Last day of June: performare il lutto tra pathos ed en-pathos = The last day of June: "performing" the mourning between pathos and en-pathos

Abstract

Unlike other social-technological contexts (Boccia Artieri, 2012), video games offer a space where death is frequently present as a narrative theme from the linguistic and practical viewpoints (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, et al. 2015), even though it is deprived of its more dreadful dimension—its permanent trait. In fact, "game over" indicates only the end of a possibility that can be repeated countless times, as players wish. The Last Day of June proposes a story that focuses on the protagonist's loss. A car accident leaves the main character, Carl, in a wheelchair. When the man realizes that his loved one, June, died, the players' target becomes to help him accept his loss – and triumph over it – by modifying the course of events before June's death. This paper proposes a narrative analysis (Fernandez-Vara, 2015), rooted on Gennette's (1980) model, relating story highlights to flashbacks (which we define "generative" in the analysis) to some visual and scenic choices that are associated with the stages of grief and its processing. The aim is to enquire into the pedagogical and cultural values of the case study by means of its association with myths and their main functions. Finally, a qualitative examination of a number of comments from one of the main YouTube channels will support the interpretation of the video game