where she will later be forced to go to in-game. When she wakes up from this nightmare, we see her in a mall where she then gets to a phone booth and calls her father, Harry Mason, letting him know she’ll be home soon. She’s then approached by Douglas, a private investigator who has unknowingly been commissioned by The Order to find Heather. He lets Heather know that someone wants to talk to her, but Heather does not comply to this stranger, and escapes his questioning by jumping out of the mall’s bathroom window. Upon re-entering the mall, it is evident that something has shifted. Her world had changed, since The Order was able to locate her through Douglas. Monsters litter the mall floors, and we are given an arsenal of weapons throughout the game to arm Heather with.
Heather is a confident and capable young woman, her experience of growing up has led her to become someone who is competent and isn’t afraid to defend and speak up for herself. Many of her dialogue interactions the game show her as angry, frustrated, and disgusted by the events that are transpiring. She does not allow these instances to break her, and she is rarely scared unless is direct danger. She is capable of looking after herself at such a young age. Heather seems to be a lonely character. There are no mentions of friends, and the only person who is actively reached out to is her father Harry Mason. Harry Mason has armed Heather with a taser ‘just in case’ and Heather personally carries a switchblade that’s present in her inventory at the start of the game, that she notes her fondness for carrying it around when examined.
During the events that transpire in Silent Hill 3, everyone Heather comes in contact with wants to use her, specifically her body, in one way or another. Heather’s ownership of her own body and the resilience she puts up in protecting herself, and like Fiona Belli, her womb, is played out with each character.
Heather is seen as a vessel, which is how women are sometimes reduced to and made to feel. Claudia, The Order’s cult leader, sees Heather as someone to birth their terrible god.
Stanley Colemen is someone you don’t ever meet in the game, but instead you find notes from him addressed to Heather left by him in areas throughout the game, detailing his lust for Heather in a stalker-like manner. He leaves his notes around with a small doll, likely symbolizing how he views Heather. An object to be played with for sexual gratification. Stanley’s letters feel all too real considering the plight women face online and in real life with harassers they’ve never met, or sadly come in contact with unwillingly in public spaces or traffic in the GCC and their unsolicited comments and unwanted approaches to women under the guise of forming relationships.
There is a specific puzzle in-game that has you look at a collection of things Stanley has glued to a wall in his room at the Brookhaven Hospital. A cookie, a toothbrush, a spoon, a Christmas card, a clock, a bug, and the important key needed to progress. Stanley has a note next to this collage of items, and writes to Heather that she can use the nail polish remover that he dubs, “the junk those nasty wenches won’t stop using.” Referring to the nurses at the hospital, further proving how he views women he isn’t attracted to, much like how some men may treat women in real life. Stanley’s infatuation with Heather is extremely upsetting when knowing that Heather is only 17 years old.
Private investigator Douglas also uses Heather for his own gain when he followed her in order to locate Heather for the cult. Later realizing his mistake, he then uses her as redemption for his only son who was sadly killed after he tried to rob a bank when his family had financial burdens. Douglas tells Heather that she reminds him of his late son, and how he blames himself for his death. Now, he fights for Heather’s survival.
Harry Mason, at least at first, saw Heather as a replacement and restart to his paternal instincts with losing Cheryl. This is only speculative after recalling the events of Silent Hill.
Throughout Silent Hill 3, Heather is in a constant battle over the ownership of her body, which then extends to revenge. She is fighting her predetermined fate of carrying and giving birth to the Cult’s hellish god. Heather, in turn, destroys god, and manages to leave Silent Hill.
There are several similarities in both Haunting Ground and Silent Hill 3, and in real life. The Feminine Horrors of the body and how women are treated in game and in real life is something to be explored and talked through. As the culture of bodily autonomy in the GCC spreads, we cannot ignore how how ownership and identity is comparable to concepts of virginity and honor that are imbued onto Arab and Muslim women.
As a woman, these games bring about the lived reality of operating a female-presenting body in a society that seems to want to silence and control. Social circles and friendships live on shared experiences of abuse and harassment online and in real life. The act of living for oneself is seen as a defiance, and the fight for living against these societal bonds exists in spaces that these women and girls now occupy. Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram now house several Arab and Muslim women of different backgrounds with the same will to live and have fun. The comments and tweets that defile these spaces come from men who seem to only want to reinstitute that control, now in digital ungoverned spaces.
Horrific acts such as honor killings, female genital mutilations, and child marriages highly disregard a woman’s own autonomy and self. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and strange men sadly deem a ruling over what is done by a woman to her own body. Even when a person cannot physically carry children, or does not marry, they are seen as a failure or a spinster in the society they’re in. Whatever goals or dreams a woman may have for herself is predisposed by the hands of men who want to control her life and subdue her sense of self and her physical being. To be a woman in the GCC already places you in a box that has been predetermined by several generations of control and silencing, and with these small and felt changes, we would hopefully be able to reclaim our sense of self, much like Heather and Fiona.
All photos shown are taken by me through Silent Hill 3 on the PS3 and Haunting Ground on the PS2. (Would love remakes of both.)
