Poétique des corps fragmentaires : approches iconographiques et poïétiques de la double figure de Frankenstein dans les créations vidéoludiques

Abstract

This text analyzes the importance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the videogame imagination and how Victor Frankenstein and his creature became major figures, inspiring antagonists as well as protagonists. This text shows how, beyond the iconographic references, the specificities of the creature’s body allows a specific relationship to images that the videogame medium is able to intensify. Through the analysis of the video games Monster Lab and Dead Space — which share an iconography inspired by Frankenstein on several levels— this text observes how a gaming experience that induces paradoxical creative postures on the edge between creation and destruction can be created.