Embodied Research in Sea of Solitude
Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonzalez, Contributing Editor
Spooky season crawls back into the corner of our sight. With pumpkin spice, caramel latte cold brews, and tasty chocolate delights, there is a lot to look forward to this month! Yet…I am tired, both physically and mentally, to the point where my body shuts down as soon as I arrive at my apartment after a busy day of teaching, researching, working with other people’s situations and past traumas, and then dealing with my own demons. Slowly, my state of mind is manifesting through my own embodied agency, where my own body chooses to take different actions as an attempt to get away from my own negative mental places.
I’ve been thinking about the different ways our own bodies represent our own mental health, and ways our past trauma can still get ahold of us in very meaningful and harmful ways. One example would be what José Esteban Muñoz refers to as “disidentification,” where our trauma can renegotiate our own identity by letting our harmful behaviors dictate how the world perceives us. I gathered these thoughts while playing Sea of Solitude and joined protagonist Kay’s journey of remembrance, loneliness, and realization of her own past actions through her own embodiment. I use the term “embodiment” to explain the material manifestation of the characters' emotions through the game and how these transform them into different beings.
Sea of Solitude is an adventure video game developed by Jo-Mei Games and published by Electronic Arts. The game is an interactive story, where the player joins Kay in exploring a flooded city representing her memories. The game consists of twelve chapters, each advancing the narrative and exploring different facets of the protagonist's journey. Kay takes the form of a monster, where she embodies her feelings of hopelessness, anger, and worthlessness. At the start of the game, she appears as a young woman with a dark, monstrous form, covered with black feathers with glowing red eyes, a result of her overwhelming loneliness and emotional turmoil. This form represents her inner struggles and feelings of isolation, serving as a visual metaphor for her internal state. Unlike the other monsters in the game, which can be compared to a “giant kaiju elder god" in size, Kay is more of a human-sized monster, suggesting how Kay is battling in keeping her humanity throughout the game. In an interview with the creator of the game, Cornelia Geppert expressed how part of Kay’s journey represents how people work through their own mental health issues. What I found interesting about the interview is how Geppert explained how other people had contacted her expressing how the game helped them start seeking help to get out of their numbness. I see this represented with Kay’s character. While her monster form represents the emotional distress she is going through, the fact that her monster form stays human size is a sign that she is holding onto her feelings and memories, aspects that make her human.
During her journey, she encounters other monsters who she finds out are her own family, each embodying their own internal struggles. Kay’s younger brother, Sunny, is a large crow who flies away from the bullying he suffers in school, her dad is a reptile that breathes powerful streams of hot air that represents his need to vent about his problems, and her mother is a sea creature with a scaly human face. Her hair is made of large tentacles with which she tries to hold her family, and their family home, together. What makes this game interactive is that it exemplifies how a character undertakes “embodied research” to understand and analyze why they are experiencing intense negative feelings that don’t allow them to move forward with their life. Therefore, Kay represents the need for embodied research and access to intimacy not only for the characters represented in this video game, but for us, as we explore our own emotional isolation by revisiting our past actions.
Artist T.J. Dedeaux-Norries defines “embodied research” as “a way to heal their body from fatigue, disease, generational trauma, and immense grief,” where part of the process of self-healing centers on engaging in multiple activities to address issues of the body and mind. For example, Dedeaux-Norries’s art exhibition titled “Second Line,” displayed T.J. engaging in multiple physical activities, such as boxing, and working in their artwork as a way to search for themselves and understand the link between their past memories and emotions they are experiencing. Similarly, Kay engages in embodied research when she questions herself and her past memories. Every time there's a sea monster approaching Kay, she gathers light energy as a way to purify the negative energy surrounding the area. Kay acknowledges that she is tired from the journey, but chooses to continue to find out about her own past and help her family with their trauma as well. When she realizes that her own brother is the crow monster that emerges from the sea, Kay makes it her mission to help him regain his human form again. Here, Sunny embodies a crow as a response to the bullying he suffered in school. Other boys would tell Sunny that he was too weak and emotional to fit in with the rest of the group. Even as a strong monster with physical strength to crush down buildings and enemies, Sunny’s human side still struggles, and he talks with Kay about his own isolation.
During this part of the game, Kay discovers the extent to which her brother was bullied by the other boys in school. The boys would refer to Sunny in very gendered ways, calling him weak like his own father, saying he was too effeminate, even referring to him as prey to be hunted. Dedeaux-Norries explains how embodied research is a way to “heal [the] body from fatigue, disease, generational trauma, and immense grief”; similarly, Kay experiences Sunny’s trauma by visiting his old school, where Kay embodied the emotional and physical pain Sunny experienced. It's worth noting that Sea of Solitude places a strong emphasis on its emotional narrative and the introspective journey of its protagonist, Kay, making it an emotional and reflective experience in the gaming landscape. In this level, shadows in the form of Sunny's bullies emerge and push Kay to the sea, where hands try to pull Kay under water. The shadows chant and say that they will find and kill Sunny.
During this level, Kay hears conversations from her and Sunny’s past where she realized that she failed to listen to him or take any action in regards to his situation at school. Kay realizes that her brother’s situation is part of the reason why she still embodied a monster form. While Sea of Solitude is a manifestation of Kay’s own emotional struggle, part of her own resolution to this involves connecting back to her own family’s problems and getting involved in encouraging each other to face their trauma and find ways to feel at peace with their current self. Toward the ending scene of the game, Kay undergoes a significant transformation. She sheds her monstrous form, representing her breaking free from the shackles of her overwhelming loneliness, guilt, and despair. This is not to say that she erases or ignores her struggles, but rather she learns to understand, accept, and manage them. The game doesn't necessarily equate peace with the absence of the monster, but associates it with understanding and self-acceptance.
