COMM 344: Doom and the question of art.

Artistically, Doom shares a lot of ideas with the Alien(s) film series. It's not hard to see why, in an interview with The Guardian, John Romero, the lead designer of Doom, listed H.R. Giger's Necronomicon and James Cameron's Aliens as the primary influences on the game's style. If you are familiar with the Alien(s) series, you'll know that H.R. Giger was the designer of the Xenomorph species that exists throughout the films. With the atmosphere being inspired by Aliens, and the monsters inspired by Giger's Necronomicon, it bears looking into Giger's work.

From the title Necronomicon, we immediately see that HR Giger was inspired by the work of the legendary gothic horror writer HP Lovecraft. In "The Gothic and the Fantastic in the Age of Digital Reproduction", Anne Quéma argues that Giger's work is both Gothic and a work of Fantasy. The Gothic is considered to be texts which are present in the place between pure reality and pure imagination. Quéma quotes Todorov's The Fantastic "The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.". Todorov gives the specific example of the devil, which, while not present in HR Giger's work, is absolutely present in Doom. The series takes place largely in hell, and forces us to encounter demons that are visually very much like the works of Giger. One of the earliest dialogue moments in Doom 3 is "the devil is real, I know, I built his cage".

But Quéma also looks into the sexual undertones that Giger put into his work. For Giger, necrophilia is a repeated theme. Quéma states that "erotic seduction is checkmated the necrotic display that identifies the viewer as a posthumous witness."  Giger is essentially creating an image that juxtaposes the sexual and the grotesque so as to create a level of discomfort in the viewer. In Alien, this is evident in Ripley stripping to her underwear in the escape pod before her final confrontation with the Xenomorph. In Doom, you shoot white plasma from a phallic looking gun that is mounted in the center of your body at a series of zombies and demons. The influence of Giger's necrophiliac work is subtle, but once you notice it, quite obvious.

The Plasma Rifle being fired at an Undead Soldier

1. Quéma, Anne. "The Gothic And The Fantastic In The Age Of Digital Reproduction." English Studies In Canada 30.4 (2004): 81-119. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.