#overanalyzing video games with literary theory
The idea of liminal space is an extremely important concept in Twilight Princess. If you aren’t already aware, a liminal space is a transitional space, such as a place between two extremes, or a place that serves to connect two places–think of stairwells, hallways, waiting rooms, vehicles, parking lots, or airports. These are spaces that, while meant to be used, are not meant to be occupied for long. You don’t hang out in a waiting room for the sake of it; you wait in a waiting room in order to transition to the doctor’s office. It is because of this that many of us perceive liminal spaces to be eerie or unsettling–we are occupying a space that feels in-limbo, somewhere outside the pace of everyday life.
Writers and filmmakers of horror have been using this to their advantage for hundreds of years, utilizing liminal spaces as settings to build up dread for both the characters and the viewer without ever needing to explain why. Begin looking for liminal spaces in horror and you’ll see them everywhere–i.e., the entire concept of the Korean zombie film Train to Busan, which is set almost entirely on a single train. Liminal spaces do not have to be physical spaces, however, but can also be metaphorical spaces–look no further than The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where one man’s body is the space occupied by the two extremes of the morally upright Jekyll and the deplorable Hyde (granted, this is a little bit of a simplistic reading of the character–but the concept is still in-play).
Twilight Princess, while not a “horror game,” per-se, dips into the tropes that define the genre–including liminal space. Twilight–the place of transition between day and night–is itself a liminal space. Making this concept into an intrusive, almost parasitic force than encroaches itself onto the everyday world is deeply unsettling to us as the player. It is forcing liminality onto places that are not meant to be liminal, creating places of transition that transition to nowhere. Places in the game that have been overtaken by Twilight are empty, strangled into silence that feels like it should be building up to something, but never does. Perhaps it is because of this liminality that all people caught in Twilight are turned into spirits–they are unable to continue with their lives, stuck in the moment when Twilight took over, but unable to ascend to an afterlife. Whenever Link enters this liminal space, he is forced into a form that is not his, in which his normal capabilities are limited. It is only when he leaves the liminal space that he is himself again.
However, despite all this, nearly everyone who has played the game agrees that, despite all of this, there is a certain beauty about Twilight. It is fascinating in its eeriness–just like liminal spaces. Have you ever met anyone who loves airports (of which I am one)? It’s that same sort of appeal. There’s a strange dichotomy between how unsettling and how fascinating it is to occupy these spaces that escape definition.
And here, inevitably, we come to the tragedy of Midna.
Because, she, of course, is a being of Twilight. As one of the Twili, the princess of the Twili, she is defined by liminality. She comes to Hyrule as an outsider, almost something alien, something that does not belong–she is liminal. And she knows it. While her vendetta against Zant and her desire to eliminate his influence is highly personal, there is no doubt that, by the end of the game, she recognizes that Twilight is a corruptive force to the land of Hyrule. But she also realizes in the end how much she cares about Link–while they began their adventure barely tolerating one another, they ended it with mutual trust, and it’s not too much of a stretch to say mutual attraction. However, despite all of this, Midna knows the nature of her existence. The two of them aren’t meant to occupy the same space for long. Perhaps this is why, in the end, despite the tragedy of it all, she shattered the mirror behind her.
Because Midna was liminal. Link was not.
