Empathy and Frustration in Hair Nah

I was really interested in exploring Hair Nah as an empathy game, and how the game is used to generate a sense of defamiliarization and frustration to talk about the unwanted invasion of personal space felt by black women when people try to touch their hair. When you first open the game, bright, colorful images with “simplistic” pixelated graphics appear, depicting an airplane beneath the title, with a disembodied white hand protruding from the left. Upon hitting start, we are given a short description of Aeva, the protagonist, detailing her love of travel and hatred of people invading her personal space, before being led to a character creation screen. This all contributes to creating an attitude reminiscent of a game that is perhaps a text based adventure centered around travel, a game that would most likely center around interactions with NPCs or overcoming some travel-based inconveniences. Instead, this notion of good-natured fun is juxtaposed against the claustrophobic intrusion of white hands pressing in from the sides of the screen closing in on Aeva that she has to smack away. Smacking the hands also introduces a percussive, almost jolting smacking noise which intrudes on the upbeat background music, leading to a further defamiliarization with the harmless environment, and introducing the claustrophobic and jolting nature of the sounds, actions, and animations. As the game progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to smack the hands away, while the animation and environment remains as frustratingly inviting compared to the action of the game.

This juxtaposition of what is seemingly a harmless environment with the frustrating nature of the game mechanics leads to a defamiliarization with the environment that contributes to what the game’s creator, Momo Pixel, says is the reason she made the game, “I just really wanted people to understand how much of an invasion of space it [touching another person’s hair] is”. We are thus placed in what should be, and is for those who are not women of color, a space that should be welcoming and, for the most part, a representation of what an average trip would be. However, we are quickly told be the claustrophobic, jolting nature of the game how uninviting these spaces can be for women of color when their personal space is constantly invaded. This space is hostile and jarring, and because the game is set in an environment that could be, essentially, “any place”, the game shows us that this isn’t some particular experience, but allows us to empathize with this one small part of the experience of being a woman of color.

Here is the video that I took the Momo Pixel quote from

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aphpJi5jKrM