Part 9 - Helplessness - The Elevator Episode
Divorce is a situation forced upon children. Parents, either one or both, can choose to separate. For the children, there is almost always a feeling of helplessness [31] , of a situation not of their choosing, a situation forced on them, and they have no real impact on their parents’ decision to divorce. And now they have to live with it (in many families parents do not divorce, for the children’s sake. Those that do decide to divorce, do so in spite of the children.)
Even children from physically and emotionally violent families, who encourage the divorce actively or passively, experience helplessness in the face of their inability to make things better. Their desire for the parents’ divorce is their solution for getting out of their feeling of helplessness.
In step families, the sense of hopelessness is sometimes tied in with the actual marriage of their parents. Statistically, the percentage of divorces in step families is higher than in “chapter 1” families and most are precisely because of the children but, once again, the decision is made by the parents and the child is the passive recipient of the decision and bears the consequences.
The elevator episode provides an opportunity to experience the helplessness once again, for both the hero and the player.
The helplessness is expressed at the levels of dialogue, graphics, and the frustration that the game creates. Even the music contributes to this feeling.
The purpose of this frustration is to produce desensitization of the feelings of helplessness and to look for creative solutions within the boundaries presented by the situation.
The hero is in the elevator and wants to get to the third floor, where the zipper store that is supposed to solve his problem is situated. In the elevator there are three figures, two of them sort of parent figures and one in charge of the elevator that can represent the figure of the judge. The figures declaredly take into consideration the good of the hero and his needs, asking him to which floor he has to go, but in the end they ignore his requests.
He experiences helplessness, lack of control and anger, and is totally at the mercy of the caprices of the other passengers.
He tries humor, he tries outsmarting them, he asks politely and then lunges angrily at the operating board.
Within the confines of the reality of the elevator, over which he has no control, he seeks a solution that will bring him to the third floor. The player has to be very creative in order to extricate himself from this situation. The experience of success and mastery at the game level obviously increases his creativity and trust of self in his real life.
Continue reading “Part 10 - Triangulation and Conflict of Loyalties”
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[31] Wallerstein, J., Lewis, J.& Blackeslee .S. (2000). The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. New York: Hyperion
