viz. - race

Moving Targets: Player Choice and the Politics of Bioshock: Infinite

Aubri Plourde — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 03:49:02 +0000

This post was generously guest-written by former .Viz contributor, Casey Sloan. Casey incessantly reads and writes about gothic novels, Victorian culture, individualism, and gender studies. She has craftily parlayed these fixations into research interests for the UT English Department's PhD program. Currently, she is exploring DWRL avenues in order to drag other passions, particularly internet identity and video game culture, into her professional life.

You are given a ball at a fair. You are told you can either throw the ball at a racist carnival barker or at an interracial couple tied up in the midst of insulting cardboard cutouts. As a player in this video game (Bioshock: Infinite, to be precise), you are faced with the question: what do I do? As a critic of this video game, you are faced with the question: what does being faced with the question "what do I do" mean?

Image Credit: Bioshock Wikia

On a broader scale, we can ask, specifically, how video games construct ideological arguments for their players. Coming from a background in literary criticism, I'm used to relying on narrative elements when constructing an ideology critique. Points like plot, characters and setting necessarily influence a text's paradigms. Writing style also plays a crucial role: diction, syntax, tone, and style. Basically, critics looking at your standard prose narrative have to ask what is being said and, perhaps more importantly, how is it being said. The same holds true with cinema studies. Words on a page focus a reader's attention the way a panning camera shows a viewer what's important (or supposed to be important) about a scene.

Video games often rely on similar elements to construct their worlds. By "worlds" I do not simply mean a fantastical realm in which "real life" laws are broken and fictional characters come to life. I also mean the general paradigms of these fictional, simulated spaces: the sorts of values, ethics and identities elaborated by a game. For example, Bioshock: Infinite suggests the moral bankruptcy of discriminatory practices by introducing the player to a world in which casual racism is practiced only by villains while sympathetic characters support values like emancipation and equality. Through rather simple narrative techniques (giving the player diaries to read from the perspective of black characters and designing a plot that dynamically moves towards the eradication of class-based and racial oppression), the game appears to take a moral stand against a society constructed on an unequal distribution of power.

But can video game criticism be built entirely on standards of "reading" or "viewing"? What about the problem of situations constructed on the affective hinge of player choice? Aren't there other dimensions to player experience than the unfolding of a story or the cinematic enjoyment of cutscenes? Many scholars, gamers and critics argue: yes.

Ludology is the burgeoning field of game studies. It strives to combine analytical techniques from literary and film criticism while also attending to elements in games that seem unique to the medium. Ludology, for example, would ask us to critically attend to features of Bioshock: Infinite that cannot be charted neatly with familiar critical methods. A ludological reading reveals that the driving ideology of the game holds that racism generates directly from evil people who need to be eradicated through violent means. Though it falls beyond the rather narrow scope of my reading of a single, specific scene in the game, I simply must note here that this ludological reading clashes paradoxically with the narrative's supposedly progressive politics, particularly in the jarring disconnect between the implicitly justified violence of the player's avatar and the condemned violence of the Vox Populi, the game's revolutionary faction.

Bioshock: Infinite is set in the floating city of Columbia, an extremist society ruled by the principles of religious fundamentalism and American exceptionalism. The player explores this culture as Booker DeWitt, an ex-Pinkerton agent turned private investigator who served as a soldier during the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Booker traverses Columbia searching for a mysterious girl named Elizabeth, who, he later learns, can manipulate space-time by opening dimensional portals called "Tears." During his quest to take Elizabeth out of Columbia, the pair is thrown into the sociopolitical upheaval of the city. The city's upper class, comprised of wealthy white citizens, struggle to retain power while the Vox Populi, a grassroots revolutionary group, fight for the rights of oppressed racial minorities and the poor.

Image Credit: Amazon.co.uk

Since the game is a first-person shooter, the player effectively "sees" what Booker sees and interacts with the environment via Booker's virtual body. The player, in other words, not only controls Booker's actions but, cinematically, is Booker. In “Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games,” game studies scholar Alison McMahan explains that the interface of first-person shooters lends itself to high levels of player "presence." This interface collapses the vision of the player and the player’s avatar, which encourages players to think of the on-screen environment as that which is immediately available to the eye. The hands of the avatar can also often be seen, and their actions tend to correspond with actions taken by the player’s hands. For the X-Box 360 console version of Bioshock: Infinite, for example, diagetic or in-game gunfire corresponds to the extradiagetic or physical action of pulling of the controller’s trigger.

While a vast majority of the game involves skill-based gunfights, collecting supplies like health and ammunition, and real-time exploration of the world, the player is occasionally given direct options for how to interact with certain scenarios or objects. At the beginning of the game, you stumble across a gruesome spectacle. A delighted crowd has gathered to stone an interracial couple and you are given a baseball and the option to either a) participate by choosing "THROW AT COUPLE" or b) violently reject the cruelty by attacking the festival's organizer by picking "THROW AT ANNOUNCER." You can also allow the timer for the decision to run out and simply not throw, though this option is not formally articulated by the on-screen prompts. Your avatar, Booker, also has brief custom monologues for two of the three options. If you let the timer run out, Booker mutters "I'm not throwing that." If you throw the ball at the announcer, Booker injects the angry aside "I've got something for you, you son of a bitch." Opting to assault the couple results only in Booker's silence.

An informal poll on IGN.com (accessed April 6, 2015) shows that 71 out of 79 players chose to throw the ball at Fink, the announcer. You are effectively set up by the game to reject the grisly, racist violence by several factors. The sudden reveal of this apparent utopia's virulent prejudices (this is the first you hear or see of the rampant racism in Columbia), coupled with the timed pressure to choose an option encourages the player to ride the wave of an emotional upsurge and strike out against the oppressor. The outside knowledge the player brings to the game (anxiety about miscegenation is ignorant and hateful, as is drawing cartoonish "links" between black people and animals) is supplemented in-game by the broad, obvious villainy of the announcer and the selfless pleas uttered by the couple ("I'm the one you want. Let her go."). Even Booker’s dialogue seems designed to sanction one particular choice over the other two. Booker only reveals emotional involvement when he decides to attack Fink, effectively demonstrating that Booker is essentially a "good guy." Why else would you attack the announcer save out of a sense of righteous indignation?

On the other end of the spectrum, Booker’s silence that accompanies the choice to throw the ball at the couple ultimately exemplifies a problem with the game's politics. If righteous fury fuels his assault on Fink, why would Booker throw the ball at the couple? Is it because he, like Fink, is a malicious racist who delights in the suffering of others? Or does Booker simply want to blend in with the crowd? His silence indicates an unwillingness on the part of game's designers to commit to any single motivation for the character, but the omitted nuance brings along with it the idea that racism in its most insidious form is less about villainy and more about institutionalized, systemic, and normalized violence. Paying attention to how games interpellate players and direct player experience through game elements like choice and decision making can yield rich readings inaccessible through purely literary or cinematic criticism. Bioshock: Infinite allows the player to enjoy the emotional release of, essentially, attacking racism by attacking a racist. You are encouraged in your player experience to revel in the implied notion that enough bullets (or baseballs) will rid Columbia of wicked individuals and therefore of wicked ideologies.

Tags:

video games

Visual Rhetoric

race

Playing with Darkness: A Problematic New Cover for The Jungle Book

Deb Streusand — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 01:21:20 +0000

Image Credit: creativebloq.com

Following up on my last post’s discussion of the 2008 Alice in Wonderland cover, today I’m exploring another dark reimagining of a children’s book cover. The image above was designed for the Vintage Children’s Classics series. In Vintage’s own words, “Rudyard Kipling’s collection of fables have a much darker feel than the Disney musical, and we wanted to reflect this in the cover. We chose Italian illustrator, Gianni De Conno, to come up with an image which has engaging animal characters peering out from dense jungle foliage. The resulting cover illustration has both charm and intrigue, and a hypnotic feel from the staring faces.” But what makes the image “darker,” exactly? Certainly the literal color is much darker than the general color palette of the Disney film, as shown in the image below:

Image Credit: fanpop.com

The animals look considerably more realistic and therefore much more threatening, even though the animals pictured are the ones who help Mowgli in the story. The flowers, however, are bright and colorful, making Mowgli’s desire to stay in the jungle more understandable. The green foliage is rather neutral-looking, dark without being jagged or otherwise ominous. The center of the image’s darkness, I think, is in Mowgli’s half-shadowed face, which almost appears to be covered by a mask. His eyes are shaded by the plants looming over him, and in combination with the somberness of the more visible part of his face, this shading argues for a Mowgli who is more beast than man.

Of course, there are multiple complex racial issues involved in re-issuing The Jungle Book. There’s the initial question of whether Rudyard Kipling, author of “The White Man’s Burden,” should have his work promoted as a classic. If one is going to re-issue his work with visual accompaniment, then the image of the central character should have two characteristics: the hero should unambiguously be a person of color, as he is in the story, and he should not be portrayed as savage. This cover fails in both of these respects. The shade of the unshadowed portion of Mowgli’s skin could be that of a white person, or of a light-skinned person of color. It’s not clear. What the cover does is choose a shade that is non-threatening, to white readers, for its hero. Then, with a Mowgli who could be white, it becomes safe to play with the idea that this specific person has inhuman elements to his character. But the implication that he is inherently uncivilized can’t be separated from Mowgli’s explicit identity, in the story, as a person of color. The cover ends up both whitewashing Mowgli and reinforcing the idea that people of color are savages. So it’s certainly darker, but, I think, not only in the way that its commissioners and creator intended.

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(White) Men Behaving Badly, or, Why I'll Be Staying Home This Halloween

wiedner — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 20:12:13 +0000

Image Credit: Google Image Search

These are truly tough times for white males in America.

Every Halloween, I have trouble coming up with a creative, relevant costume. What I have found over the years, however, is that- along with my severely limited creative capacities- my costume options are greatly curtailed by my gender and race (I'm a white guy).

Granted, I am fully aware that the number of costumes falling within the realm of that which is acceptable is diminishing for everybody, not just folks in the aforementioned demographic. Now that old standbys like a mental patient with straight jacket and messy hair, a hobo with stick and bindle, or a “'fat' anything” are no longer socially acceptable for anybody, we all need to treat goofy costumes as serious business.

Time was, Halloween was simply an excuse for guys to dress like girls and for girls to dress like sluts. That is, women have always been able to fall back on the “sexy [anything at all]” as a totally passable costume. (Aside: I really do mean anything at all; - you can be a sexy ear of corn, for God's sake!)

As for us guys and our storied tradition of falling back on cross-dressing for Halloween, it goes without saying that “sexy [anything at all]” really doesn't work for us, aesthetically speaking (as this article illustrates quite well). This is nothing new. What is a more recent development is that, in our increasingly “enlightened” culture, any man who's dressing as a woman for Halloween is treading on shaky ground in terms of rubbing someone the wrong way. If I put on a less-than-flattering flattering ladies' pantsuit and go as Sen. Clinton, I might be construed as a sexist, rather than as the unwavering Hil-Dog fan that I am. So, the ol' cross-dressing option is out.

So what are some other options? Well, I'm not big on dressing like superheros, and I don't watch enough “E!” to know what clothes I would need to don in order to look like anyone of Hollywood fame. With all of these factors in mind, I thought I'd go as a politician or other public figure who had shamed themselves in the spotlight over the past year. Since any such public figure I might choose would be one that had "brought it upon themselves" by doing some legally or ethically dubious, nobody could really misconstrue my intent to satirize someone who deserves it!

Easy, right?

Not if you're a white dude.

As for the individuals among the group that fall within the category of shamed public figures, I need to make damn sure that the person I'd be satirizing is the same color as me, otherwise I'd be perceived as racist. Generally, I am OK with risking irking the easily offended with a costume of questionable propriety, but one need not be a dedicated fighter for racial equality to be offended by a white guy dressed in blackface; I think any culturally literate person would be able to see why that would be inappropriate (myself included). So, that limits the white dude even further in his costume options.

Now, at first blush, this all might not seem limiting at all. God knows there's no shortage of white guys breaking the law or otherwise inviting public disdain. But here's the problem:

They all look exactly the same.

Whether I want to be an overzealous neighborhood watchman, a racist basketball team owner, or any other sort of white guy making headlines for screwing up, the costume is the same: a dark, traditional suit, almost invariably coupled with a “power tie.”

I put it to you, good reader: What could possibly make for a more boring and unidentifible Halloween costume? ("Is he supposed to be George Zimmerman? Maybe Rick Perry? I don't know.")

Come on, white guys! Can't we mix it up a little?! I realize that wearing a balaclava and carrying a sack with a dollar sign on it might be asking too much, but how about getting arrested at home in your Fruit of the Looms for disturbing the piece, or getting pinched with an 8-ball whilst out on the town in some flamboyant nightclub garb? Hell, even a cardigan and an overdue library book would be a welcomed bit of variety! Jeez!

Where does all of this leave me? I don't want to be an anonymous white guy in a suit for Halloween. Dressing up in costume is just not as much fun when it entails wearing clothes strikingly similar to those that you wear every other day of the year. I also don't want to offend anybody, so I need to steer clear of anything with race- or gender-based implications. Nor do I have the time/money/creative energy required to put together some prize-worthy costume that would make me the belle of the ball. And I sure as hell don't want to go as a goddamn Ninja Turtle. So, it would appear as though Jim will be settling into a Hulu marathon this Halloween.

Oh well. At least that means there will be one less white dude in a suit out on the town getting himself in trouble.

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media representations