interactive choice-based narratives . 6 The supportive binary opposition at work here is not only that utilized by Laura Mulvey – an opposition between passivity and activity , but also an opposition between proximity and distance that challenges how traditional spectatorship exists within the hybrid context of interactive cinema . 7
From the outset , Until Dawn introduces a central theme – the close relationship between memory and media . For instance , the game ’ s initial chapters abide by what Vera Dika referred to as “ stalker cycles ,” formulaic plots set during a time of ritualistic teenage celebration unfolding inside the frame of an insular community – to which the killer was once intimately linked . 8 This role of media in the archiving , circulation , and construction of both individual and collective remembering has been identified by many scholars within the field of memory studies . Joanne Garde- Hansen writes of the symbiotic relationship between media and history , engagement with the past being mediated and mediatized through print , film , photography and digital media . 9 Moreover , Freud uses two media metaphors : the magic writing pad and the screen . The latter , Alison Landsberg argues , indicates an understanding of the role of mass media on processes of memory ; something reflected in the opening assertion of Russell Kilbourn ’ s examination of memory in transnational art and film , that cinema is constitutive memory in its most meaningful 6
Amir H . Ameri , The Architecture of the Illusive Distance ( London : Routledge , 2016 ), p . 167 . 7 Laura Mulvey , ‘ Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ’, in Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings Third Edition , ed . by Gerald Mast ( Oxon : Oxford University Press , 1985 ), p . 806 . 8 Vera Dika , Games of Terror : Halloween , Friday the 13th , and the Films of the Stalker
Cycle ( Madison , NJ : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press , 1990 ), p . 90 . 9 Joanne Garde-Hansen , Media and Memory ( Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press , 2011 ), p . 25 .
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