Brigid Tenenbaum

Last updated
Brigid Tenenbaum
BioShock character
Brigid Tenenbaum.png
Brigid Tenenbaum in BioShock 2
First appearance BioShock (2007)
Created by Ken Levine
Voiced byAnne Bobby
In-universe information
Nationality German

Brigid Tenenbaum is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. She is a German Jew who survived the Holocaust due to assisting in Nazi human experimentation, and was eventually invited to the underwater city of Rapture, where she continued human experimentation. She discovered a substance that altered DNA that was highly addictive, using little girls as hosts, before developing compassion for them and attempting to save them from their parasites.

Contents

Various aspects of her character have been the subject of discussion by critics, including her ethnicity, autism, and gender. Her initial lack of empathy was suggested in a paper to be spreading the implication that people with autism lacked empathy, a sentiment other people shared after Levine discussed it in an interview. He later clarified that her autism was not the source of her lack of empathy, but rather, her experiences with the Holocaust contributed to it.

Concept and creation

Brigid Tenenbaum was created by BioShock director Ken Levine. [1] She is a German Jew who is autistic. She was a victim of the Holocaust and the sole survivor of her family. She managed to survive due to her usefulness in conducting Nazi human experimentation. [2] When discussing both her ethnicity and autism, Levine noted that "Tenenbaum's a highly functioning autistic. Those are instrumental in getting her to that place, but a different autistic Jew wouldn't have ended up there, because there is something about her and what she wants – her absolute adoration of science – to the point where she fails to see every other thing." He noted that she was blinded to the horrors of her actions, and argued that the Holocaust corrupted her sense of morality. He discussed how her eventual change to develop empathy was an unwanted change, but one that occurred nonetheless. [1] Some questioned Levine's invocation of autism in this interview, causing him to explain that autism did not define her lack of empathy. [3] She is portrayed by Anne Bobby. [4]

Appearances

Before the events of her first appearance in BioShock , Tenenbaum was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Nazis. She was the only member of her family to survive, owing to her assisting the Nazis in their human experimentation. She became a geneticist, and was invited to join the underwater city of Rapture by its leader Andrew Ryan. Tenenbaum discovered a species of sea slug there that was able to rewrite DNA, calling the substance ADAM. She worked with gangster Frank Fontaine, who offered her funding to conduct human experimentation. She found that the best way to produce it was to have little girls, called Little Sisters, serve as hosts to the slugs. ADAM became widespread, due in part to its addictive nature. It caused people to degrade from its use. She developed empathy for the Little Sisters, refusing to continue work on them, leading to her being replaced. She worked in secret to abduct Little Sisters and to try to cure them of their parasite. [2]

During the events of BioShock, Tenenbaum crosses paths with the protagonist Jack, and she implores him to rescue the Little Sisters, which are guarded by Big Daddies. The player may choose whether to do so, gaining less ADAM but receiving other rewards, or gaining more ADAM from the Little Sisters if he kills them instead. Much later in the game, Jack is helped by Tenenbaum and her cured Little Sisters to track down Fontaine, finally killing the crime boss by draining him of the ADAM he needs to survive after splicing into an inhuman monster; Jack then leaves Rapture with Tenenbaum and the girls. [2]

In BioShock 2 , Tenenbaum discovers that girls are being abducted near shorelines, leading her to take a submarine down to Rapture to investigate. She finds that Sofia Lamb is behind these abductions, turning the girls into new Little Sisters; Tenenbaum attempts to cure these as well, but she is impeded by Lamb. She collaborates with Sofia's daughter, Eleanor, who has a psychic connection with the Little Sisters, and asks Tenenbaum to help awaken a Big Daddy called Subject Delta. Tenenbaum aims to cure the dependency on ADAM and succeeds, leaving Delta to be guided by her ally Augustus Sinclair after she departs. [2] Tenenbaum's story is continued in BioShock 2's DLC Minerva's Den , set shortly after she parts ways with Subject Delta in the main game. In it, she works together with the Big Daddy Subject Sigma, formerly Charles Milton Porter, in order to retrieve the schematics of the Thinker, Rapture's operating supercomputer set within Minerva's Den, the city's technology center now controlled by the insane Reed Wahl. After Sigma succeeds in this and defeats Wahl, he escapes Rapture with Tenenbaum, who is able to restore back his humanity.

Reception

Brigid Tenenbaum has been the subject of discussion and analysis by critics. Writer Juho Matias Puro felt that she was one of the "most interesting maternal characters" in modern Western video games, discussing how she is a mother figure during her experimentation, but holding more regard for science than empathy. However, they were critical of her arc being the product of the development of her maternal instincts. Namely, that, rather than her own agency being responsible for her developing empathy, it was simply a biological function. Nevertheless, he felt she was interesting due to representing both "the caring mother and the twisted, evil version; sadistic instead of nurturing, hurtful and disregarding instead of comforting." [5] Authors of the book Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock discussed how being raised in a fascist regime made intimacy an alien concept to her, which lead to her viewing her maternal instinct as an "abomination." They argued that the Little Sisters were a reflection of herself and her endeavours, suggesting that, despite her lack of monstrous features like others in Rapture, the Little Sisters reflected her monstrosity. [6]

The Guardian staff analyzed Tenenbaum among other female video game characters, describing her as a "disturbing study in motherhood, creation, and amorality. They discussed her history in Auschwitz working under Josef Mengele, as well as the eventual empathy she gained for the Little Sisters. [7] Her autism was the subject of discussion in the paper Characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Fiction: Where are the Women and Girls? The authors discussed the stereotype of people with autism lacking empathy, arguing that this is perpetuated by Tenenbaum's indifference to the suffering of others during the Holocaust. [8] Author Ewan Kirkland discussed the contrast between masculinity and femininity in BioShock, noting how the two female doctors in the game, Tenenbaum being one of them, were depicted positively due in part to Brigid's attempts to protect the Little Sisters, where other pivotal characters, such as Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine, were "self-centred masculine megalomaniacs." [9]

Brigid was also analyzed as a Jewish character. Kotaku writer Cody Mello-Klein discussed how Brigid came to Rapture because she, as a Jewish person, felt a displacement and lack of control, arguing that she became "reflections and distortions of these themes, examples of what happens when people are put under the pressures of history, time, and trauma" in her times at Rapture. He also touched upon how she became a tormentor herself, saying that she served as an example of how trauma can cause people to adopt their tormentors' methods. [10] Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle writer Jillian Diamond discussed the propensity of Jewish characters in Rapture, noting how her story was "inextricably tied to her Judaism." They touched upon the complexities of her character, namely her guilt, feeling that her and her identity as a Jewish woman in the Holocaust was central to BioShock's plot. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milgram experiment</span> Series of social psychology experiments

Beginning on August 7, 1961, a series of social psychology experiments were conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, who intended to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SHODAN</span> Fictional artificial intelligence and main antagonist of the System Shock video games

SHODAN, an acronym for Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, is the main antagonist of Looking Glass Studios's cyberpunk-horror themed video game System Shock. An artificial intelligence originally in charge of a research and mining space station, after her ethical constraints are removed, she develops a god complex and goes rogue, killing almost everyone on board before being stopped by the hacker that originally removed her limitations. In the game's sequel System Shock 2, SHODAN returns, temporarily allying herself with a soldier to stop her rampaging creations. She is defeated again afterward by the soldier when she attempts to remake all reality in her vision, but not before transferring her consciousness into a human woman's body. In all appearances, SHODAN is voiced by Terri Brosius.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Levine (game developer)</span> American video game developer (born 1966)

Kenneth M. Levine is an American video game developer. He is the creative director and co-founder of Ghost Story Games. He led the creation of the BioShock series and is also known for his work System Shock 2.

<i>BioShock</i> 2007 video game

BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hana Brady</span> Czech Holocaust victim

Hanička "Hana" Brady was a Czechoslovak Jewish girl murdered in the gas chambers at German concentration camp at Auschwitz, located in the occupied territory of Poland, during the Holocaust. She is the subject of the 2002 non-fiction children's book Hana's Suitcase, written by Karen Levine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kirsten Miller (South African writer)</span> South African writer

Kirsten Miller is an accomplished South African novelist, writer and artist represented by numerous published works and a range of large scale private and public art pieces.

<i>BioShock 2</i> 2010 video game

BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 on February 9, 2010; Feral Interactive released an OS X version on March 30, 2012. The game takes place in the dystopian underwater city of Rapture, eight years after the events of BioShock. In the single-player campaign, players control the armored protagonist Subject Delta as he fights through Splicers—the psychotic human population of the city—using weapons and an array of genetic modifications. The game includes a story-driven multiplayer mode that takes place before the events of BioShock, during Rapture's civil war.

Sander Cohen is a character in the BioShock video game series. He debuts in the first title of the series, developed by 2K Boston, as a celebrated polymath of the underwater city of Rapture who has a deranged and sadistic personality. The protagonist Jack is forced to help Cohen with the creation of a macabre sculpture, built around pictures of Cohen's former proteges whom he kills and photographs on his behalf, before he allows him to leave his domain Fort Frolic. Sander Cohen makes another appearance in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, a downloadable content story expansion for BioShock Infinite which sets up the events of BioShock. He is voiced by T. Ryder Smith for all appearances.

Andrew Ryan (<i>BioShock</i>) BioShock character

Andrew Ryan is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. He is the secondary antagonist in BioShock, and also appears in its follow-ups BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea. Ryan is portrayed as an idealistic business magnate in the 1940s and 1950s, aiming to create an underwater city called Rapture to avoid government oversight and scrutiny. As civil war erupts in Rapture, Ryan's utopian vision collapses into a dystopia, leading him to become reclusive and paranoid. After winning the war, he becomes increasingly ruthless in his control over the city's remaining inhabitants.

<i>BioShock</i> (series) First-person shooter game franchise

BioShock is a retrofuturistic video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin. The BioShock games combine first-person shooter and role-playing elements, giving the player freedom for how to approach combat and other situations, and are considered part of the immersive sim genre. Additionally, the series is notable for exploring philosophical and moral concepts with a strong in-game narrative influenced by concepts such as Objectivism, total utilitarianism, and American exceptionalism.

Rapture (<i>BioShock</i>) Fictional underwater city

Rapture is a fictional city-state in the BioShock series published by 2K Games. It is an underwater city that is the main setting for the games BioShock and BioShock 2. The city also briefly appears in BioShock Infinite, and is featured in its downloadable content, Burial at Sea. The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-late 1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest artists and thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the world's governments and religion. However, the lack of government led to severe wealth disparity, a powerful black market, and unrestricted genetic modification, which turned the city into a dystopia exacerbated by Ryan's tyrannical methods to maintain control. The masses turned towards political activists like Atlas who advocated an uprising of the poor against Ryan and the elite of Rapture; and on the eve of 1959, a civil war broke out, leaving much of Rapture's population dead. The remaining citizens either became psychotic "Splicers" due to the effects of ADAM, a substance that can alter genetic material, or have barricaded themselves from the Splicers to protect themselves, leaving the city to fail and fall apart around them.

The BioShock series is a collection of story-driven first-person shooters in which the player explores dystopian settings created by Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games. The first two games, BioShock and its direct sequel, BioShock 2, take place in the underwater city of Rapture in 1960 and 1968, which was influenced heavily by Ayn Rand's Objectivism. The third installment, BioShock Infinite, is set aboard the floating air-city of Columbia in 1912, designed around the concept of American Exceptionalism. Though Infinite is not a direct sequel to the previous games, the game is thematically linked; a short scene within the core Infinite game returns to Rapture, while the downloadable content BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea tie in many of the plot elements between BioShock and BioShock Infinite.

<i>BioShock Infinite</i> 2013 video game

BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game in the BioShock series, developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K. Infinite was released worldwide for the PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360, and OS X platforms in 2013. The game is set in the year 1912 and follows its protagonist, Booker DeWitt, who is sent to the airborne city Columbia to retrieve Elizabeth, a young woman held captive there. Booker and Elizabeth become involved in a class war between the nativist Founders that rule Columbia and the rebel Vox Populi, representing the city's underclass. Elizabeth possesses the ability to manipulate "Tears" in the space-time continuum, and Booker and Elizabeth discover she is central to Columbia's dark secrets. The player controls Booker DeWitt throughout the game, fighting enemies and scavenging supplies, while the computer-controlled Elizabeth provides assistance.

Elizabeth (<i>BioShock</i>) Character in BioShock Infinite

Elizabeth is a fictional character in Irrational Games' BioShock Infinite, the third title in the BioShock series. The game is set in 1912 on a floating steampunk city named Columbia which was founded on the principles of American exceptionalism. Elizabeth has been groomed in a controlled environment to take over the reins of the city once its current leader, Father Zachary Hale Comstock, dies. Elizabeth has the power to open "tears" in the fabric of reality; she is able to view every event across all of the infinite timelines simultaneously and effortlessly open doorways to them, allowing her to access parallel universes.

<i>BioShock 2: Minervas Den</i> 2010 video game downloadable content

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den is a single-player downloadable content (DLC) campaign for the 2010 first-person shooter game BioShock 2, developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored and genetically modified human, or "Big Daddy"; Sigma must travel through Minerva's Den, the technological hub of the underwater city of Rapture, to download a schematic of the city's supercomputer. Gameplay is similar to that of BioShock 2, with new enemies and weapons.

Development of <i>BioShock Infinite</i>

The development of BioShock Infinite began after BioShock's release in August 2007. The five-year development, led by studio Irrational Games, began under the moniker "Project Icarus". Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine was inspired by events at the turn of the 20th century and the expansion of the concept of American Exceptionalism set by the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. His story took these events to create a tale set in 1912 where the player, as former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, is challenged to rescue a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been kept aboard the floating city of Columbia in the middle of a civil war between its founder Father Zachary Comstock and the Vox Populi, the underclass revolting against him.

<i>BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea</i> Episodic expansion to the first-person shooter video game "BioShock Infinite"

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea is a two-part single-player expansion to the first-person shooter video game BioShock Infinite. It was developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games for PlayStation 3, OS X, Windows, Xbox 360, and Linux platforms. Episode One was released digitally on November 12, 2013, followed by Episode Two on March 25, 2014. A retail version was released as part of BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, and later included in BioShock: The Collection for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

<i>BioShock: Rapture</i> 2011 novel by John Shirley

BioShock: Rapture is a 2011 science fiction novel written by John Shirley, published by Tor Books in the United States and by Titan Books in the United Kingdom. Rapture forms part of the BioShock retrofuturistic media franchise created by Ken Levine and published by 2K Games and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin. A prequel to the first BioShock game the novel tells the story of how Andrew Ryan founded the underwater city of Rapture. The book follows multiple BioShock characters. The cover art was designed by Craig Mullins, who also produced the cover art for BioShock 2. It was released July 19, 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lutece twins</span> BioShock character

Robert Lutece and Rosalind Lutece, collectively known as the Lutece twins, are a duo of characters from the BioShock video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K Games. They debut in the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite, where they serve as the drivers for the game's events and often materialize under mysterious circumstances to guide protagonist Booker DeWitt. By the game's end, both characters are eventually revealed to share no family relations, and are in fact parallel universe versions of the same individual. Robert and Rosalind are voiced by Oliver Vaquer and Jennifer Hale respectively. Concept artist Claire Hummel was responsible for the visual design of the Lutece twins.

Atlas (<i>BioShock</i>) BioShock character

Atlas is a character in the BioShock video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K Games. He first appears in the first title of the series, where he sets himself up as a benefactor of Jack, the game's player character, upon his arrival in the underwater city of Rapture. During a pivotal scene later in the game's narrative, Atlas discloses that he is actually the crime lord Frank Fontaine in disguise, the main antagonist of the game, and that he had been manipulating Jack to act against the city's founder Andrew Ryan. It is also revealed that he is responsible for orchestrating Jack's mental conditioning during his infancy and later a chain of events that led to his subsequent arrival in Rapture. Atlas/Fontaine also appears in the sequel BioShock 2 through audio diaries, and more prominently in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, a prequel which sets up the events of BioShock.

References

  1. 1 2 Futter, Mike (April 9, 2015). "Conflict In Utopia – How Relationships Are At The Heart Of Ken Levine's New Game". Game Informer . Archived from the original on February 21, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Trock, Daniel (February 21, 2023). "BioShock: Who Is Brigid Tenenbaum?". The Gamer. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  3. ↑ Futter, Mike (April 9, 2015). "Faith In Rapture – Ken Levine Shares Thoughts On Creating Authentic Diversity". Game Informer . Archived from the original on January 19, 2020. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Anne Bobby". Behind the Voice Actors. Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  5. ↑ Puro, Juho Matias (May 2016). "Female Characters in Video Games : Representation and Character Types". Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  6. ↑ Parker, Felan; Aldred, Jessica (November 9, 2018). Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN   978-0-7735-5497-9. Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  7. ↑ Gray, Kate; Nielsen, Holly; Webber, Jordan Erica (January 25, 2016). "Beyond Lara Croft: 30 truly interesting female game characters – part one". The Guardian . Archived from the original on June 8, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  8. ↑ Tharian, Priyanka; Henderson, Sadie; Wathanasin, Nataya; Chester, Verity; Tromans, Samuel. "Characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Fiction: Where are the Women and Girls?". University of Warwick . Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  9. ↑ Kirkland, Ewan (October 1, 2021). Videogames and the Gothic. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-000-45310-2. Archived from the original on February 27, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  10. ↑ Mello-Klein, Cody (July 10, 2018). "BioShock's Jewish Roots Run Deep". Kotaku . Archived from the original on July 11, 2018. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  11. ↑ Diamond, Jillian (August 3, 2022). "From 'Wolfenstein' to 'Unpacking,' examining Jewish characters in video games". Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.