Angel Anxiety: Alice Angel as the Uncanny Presence in Bendy and the Ink Machine

Abstract

Exploring the roles of gender performance through the experience of digital gaming provides an arena for discussing the power of fear and anxiety as cultural tools for counterhegemonic forces. The power and function of gender performativity in its varied and multiplicitous forms is a newer branch of game studies research. In this article, fear and anxiety are explored as a game procedure and cultural tool used by the character Alice Angel in Kindly Beast's Bendy and the Ink Machine. By enacting Barbara Creed's uncanny gaze and the monstrous-feminine, Alice Angel calls attention and visibility to the function of the abject as a form of visibility for the oppressed. The monstrous-feminine as a theoretical concept for horror media texts provides a framework to explore the posing, behaviors, and actions of game characters and their relationships to the player and culture at large.