Different Songs, Same Franchise

Songs have been with us for a long time. They entertain children, teach lessons in a more whimsical manner, and reference historical events in a compact manner. Two songs, referred to as nursey rhymes, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and Ring Around the Rosie are two rather whimsical nursery rhymes that have been popularized over the years. Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star talked about a star and giving thanks to the light it provided people in the dark. Ring Around the Rosie has had many interpretations, but it normally referenced people dying, so it was one of the darker nursery rhymes sung. In recent times two video games from the years 2008 and 2011, Dead Space and Dead Space 2 used these nursery rhymes in their trailers and sometimes during cut scenes in their video games, but due to both of them being part of the survivor horror genre, these nursery rhymes were used to emphasize the creepy atmosphere that Dead Space and Dead Space 2 took part in and in the trailers showing potential buyers of both games, emphasize the scariness by showing the visceral combat of both games. Essentially Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and Ring Around the Rosie can be both fun and scary at the same time; it just depends on how you used the nursey rhymes.

The song of Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star is a rather simple nursery rhyme. The song talks about a star and what it does for people when the sun goes down. The full song, written by Jane Taylor and published by her and her sister Ann Taylor in London in 1806, goes:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
'Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark.
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
How I wonder what you are.

Basically this specific star is a helpful little think at night and the singer is praising and thanking this star for providing its light to travellers.

Ring Around the Rosie is interesting in that there were many versions of the song. For the modern, America version has these lyrics:

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down.

Essentially the American version of the song is just some silly rhyme people sing in a circle and ends with everyone falling down. However, the original version of the song has some different lyrics, as seen by the first printing of the song in 1881:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

While these songs sound similar and carry the same whimsical tone, there are some negative qualities Ring Around the Rosie carries. One of these negative aspects was the fact that the whole song was talking about the Great Plague which occurred in England in 1665 or some earlier plague. The ring of roses symbolized the red, circular rash, the pocket full of posies symbolized herbs that people in ancient times believed would help ward off the disease, and the falling down symbolized people succumbing to the plague and dying. Also, the shouting of ashes symbolized cremation, the burning of the deceased's possessions, or an actual symptom one got from the Great Plague before dying. Essentially Ring Around the Rosie is a creepy song.

The thing about survivor horror games is that it can be very visceral. And most of the times needs to scare the player with its content. In Dead Space and Dead Space 2 this was achieved by incorporating what would normally be seen as safe and nurturing into something that was anything but. In one of the trailers of Dead Space the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star was used. In the beginning the song plays and it starts peacefully enough. The viewer sees a space station where the game begins and it looks calm. However, things change once the scene shows various corpses and wreckage litter the landscape, with little scenes of someone fighting horrific zombies. By the end of the trailer the viewer now knows that this game will not let the player fell safe. The player will feel claustrophobic, paranoid, and scared that some horrific mass of whatever the space zombie was made out of will attack the player in a gruesome manner.

Dead Space 2 continues Dead Space's usage of a nursery rhyme in its trailer by using Ring Around the Rosie. Because the viewer most likely played through Dead Space or at least saw how the game played, that player is already familiarized with Dead Space 2's content. The people who developed Dead Space 2 most likely knew that and decided to use a nursery rhyme that already talks about a horrific event that resulted in many corpses to assure the viewer that, yes, Dead Space 2 will be just as visceral as its predecessor. This was also shown in that the trailer start off by showing the new space station this game takes place in already in a state of chaos. The nursery rhyme, slightly altered to emphasize the horror aspects of Dead Space 2 plays along the scenes of chaos and carnage and by the end of the trailer it showed what looked to be ashes and debris falling down.

Different nursery rhymes can sound whimsical or horrific if taken in different contexts. Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star sounds like a whimsical and optimistic nursery rhyme about a supportive star, but through Dead Space's usage of the nursery rhyme, it became a foreshadowing of future horrors. Since Ring Around the Rosie made references to an already horrific event in human history, thus when Dead Space 2 used that nursery rhyme the player already has the sense of dread about whatever events occur in that video game. Both nursery rhymes were used to either foreshadow the horrors that awaited the player, or point-out that the horror is back and even worse than before.