Philip Sandifer's Blog, page 44
September 1, 2017
Asylum, Love, & Slavery
I was just popping by to tell you lot about a brilliantly fun new entry in the Amicus podcast from myself and Lee Russell, which you'll find here http://pexlives.libsyn.com/city-of-the-dead-14-asylum and will offer you just the tonic. If you like old Doctor Who, this sort of stuff is right up your alley. And if you don't, you'll probably dig it too.
I was just going to do that and be on my way, but I noticed that there was no Friday post from that wine chugging layabout J. Graham, so I thought I'd be your subsitute leftist for the week and post this recent essay that had previously been exclusively available to those who support me on Patreon. Feel free to throw paper airplanes and leave tacks on my chair in the comments below.
All over the world, white supremacists are flexing their pale, flabby muscles in this new age of online organising. In America, an emboldened, far-right Republican party controls the government. The Southern Strategy has made the Republican Party as hard right, as racist, and as popular as it is now. The strategy was (and is) the winking and ever more thinly veiled appeal to racist whites in the South and elsewhere. Vote for us, it promised with seductive gestures towards prejudice against blacks, and we'll take care of crime and immigration.
The Southern Strategy was pioneered by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s and took thousands of anti-civil rights bigots away from their traditional home in the Democratic Party. Credit is also due to the now-dead, once-sentient hemorrhoid, Roger Ailes, who was later an instrumental force behind the shaping and running of the Fox News network and all of its crimes against humanity. The Republicans subsequently had crushing electoral success in 1968 and rode the strategy again and again to the Presidency.
The logical endpoint of moving further and further in this toxic, backward direction is the kind of Presidential campaign run with intolerant and vicious effectiveness by Donald Trump, New York millionaire and media personality, in 2016. There is no need to dredge once more over the motherfucker's worst moments on the campaign trail here.
Donald Trump now squats in the White House (built by people who were whipped, beaten, and enslaved because of the tint of the colour of their skin) thanks mostly to the suppression of votes from non-whites, the new Jim Crow, and the work of one of the United States' most cerebral slaveholders. James Madison advocated for the Electoral College as a way to give the slave states an advantage against the more populous so-called free states in the choice of President.
Plantation slavery in the US was not that long ago, however much the black and white photographs may tie it in our minds to some prehistoric era that doesn't need consideration, like the Roman destruction of Carthage. That we all still live with slavery's malignant after effects is evidence enough of its closeness. To get the beginnings of an idea of what that simple word 'slavery', which we can be in danger of eliding over, meant (as well as its intrinsic link to the growth of capital) I recommend Edward E. Baptist's unforgettable, searing The Half Has Never Been Told. To quote very briefly from that essential book;
"...the worst thing about slavery as an experience, one is told, was that it denied enslaved African Americans the liberal rights and liberal subjectivity of modern citizens. It did those things as a matter of course, and as injustice, that denial ranks with the greatest in modern history. But slavery also killed people, in large numbers. From those who survived, it stole everything. Yet the massive and cruel engineering required to rip a million people from their homes, brutally drive them to new, disease-ridden places, and make them live in terror and hunger as they continually built and rebuilt a commodity-generating empire—this vanished in the story of a slavery that was supposedly focused primarily not on producing profit but on maintaining its status as a quasi-feudal elite, or producing modern ideas about race in order to maintain white unity and elite power. And once the violence of slavery was minimized, another voice could whisper, saying that African Americans, both before and after emancipation, were denied the rights of citizens because they would not fight for them.”
We're only three human lifetimes away from the rape and torture of the African American holocaust. The reigning monarch of the United Kingdom's (Queen Elizabeth, 1926 - ) first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), who, as a young man, listened intently to William Gladstone (1809 - 1898) from the polished wooden seats of the House of Commons viewing gallery. These mammals lived on the same land mass and breathed air in the same exalted rooms as one another. Gladstone spent the majority of his life in a world where slavery in the United States was suffered to continue. Indeed, Gladstone's life overlapped James Madison by 17 years, but they were seperated by an ocean.
It is the unfairness inherent in Madison's electoral college - the extreme mainstream of the United States' political world - that allows a moronic thug to rule over a country where the majority voted against him. Trump does not pay any lip service to noises he made about less foreign military intervention or standing against the neoliberal onslaught of the past 30-40 years. He governs like Reagan without the handsome mask of charm and affability. Which makes him far, far more objectionable to the centre of political discourse. At least, they say, President Ronald Reagan was a nice man as he did all that reprehensible evil shit. Trump is an ur-Republican, whatever those in the party who are holding tightly to their masks to different degrees may say.
The struggle against the modern Republican party, and their allies of all classes, is the same one towards emancipation that the radicals of the nineteenth century fought against the Confederacy, and is the continuation of the civil war that radicalised Lincoln and turned him into the only tolerable President. It was John Brown with his inability to accept living next to a modern torture machine and his righteous midnight insurrection who did more to emancipate his comrades than scolding John Quincy Adams in the senate, politely opposing the peculiar institution in accepted, clever parliamentary manoueverings.
As quiet and as fringe as they may have seemed since the hard work of civil rights achieved incredible victories in the 1960s, the racists have never really gone away. The make-up of the United States' laws and law enforcement has not had any revolutionary change since the Civil War. Having an explicit white supremacist as President has shaken up and raised the voices of those who were always the most pampered and accomodated to, and somehow also the most aggrieved in the American system. Trump's Presidency has, as many predicted, turned the undertones of the entire edifice into its overture. Like their ancestors and near contemporary villainous countrymen before them, they deny the basic humanity of those with the most surface difference to themselves. The problems in their lives - and we all have problems - would be better solved if they took aim at the millionaires like their beloved President, but this is a issue for almost every other day. They hate and they do not think.
The centre and those who proudly call themselves the resistance talk again and again of love and of love winning, hate being beaten. But love, as Massive Attack sang, is a verb. Love is not a magic spell and a rich, privileged person standing behind the statement of "love wins" while they do nothing else to combat the tide of racism and exploitation that the worlds we live in (the US, Europe, Australasia, etc) are founded on (and continue to be driven by) is counterproductive.
As anyone in a long-term loving relationship of any description (romantic, familial, friendship, even love of yourself, and all through those different Greek ideas of love) will tell you, to share love, in its wonderfulness, takes constant work all the time and there will be occasions when you have to graft harder than anything through painful struggle. Love is action and the best kind of action is love.
Hollywood films and pop music tell you that love is only a longing, a yearning that eventually yields to a powerful wave which encompasses you and finally leads to your life becoming complete and rewarding. This is an untruth. As rewarding as it can be, it is also equally capable of fucking you up mightily. Phil Spector, in my opinion the greatest creative behind this kind of love song and a giant of 20th century art, was an abusive murderer who deserves no quarter. Those who propagate this position are damaged people lying poisonously for profit. Or worse, for those they love or who love them, are deluded into expecting this impossibility and wreck lives as they are inevitably disappointed.
Love will win and it will beat hate if it is tied to action and is nurtured. In the political world, it must be tied to direct action, with mobs of the best-intentioned on the streets holding power to account. Lying back and eating cake is a selfish luxury which we cannot indulge as our survival and that of our most vulnerable is at stake. The historic forces which are moving throughout the world on the side of intolerance have to, and are, being fought. And those who are not actively fighting the legacy of slavery are not showing love. What they're doing is avoiding the work of emancipation and justice.
Get early access to content like this as well as exclusive audio and writing for as little as $1 a month at my Patreon. I've just exploded out of the only job I've ever been good at, so any help is particulary gratefully received just now. Thank you.
August 30, 2017
Nintendo at Gamescom and QuakeCon, 2017
I'm not sure if companies do the big press conferences at Gamescom like they do at E3-If they did I didn't see anywhere to stream them, and either way Nintendo seemed to once again go the route of releasing information directly to its fans through its own social media profiles. So strap in, it's time once again to overanalyse some trailers.
Fire Emblem Warriors is a game that I've gotten progressively more interested in as the months have gone by. I don't know much at all about Fire Emblem as a franchise: The earlier games' permadeath turned me away from what basically amounts to Medieval Fantasy Advance Wars, but the corner it seems to have turned as of Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS, making the permadeath optional and adding in a visual novel/dating sim style relationship mechanic (clunkily implemented as it is) seems to have made it into something that seems marginally more up my alley. I was all ready to put down cash for Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE on the WiiU in spite of my total disinterest in Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, Fire Emblem and JRPGs in general simply because that game looked and sounded freaking awesome, but the collector's edition turned out to be *way* more money than I wanted to spend at that time, especially with the WiiU at death's door in 2016 and other releases causing me to have an existential crisis about the video game medium. I do still kind of want to at least add that to my collection given its critical acclaim, possibly if I can get it at a budget price, but it's definitely not a priority anymore.
In the end, it took Omega Force releasing a musō game based on the franchise to get me to really pay attention to Fire Emblem for the first time. My hunger for any and all things musō cannot be satiated, and I've been desperate for another game like this I can take on the go with me and play without an Internet connection since grinding Hyrule Warriors Legends into dust last year, and in lieu of a proper Dynasty Warriors Empires or Samurai Warriors Empires release on the Switch I initially thought I'd have to settle for this.
I've been doing a lot of research on Fire Emblem to prep for its Warriors debut and hopefully get me more excited for it, and while it hasn't *quite* worked to the degree I'dve liked, I could still see myself getting this one, if for no other reason than to support Omega Force's work on the Switch (and Lucina). At Gamescom, Nintendo and Koei-Tecmo released a new trailer showing a new handful of playable characters (Hinoka, Camilla, Takumi and Leo, I guess?), while Koei-Tecmo Japan independently released a new character showcase trailer for the female version of Robin. Omega Force says this game will have more playable characters at the start than any prior musō game ever, so I'm sure this isn't the last of the reveals we'll be seeing over the next month. I'm holding out for Tiki, because “Beastie Game” from Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE is one of the greatest video game theme songs ever recorded. I'm also hopeful this will be the musō game to get more Western women interested in the genre (as modern Fire Emblem fandom is very female-driven) and also resolve some of my lingering hangups about Koei-Tecmo's historical fiction (as I talked about in my video podcast with Ben Knaak awhile back).
I just have two concerns. One, we still know very little about what sorts of modes are going to be offered, and the one big problem I keep having with musō is that the non-Empires games are so story driven they tend to lack replay value and staying power after you've played through the main campaign. Also, I hate to say it, but...The English language dub of Fire Emblem Warriors sounds...alarming. If for whatever reason the West doesn't get the option of a Japanese language track, I have to say I'm gonna need to import this from Japan if I'm ever to play it.
But even if I'm disappointed by Fire Emblem Warriors I now know I have other options, because on Friday this happened. For those who can't read Japanese, Koei-Tecmo announced (obviously not at Gamescom) that Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada and Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate are *all* coming to the Nintendo Switch *the same day*, November 9, and I am so incredibly beyond happy. This is *three times* the news I've been waiting on with bated breath *all year*: Any single one of these would be a system seller for the Switch for me, and now we're not just getting one, but all three. If you've never played a musō game before, you frankly can't go wrong with any of these: Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada has a wonderfully melodramatic and comprehensive story that's a great fit for JRPG veterans, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is as close to a perfect musō game for my tastes as I've yet found, and I'm really excited to finally play get a chance to Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate, which many (including non-musō fans) consider Omega Force's masterpiece. I was thinking about getting the comparatively-stripped down WiiU version, but now that the Switch is getting the definitive edition I'll just wait for that instead! These are some of the greatest and most critically acclaimed musō games of all time, and that we're getting not just one of them, but all of them makes me frankly feel a bit spoiled.
If I were really spoiled though I'd quibble a bit about some of the choices: I can't say I wouldn't prefer Samurai Warriors 4: Empires to Spirit of Sanada, but the latter *is* the newest release, has all the officers yet made playable and has received incredible (and, for a musō game, unprecedented) accolades from fans and critics alike. I also hope Spirit of Sanada and Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires are optimized better on the Switch than they were on the PC, and there is a slight concern that Omega Force could get lazy and just port over the PlayStation 3/PlayStation Vita versions again, like they did with 8: Empires on PC. But, given Koei-Tecmo's close relationship with Nintendo (as Fire Emblem Warriors demonstrates) I have enough faith that they care (and know) enough about the Switch hardware to give us versions of these classics custom tailored for it.
Also, all three games have so far only been announced for Japan, but even in a worst-case scenario in which they're never exported, the Switch is region-free and is programmed to recognise Japanese games and trigger an English language option where available, so I can always just import them if need be! I have a hard time seeing how Omega Force *wouldn't* at least include the localization as an option as all three games have received Western releases before (and in the case of Warriors Orochi 3, several times) anyway.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Nintendo Switch made a surprise appearance as a playable demo on the show floor. Digital Foundry says the game runs impressively: Though it was only shown in handheld mode, they guessed it was hitting a solid 720p/30 frames per second consistently, and, while it was tough to tell, it seems to be performing closer to the XBOX One and PlayStation 4 versions of last year's Special Edition release, as opposed to the XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the original 2011 release, which is good to hear. I will say I'm a bit disappointed to hear Bethsoft haven't seemed to get it to crack 60 FPS in handheld mode, especially as EA stunned everyone by doing just that with their specialized version of FIFA 18, but it's not like I'm going to not get Skyrim on a Nintendo handheld because of that. I've been getting more and more excited for this release the more I think about this prospect, and between Skyrim on a Nintendo handheld and Koei-Tecmo's dizzying triple-header announcement (in addition to ARMS, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Poi: Explorer's Edition and Sonic Mania), I've never been more confidant, self-assured and proud in my decision to invest in the Nintendo Switch.
What a launch this has turned out to be.
There were two announcements regarding updates for the Switch's big multiplayer phenomena, ARMS and Splatoon 2. Like the original Splatoon, both are getting regular “free DLC” updates that add a bunch of new content in addition to bugfixes and balance tweaks. ARMS is getting a new character in the sure-to-be-fan-favourite Lola Pop, while Splatoon 2 is getting some new weapons and a new map for its competitive modes and Salmon Run co-op mode. There's also a bizarre collaboration between Nintendo and the cartoon show We Bare Bears to promote both games. For some reason. I'm still pretty frustrated with Splatoon 2 (it's actually a big part of the reason I've been so self-critical about my gaming habits recently) to the point I've given up on it completely as being simply not made for me, so news about that game really doesn't help me anymore. It's a good thing I no longer feel I need it, and, as for ARMS, while I do want it, I've had my clown fix for awhile and I'm almost certainly gonna be maining Twintelle.
Yes, I'm one of those people.
Preorders and stuff were announced for the Super NES Classic Edition Mini. Do not get me going on the Classic Edition Mini devices. Long story short, I don't care about them (especially not this one, cashing in on retrofetishism for what is unquestionably my least favourite Nintendo console) and I don't think you should either. They're a waste of your time (and money, if, gods forbid, you cave and seek out a scalper). Much as I love and respect them, Nintendo clearly bit off more than they could chew with these things, the retailers screwed everyone over and there are far easier, better and less stressful ways to play retro games in your living room. The only thing the Super NES Classic Mini has going for it is an official release of the fabled Star Fox 2, which is going to be a near-final build previously unavailable publicly and which developers stress is completely different to (and better than) the commonly available ROM versions. But you can bet within minutes of the Super NES Classic Edition Mini releasing there will be other ways to play and enjoy that, if you are so inclined.
It's Kirby's 25th Anniversary this year. Nintendo didn't do much for it but release a brief retrospective trailer for the series' history and plug the upcoming Switch game, but it's a pleasant watch and you can catch glimpses of the minigame collection HAL released on the 3DS eShop to celebrate.
Then there's Metroid. Oh Gods, Metroid. Metroid: Samus Returns, to be precise. There was apparently a gameplay showcase for it I didn't see, but to be honest I'm not sure what more needs to be shown of that game that wasn't in the exhaustive series of E3 Treehouse segments. More galling was the “Overview Trailer” showing off the game's key mechanics: Aside from clearly (and very, very badly) attempting to sell Metroid as Nintendo's Aliens to an embarrassing degree (the link between Metroid and the Alien film series is but one of many threads I could incessantly pick at in regards to this messed-up series. Perhaps I will whenever Jack gets around to starting his Alien project), what also bugs me (hah) about this is how, in spite of this being a remake, it focuses so much on the new features and the features it inherits from Super Metroid as opposed to those that were actually in the original Metroid II: The Return of Samus. As my first Metroid game and one of the only ones Yoshio Sakamoto wasn't heavily involved in this is kind of an important game to me, and everyone's tried to take a swing at it over the years to make it “fit” better with the Master Narrative set down by Sakamoto and Super Metroid (or, ironically enough, Metroid Prime but Oh Gods that's a whole other howling abyss of madness). Although I have faith Nintendo and MercurySteam will come up with *some* kind of good sidescrolling Metroid, the frenzied marketing seems to be trying to turn this game into something bigger than it actually is.
But let's stop beating around the bush. My real concern is Yoshio Sakamoto himself and his legions of Metroid faithful. I've no doubt Metroid: Samus Returns will be a rock-solid and evolutionary return for the series' sidescrolling roots, but absolutely none of that matters if the plot this team cooks up is anywhere remotely reminiscent of Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission or the crateringly disastrous Metroid: Other M. And in this day and age, I'm skeptical that, if it is, it will ever be called out on this because of how important this game is going to be to so many people. People are going to *desperately* want this to be Metroid's return to form, Metroid's Sonic Mania, and I shudder to think what's going to happen if it turns out to be anything less than an instant classic (and gods protect anyone for whom this is going to be their first introduction to Metroid). Sakamoto-san has seemed pleasingly relaxed and casual in his recent appearances, and interviews like this one with Eurogamer give me hope, but still, for me, in spite of how important the Metroid series and Samus herself have been to me over my life, I will not even consider buying Samus Returns until I see a shot-for-shot, scene-for-scene spoileriffic breakdown of its story and I'm fully, 100% convinced the series has finally turned a corner again.
Because, you know, speaking of MercurySteam and Metroid, there's also this.
Nintendo released two new trailers for Pokkén Tournament DX. They both more or less go over the same material and don't tell us anything new about the game we didn't know from E3 or the earlier Pokémon Direct presentation and are mostly noteworthy for their stunning terribleness. I don't think the announcer could have given a smarmier or more grating performance if he was consciously trying. Far be it for me to criticize Nintendo's marketing given the fact the Switch is flying off shelves and I've been wrong about everything else this year, especially given the debacles that were the 3DS and WiiU launches, but it seems to me this kind of approach isn't going to win them very many admirers. Perhaps, like everything, it's another sign of my age. Pokémon is said to be a series for “everyone”, but it's really for kids. Even Pokémon fighting games that play like Tekken. And maybe kids don't mind a little cheese in their commercials.
I'd be more upset about this if it hadn't been for this past week: My challenge to Nintendo this year has been “If you're returning to your toy company roots and don't want adults like me to play the games you consider for children anymore, than give me some other way to support your console if you still want to reach me”. And until the announcement of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada and Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate I wasn't really seeing enough of that (hell, even Spirit of Sanada is a bit of a young adult fiction story, as all JRPG stories are). But now that those games are coming, combined with stuff like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Nintendo Switch (which is really just a matter of it being an intensely personal symbol for me) and ARMS, which is every bit the competitive eSport I need, I think I'll be OK.
There's going to be a new colour for the Nintendo 2DS. This is the original model, not the newly-released New Nintendo 2DS XL. In keeping with Nintendo's renewed emphasis on children, the 2DS has always been positioned as a young child's first video game console, and the commercial reflects this angle. That's about all there is to say about that.
Apparently there were some other games demoed Treehouse-style, but once again I missed out on that as I operate from a North American and Japanese perspective, not a European one. At the very least I hope I caught all the most interesting news bulletins from Nintendo at Gamescom this week. And anyway, there was another weeklong video game event that I found far more stimulating on the whole: QuakeCon.
It seems like this year was one of transition for Bethesda and QuakeCon. After spending the past few years using it as a kind of mini-industry event to show off new Bethesda trailers and game reveals, this year it went all the way back to its roots as a pure Quake-focused weeklong extravaganza. The only real news and announcements were release dates for Bethesda's big VR games: November 17 for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR (sadly exclusive to PlayStation VR), December 1 for DOOM VFR (coming to both PlayStation VR and the PC HTC VIVE) and December 12 for Fallout 4 VR (exclusive to PC and HTC VIVE). The big highlight though was Quake Champions, which came out of beta into Early Access this past week on Steam and the Bethesda.net launcher. The game, targeted explicitly to the eSports scene, is free-to-play, but US$30 gets you access to all current and future playable Champions and a selection of chests and reliquaries, this game's equivalent to the omnipresent loot crates. Quake Champions was also the focus of a US$1,000,000 World Championship tournament that ran throughout the whole event.
While the wisdom of holding a $1,000,000 prize pool for a game that's not finished yet is perhaps questionable, what isn't in any doubt is that Quake Champions is already fucking fantastic, as I learned when I couldn't resist jumping into the fray and fervor myself. All I can say is that this is Quake, pure and simple, perfectly tweaked and updated for the modern age. The only concessions to modern shooter trends (apart from the aforementioned loot crates) are the very Overwatch and Splatoon-style “Champions”: Player characters who each have unique strengths and weaknesses and whose individual playstyles take practice to master. But personally, I think this enhances the game rather than detracts from it: I mean, it's not like Quake and Unreal were particularly known for their iconic characters before.
If you have fond memories of the original Quake III Arena, or indeed any arena shooter from the bygone days, you'll absolutely feel right at home here. Everything feels exactly the way it should feel, exactly as you'd want it to feel. If you missed that era of gaming and are curious to see what multiplayer shooters looked like before Halo, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Splatoon, this is unquestionably the game for you to check out. Furthermore, this is just a really lovely community, and as someone who remembers the Bad Old Days of online multiplayer this was honestly something of a shock: I've not seen any verbal abuse anywhere (even with in-game character dialog, which regrettably in past games of this ilk did tend to employ a fair number of gendered slurs), and everyone who comes into the chat is really encouraging and supportive. Frankly between that and the game itself, I cannot recommend Quake Champions highly enough.
That said I am abjectly *terrible* at Quake Champions, regularly placing last or second to last in online Deathmatch. There's also no bot mode yet, so if you want in now be prepared to learn from the school of hard knocks. The people playing right now are all old pros, and that can be intimidating for a newcomer. Even for me, who's an old hand at arena shooters, Quake Champions has been a rough go simply because my game of choice in the late 90s and early 2000s wasn't Quake III Arena, but Unreal Tournament 2004 and Metroid Prime Hunters. And while all games of this genre are superficially similar, the physics and movement mechanics are ever-so-slightly different for each, and the devil's in the details for this sort of game. Really, what it comes down to is that I'm just not practiced enough at the Quake style of arena shooter. But I'm learning, and trying.
Quake Champions is also reminding me of how uncomfortable mouse-and-keyboard controls are for me: I do prefer them to controllers for this kind of game (the only kind of game you'll ever hear me say that about), but there's no escaping the fact it's hardly ergonomic and a bit awkward to code-shift for, especially in a game where microsecond response times are paramount (at least for me). Honestly I'd love to see Quake Champions, once it's finished, show up on the Nintendo Switch to take advantage of its advanced motion control, but I know that will never happen. I'm not sure this is the kind of game Nintendo wants right now, and even if it were Bethesda has said this is a PC exclusive. In the meantime, I'll keep soldiering away at Quake Champions on my laptop. If any of you decide to check the game out, let me know and maybe we can swing a custom match together: I'll be rocking my girl Nyx, who is this amazing blue-haired ninja assassin lady who mouths off and is snarky just like Rayne from the BloodRayne series. I absolutely love her.
Overall, this past week has given me solid reassurance the video game path I'm going down is a Good one. Ironically, given we're seeing a resurgent Nintendo, video games seem to be going back to the way they were before Nintendo (at least before Nintendo in the West): Arcade-style social experiences with friendly competition more for adults than for kids. At least those are the ones that most interest me these days, and, once again, maybe that just speaks to me and my age. Even if I'm terrible at eSports (I'm certainly not going to be walking away a millionaire anytime soon) I've had more pure fun with games like Quake Champions and Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires than I can remember in a very long time. I would still one day love to find a video game that makes me feel the same way I felt when I played games like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog, Metroid Prime and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but if I don't maybe that just speaks more to me and where I am in my life than video games on the whole.
Looking at the industry now, in August-September 2017, I can't complain much or say it doesn't look like it's in a good place.
August 28, 2017
The Proverbs of Hell 19/39: Futamono
FUTAMONO: A soup dish served in a lidded pot. Most obviously a reference to the final scene, in which Jack discovers Miriam in a covered hole.
WILL GRAHAM: You're moving smoothly and slowly, Jack, carrying your concentration like a brimming cup.
Another case of using one of Thomas Harris’s characteristically vivid similes in an unexpected context - originally it is Francis Dolarhyde who thusly carries his concentration as he sets up to peruse home movies and decide on his next victim.
JACK CRAWFORD: And then you told him to kill Hannibal Lecter.
WILL GRAHAM: Nothing I said made that happen, Jack. It just happened.
JACK CRAWFORD: Don't seem too broken up about it.
WILL GRAHAM: There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named. The happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.
Two Thomas Harris lines in rapid succession. This one comes from Hannibal, where the emotion play across the face of Margot Verger as she’s preparing to introduce Clarice to her brother. Its poetry comes from the fact that we do not, in fact, quite recognize the emotion, as the act of recognizing an emotion is in a large part coextensive with the act of naming it. The emotion does, however, cohere - once it is named, even in the nine-word formulation offered by Harris, it immediately becomes possible to recognize it, which in turn perpetuates the experience of it.
WILL GRAHAM: I have contempt for the Ripper. I have contempt for what he does.
JACK CRAWFORD: What does he do, Will?
WILL GRAHAM: What does he do? What is the first and principal thing he does? What need does he serve by killing?
And the hat trick; Will’s question is the same one Hannibal asks of Clarice regarding Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. I can’t see anything else in the scene that looks distinctively Harrisesque, so doubt Fuller got a Hannibal Rising line in as well, but then again, that’d be the book that doesn’t stand out.
WILL GRAHAM: The Ripper kills in sounders of three or four, in quick order. Do you know why? I know why.
JACK CRAWFORD: Tell me.
WILL GRAHAM: Because if he waits too long, then the meat spoils.
JACK CRAWFORD: He's eating them? Hannibal Lecter is Garret Jacob Hobbs? A cannibal?
WILL GRAHAM: Not like Garret Jacob Hobbs. Hobbs ate his victims to honor them. The Ripper eats his victims because they're no better to him than pigs.
I was tempted to make this entire post consist of an annotation regarding the pigs comparison, but it would amount to a rewrite of my previous essays “Capitalist Pig” and “Capitalist Pig 2: This Time It’s About Cancer.”
HANNIBAL: A remarkably-lean organ, the heart. Funny how we revere and romanticize a simple pump. Merely a muscle. Yet such a potent symbol of life and the things that make us human, good and bad. Love and ache.
ALANA BLOOM: All of them skewered.
HANNIBAL: It's a thematic dish. My heart certainly feels skewered.
ALANA BLOOM: You have the scars to prove it.
HANNIBAL: I feel as though that noose were still around my neck. It's strange to have nightmares. Never used to.
And so Alanna’s character enters its second and generally more distressing phase as she transfers her emotional intimacy with Will to Hannibal. This is not poorly set up per se - there’s a line in the first season in which they wonder why it is they never had an affair. But it’s ugly in ways we’ll see soon enough. All of which said, there is no particular reason to think that Hannibal is lying here, and indeed it’s far less interesting to assume that he is.
HANNIBAL: I’m metabolizing the experience by composing a new piece of music.
ALANA BLOOM: Harpsichord or theremin?
Alana’s question exposes one of the fundamental dualisms of Hannibal. The choice of instruments is drawn from Hannibal, where Lecter purchases a harpsichord and a theremin at auction, but the meaning is richly symbolic. The harpsichord is of course the classical choice, positioning Hannibal as an heir to the European aristocratic tradition; it’s an obvious, even stereotypical choice for him. The interesting one is the theremin, the first electronic instrument of note. Invented in 1920, it is an unmistakable product of modernism, and Hannibal’s attachment to it is part of the larger pattern that Jack (Graham, not Crawford) has noted of Hannibal being a monster built out of a collage of 20th century atrocity. Between this and pigs, the episode is really laying out the thematic undertones of Hannibal’s aesthetic.
Hannibal is a visionary artist, to be sure, but this does not mean he operates outside the context of his contemporaries - here the work of Eldon Stammets and Katherine Pimms emerges as a clear influence.
JACK CRAWFORD: The time he devotes to what he does. He takes real pride. Belladonna for the heart, a chain of white oleander for the intestines, ragwort for the liver.
JIMMY PRICE: The flowers are all poisonous.
JACK CRAWFORD: This is judgment. Ripper believes his victim was toxic. A poisonous man.
Jack’ is at last trying on Will’s hypothesis, imagining what would be the case if Hannibal were the Ripper. The approach yields immediate results - Jack has never been this adept at interpreting a Ripper tableau.
JACK CRAWFORD: Then you're aware what Will is accusing Hannibal Lecter of.
DR. CHILTON: Oh, yes. I am aware. I am intrigued. And I am grateful that I have trouble digesting animal proteins, as the last meals I've shared with Hannibal Lecter have been salads.
JACK CRAWFORD: You believe it?
DR. CHILTON: Hannibal once served me tongue and made a joke about eating mine. It's hard not to at least consider it.
JACK CRAWFORD: Will is delusional. And wants to reinforce his delusion. With you. With me. With Abel Gideon.
DR. CHILTON: That doesn't mean he's not right.
JACK CRAWFORD: No, it doesn't. Chesapeake Ripper is murdering again and Hannibal Lecter is throwing a dinner party.
DR. CHILTON: Jack, he fits the profile. He's attracted to medical and psychological fields because they offer power over man. Cannibalism is an act of dominance.
It’s a small grace note that Chilton, when confronted with the evidence, is one of the first to see the truth along with Jack. This fact does not help him in the slightest, and his response to the information is characteristically selfish and cowardly, focused mainly on his own interactions with Hannibal instead of on anything remotely helpful like what to do.
HANNIBAL: I don't expect you to feel selfloathing or regret or shame. You knew what you were doing and you made your own decisions. Decisions that were under your control.
WILL GRAHAM: You think I'm in control?
HANNIBAL: I think you're more in control now than you've ever been. You found a way to hurt me, Will. I wonder how many more people are going to be hurt by what you do. I'll give Alana Bloom your best.
Hannibal’s final line is a dispiriting move - the closest the show comes to breaking its “no sexual assault” rule in that it weaponizes Hannibal’s seduction of Alana into a tool to hurt Will with. That Hannibal’s treatment of her ends up being cruel and opportunistic is essentially inevitable, but without this line it is possible to believe there is some affection in it and Alana’s role in the plot is not that of mere object. With it, it is difficult not to notice a mildly misogynistic pattern in Hannibal’s actions that is an unnecessary and mildly discordant ugliness.
DR. GIDEON: I’m sure you and Frederick have had many a conversation about my bad behavior. How does he describe me?
DR. CHILTON: A pure sociopath, by the book.
DR. GIDEON: Do you mean your book, Frederick?
DR. CHILTON: Yes.
DR. GIDEON: I’d just like to point out that the word "sociopath" hasn’t been used by any respectable psychiatrist since 1968.
Not that the show’s more usual term, “psychopath,” is in widespread use these days either, with the preferred term being “antisocial personality disorder” so as to diagnose the condition as opposed to the person. Various differences between the two terms exist, but since neither is a proper medical diagnosis this is mostly in usage - various sites suggest that “sociopath” implies an environmental as opposed to genetic cause, that it refers to people with weak consciences as opposed to no consciences, or that it describes a more volatile and rage-filled actor than the coldly calculating psychopath. Admittedly all three can be argued to apply to Gideon.
DR. GIDEON: Dr. Chilton hired a nurse who’s had experience in mental hospitals, but not as an employee. That nurse attempted to murder Hannibal Lecter and you blame Will Graham. You’ve got the right box, Jack, but you’re looking in the wrong corner.
“Looking in the wrong corner” was previously used by Hannibal in “Trou Normand” to describe Will’s search for a physical explanation for his lost time. It does not appear to come from Thomas Harris, and so is presumably a favored phrase of Steve Lightfoot, who wrote that episode and has a co-write credit on this one. In any case, Gideon has a fairly valid point here.
Keeping with the Season One theme of Gideon being used as Hannibal’s means of interpolating Silence of the Lambs imagery, Gideon’s assault visually mirrors Hannibal’s escape towards the end of the film, specifically his dropping of a dead body on top of the elevator (Gideon having already used "wake up on the gurney and kill people" and "escape out of a moving van/ambulance" in previous episodes).
I’ve mentioned Janice Poon - the show’s food designer - in passing before, but as she outdoes herself in this episode between all the bits of the dinner party and the later roast leg it’s worth highlighting her contribution to the show’s aesthetic. Her key techniques are lush colors associated with poison, liberal invocation of trypophobia (the fear of holes), and arrangements that emphasize the anatomical nature of the food. None of which are actually visible in this shot, but hey.
ALANA BLOOM: I was thinking about funerals. And how they often make us want sex.
HANNIBAL: It's one in the eye for death.
ALANA BLOOM: Not that we... not that this was... funeral sex.
HANNIBAL: Of course it was. We both just buried a friend. We buried Will.
ALANA BLOOM: There's something liberating about finally letting him go.
HANNIBAL: Yes, there is. We have a lot of reasons to do this. Not just funeral reasons.
“Not just funeral reasons” is one of the show’s better throwaway lines. But don’t miss Hannibal’s double meaning in acknowledging the liberation of letting Will go.
HANNIBAL: You were determined to know the Chesapeake Ripper, Dr. Gideon. To wear that skin before you die. Now is your opportunity.
DR. GIDEON: Intend me to be my own last meal?
HANNIBAL: Yes.
DR. GIDEON: How does one politely refuse a dish in these circumstances?
HANNIBAL: One doesn't.
One of Hannibal’s more conceptually elegant murders, and one that is notably off-type for him, in that it is a piece of performance art with no subsequent tableau. But this is consistent with Gideon’s role to Hannibal, which is not based on rudeness (Gideon is clearly rude, but generally manages to avoid being so to or around Hannibal) but on a sort of aesthetic necessity based on Gideon’s false claim to be the Ripper. Hannibal recognizes that Gideon is not particularly complicit in this, however, and so crafts for Gideon a fate that simultaneously honors him and establishes him as less than Hannibal. (c.f. “it’s only cannibalism if we’re equals.”)
August 24, 2017
radical, gamebreaking politics for a group that’s struggling with the basic right to fucking exist
Being aro/ace is queer. End of story! To say that anyone who’s not cishet normative doesn’t belong at the queer “table” (as if being queer were some kind of banquet, Hannibal?) doesn’t really understand what it is to be queer at all. So let’s pick up the harp and let’s dance.
“radical”: late 14c., in a medieval philosophical sense, from Late Latin radicalis "of or having roots," from Latin radix (genitive radicis) "root" (see radish ). Meaning "going to the origin, essential" is from 1650s.
Here’s what being queer, in any sense, often entails:
corrective rape
pedagogical erasure
unacceptance of one’s non-normative relationships
othering in mainstream media
medical stigmatization, discrimination, even “conversion”
unsafe to “come out” to partners, families, community and colleagues and so forth, and yet “coming out” is essential to being authentic
In other words, nothing nice.
These are all things that ace people have experienced. These are all things that gays and lesbians have experienced. These are all things that bisexuals have experienced. These are all things that trans people have experienced. These are all things that intersexed people have experienced. Why? Because we’re all queer. Because we all deviate from the expectations of straight people.
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I’m a big fan of etymology. It’s a way of getting to the root of a word, of seeing where it came from. Because of course words change over the eons. “Nice” for example derives from Latin nescius "ignorant, unaware," literally "not-knowing," from ne- "not" + stem of scire "to know" (see science). And then it changed to “timid,” then “fastidious,” then “precise” and “careful” and “delicate” before becoming “agreeable” and “kind” and “thoughtful.” Over time, it’s been turned inside-out, polarity reversed and all that. What a queer word!
“Queer” is the perfect word to describe the history of “nice.” “Queer” derives from the c.1500, "strange, peculiar, eccentric" from Scottish, perhaps from Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer "oblique, off-center," related to German quer "oblique, perverse, odd," from Old High German twerh "oblique," from PIE root *terkw- "to turn, twist, wind." Huh, looks like we got something in common with twerking, too.
Oblique, off-center, turned… in other words, not straight. This is the geometry of being queer, or perhaps the square root of it to be particularly nerdish, and with particular thanks to Harper's Etymological dictionary.
So what does building solidarity look like? Damn, it looks like looking in the mirror, I think! Conversely, what does excluding aro/ace from queerdom look like? It looks like, I dunno, like saying that because someone under the queer umbrella has an easier time of passing for straight we might as well just pretend that they’re straight? It’s like demanding someone stay in the closet.
That’s what we all have in common. The damn closet, from late 14c. French closet "small enclosure, private room," diminutive of clos "enclosure," from Latin clausum "closed space, enclosure, confinement," from neuter past participle of claudere "to shut". In Matt. vi:6 it renders Latin cubiculum "bedchamber, bedroom," Greek tamieion "chamber, inner chamber, secret room;" thus originally in English "a private room for study or prayer."
It’s a restriction of sexuality. Including asexuality.
With religious connotations.
It’s the apocryphon of queerness.
So this is what it says to include aro/ace into queer space. It says, “you matter.” Your experience matters. You are different, and we are different, and these differences matter, and yet this is what we all share in common. Not being straight, and yet mattering. Why? Because diversity makes for a healthier ecosystem. And even if it didn’t… we all matter because we all have inherent value, which is hard to believe after lifelong immersion in a culture that either denigrates us if it even knows of our existence.
And if there’s anything that’s going to bring about the end of “the market” where everything is commodified including people, it’s going to be the practice of recognizing the principle of inherent value. Because the underlying assumption of the marketplace is that value isn’t inherent (an assumption shared by so many religions, especially those which say that all people are sinners, but also by science, as "value" is a numinous quality and so essentially unobservable) and so therefore some people are “worth more” than others. Indeed, under the assumptions of the marketplace, the world we live in doesn’t have inherent value, which is how we now face ecological disaster, and nazis walking down the street, and a living refutation of orange being the new black.
So of course everyone that's A belongs with us.
We now return to your regular programming.
August 23, 2017
Egomania
Rarely has a work of fiction been so aptly named.
Sonic Mania released this past week on consoles, with the PC version delayed a few weeks for additional tweaks and optimization. This is one half of SEGA's 25th Anniversary celebration for Sonic the Hedgehog (the actual anniversary was last year, but that's just how SEGA rolls), a game made by a team of former Sonic fangame developers led by Christian Whitehead, famous for his HD remake of Sonic CD and his extremely high-quality conversions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Sonic Mania, as you might expect, is thus a game self-consciously indebted to the style of the earliest Sonic game releases and plays out as a kind of fan's version of Sonic Generations: A bunch of “reimagined” classic stages with the occasional crop of new material, but this time done in a manner that slavishly attempts to recreate the style of the original games on a new platform.
This is not a review of Sonic Mania. I don't even have the game as of the time of this writing, though I do have the Nintendo Switch version of the special collector's edition on preorder, primarily because I thought the display statue and faux-SEGA Genesis stand would look nice in my room stood next to my library. It is a game I'm looking forward to, as you can probably tell, and I do have something special planned for it later in the year. I am not, however, looking forward to it as much as I am some other releases coming out in the next few weeks and months (the fact I not only do not have the game, but I don't even have the console to play it on should probably speak to that), and it would seem I'm not looking forward to it anywhere near as much as certain other individuals, if the press' crop of reviews is anything to go by.
The enthusiasm for Sonic Mania has been nothing short of rabid, and the professional reviews for it have been glowing in a way typically reserved for things like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (particularly perceptive longtime fans of mine will know where this is going). Amongst the expected slew of reviews declaring Mania “a return to form”, there's been many a re-evaluation of the Blue Blur's history to date, and one author even made the analogy that Sonic is the Bugs Bunny to Mario's Mickey Mouse, with their sympathies clearly lying firmly with the wabbit (Given the fact that, when faced with the age-old binary of “Disney or Warner Brothers”, I'm the asshole who picks “Tom and Jerry”, my thoughts on liberal Nerd Culture's veneration of Looney Tunes are many and varied, but would require an essay of their own). But the reviews have been something else too: Nasty. Not towards Sonic Mania, of course, but towards basically every other Sonic game ever made that isn't Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. And implicitly, any Sonic fan who wasn't them.
One review compared Sonic Generations unfavourably to Sonic Mania, saying the older game was pointless fanservice and made up of references that were there for no reason (which astonishes me as not only was I under the impression Sonic Generations was relatively well-liked, but what is Sonic Mania if not pointless fanservice?) And another particularly egregious outlet, whom I shall not be naming or linking to as I don't want to give them any more traffic than I already have for this self-indulgent hit piece, went so far as to say
“Mania is Sonic without 20-odd years of slowly accumulating bullshit. The wider pantheon of sidekicks - Shadow, Silver, Big the sodding Cat - have been cast headlong into the screaming cosmic abyss from whence they came, reducing the playable line-up to the Holy Trinity: Sonic himself (who can use each shield power-up's special ability), long-suffering fox acquaintance Tails (who can fly and swim) and beefy echidna rival Knuckles (who can smash through certain walls, climb and glide).”
This, I remind you, is a professional, highly-respected industry publication, not some random self-published asshole blogger raving about Star Trek, religion and radical lefitst politics. More to the point, and I know it may be hard to understand, but...Some people actually liked those denizens of said screaming cosmic abyss and the games they came from. A whole lot of people. Just not people who, it seems, get to write for professional game industry websites.
(Indeed, perhaps surprisingly given their reputation, it's been the Sonic fans themselves who have crafted the most sober and even-keeled reviews of Sonic Mania. Check out The Sonic Stadium's excellent review if you're curious about the game, and steer clear of the professional outlets for this and probably any other Sonic game: The industry has a real problem with this franchise for reasons that are too complex and tiresome to go into right now, and someone could legitimately write an ethnography of Sonic fandom.)
Though Sonic Mania has been read as a slavish retro throwback to the Genesis/Mega Drive games, that's not actually how either Christian Whitehead or SEGA have conceptualized or marketed it, though you wouldn't know that looking at the industry rags. Rather, the development team is pitching this as a “lost” Sonic game building on the Genesis/Mega Drive installments, but that hypothetically would have come out on the SEGA Saturn. The Saturn is the odd duck out in the fifth generation hardware cycle: With Sony setting the discourse with the PlayStation, declaring that henceforth all games should push photorealistic polygon graphics and ape cinematic narrative at all costs or be hopelessly outdated and Nintendo offering a powerful alternate take with the Nintendo 64 (namely, polygon graphics will still be the future, but actual, real-time gameplay is more important than trying to make our games look like movies), SEGA's console is the lone representative attempting to push more and better sprite-based graphics.
Although the PlayStation forced SEGA to change tactics not long after launch, the fact remains the Saturn was never designed to compete with either it or the Nintendo 64 as a polygon machine. Rather, it was designed to replicate the then-contemporary arcade experience for home audiences, something SEGA had an innate knack for understanding, and that all home video game consoles had done up to that point. And in the mid-90s, arcades were still driven almost exclusively by hand-drawn sprite animation, and indeed the arcade games of that time, such as the early Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom games, boast some of the most elabourate and stunningly beautiful sprite graphics of all time. The Saturn was the only machine at the time capable of replicating those visuals accurately, and indeed at a cursory glance it was tough to tell the difference.
If you are so far down the rabbit hole of “nostalgia” (which isn't really nostalgia, but that's beside the point) you are reading Sonic Mania as a much-needed retrograde throwback to the Genesis Golden Age, you will not understand this and will miss this level of analytical nuance. My concern here isn't that video game journalists can't read (this is, of course, nothing new), but that this is yet one more example of the medium's increasingly hostile and exclusionary nature. The discourse surrounding Sonic Mania verges on bullying, and there are plenty of voices being silenced and left behind by the new historical Master Narrative that's being crafted around something that feels to me like a microcosm for video game fandom writ large.
In many ways, Sonic the Hedgehog is a lot like Doctor Who: Both are series that can be read and interpreted very different depending on when and how you were first exposed to them. In the case of the hedgehog, Sonic was created as a brand mascot first and foremost, so there's little to no aesthetic coherence in the earliest games. The narratives were incredibly simplistic, even for the time: There's an environmental motif (Sonic must save his animal friends from being captured and turned into robots by Doctor Robotnik, an evil industrialist and inventor who wants to take over the world), but that's about it. This isn't a weakness of Sonic's, as it allows the series to throw out incredibly impressive, beautiful and praiseworthy abstract designs and concepts for the setting and art design of its levels, but it does mean that Sonic relies on the player's own imagination and positionality to a degree even above and beyond some of its contemporaries.
Sonic was designed to be a pop culture merchandising phenomenon, and the original games were only ever a small part of this. There was never any “series bible” or style guide made for the franchise: SEGA was incredibly lax about brand messaging (in fact, I don't think they ever did any), so anyone who touched Sonic pretty much had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with him. If you were a child in the early 90s, you were probably exposed to as many as three or four wildly different interpretations of Sonic the Hedgehog, in addition to the games themselves: There was a daily cartoon show called Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog that took the series in a very slapstick and irreverent direction clearly indebted to the Golden Age cartoons of Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, kind of like a more G-rated version of Ren and Stimpy. There was also a Saturday morning cartoon show simply called Sonic the Hedgehog, and it couldn't have been more different.
Unlike the weekday show, this one was set in an entirely different continuity and jettisoned whatever familiar characters and iconography the games provided in an attempt to tell a totally straight, serious action sci-fi dystopia story (although also different from them, Adventures was by and large closer in tone and style to the original games than the Saturday morning show, using recognisable characters and locations). This series was eventually spun off into the longrunning Archie Comics adaptation, which as of this writing has just recently been canceled after decades on the market. If you preferred one of these shows over the other, you probably read the original games very differently to someone who preferred the other one. That's not even touching on the UK, who got an exclusive “Sonic the Comic” that was another take still from the Archie series or either of the two cartoon shows, or Japan, who got none of this and for whom the marketing for Sonic games was dramatically different than in the west. And the video game series itself was basically soft rebooted in 1999 with the release of Sonic Adventure, which took a slightly edgier, more contemporary and more Western take on the series that was still completely different from anything that had come before.
(There's even a discrepancy in tone between *the original games themselves*: Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic CD are much closer to each other than they are to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which are two parts of the same narrative. The first two games have little to no plot and hang on game design and aesthetics, while the latter two put a bit more emphasis on story and try to turn the Genesis games into a quasi-epic trilogy.)
Because of this, what Sonic means to you very much depends on you, and how you were exposed to Sonic in the first place. Even if you played the original games when they were current and relevant, that was no guarantee you got the same things out of them as somebody else. And if you grew up on Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) or Sonic Boom instead? You've got an entirely different and unique narrative from anyone else. And, unfortunately, you're also probably left out in the cold by Sonic Mania, or at least the discourse around it.
This wouldn't be a problem-after all, Sonic Forces is pretty much being explicitly made for you-if it weren't for the fact all the discussions surrounding both of these games has been overwhelmingly positive for one and overwhelmingly negative for another. Sonic Mania has been met with universal acclaim purely because of its retro atmosphere while all the previews for Forces have been mixed to negative for the same reasons people have always slagged off “Modern Sonic” games since 1999 (namely, they're not like the Genesis games and journalists are bad at them). The new Master Narrative about Sonic seems to be an explicit declaration that he was only ever good for a few short years in the early 1990s on the SEGA Genesis, and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply Wrong. If you grew up on a Sonic game that wasn't Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, (or indeed took something different away from those games than the people currently peddling reviews of Sonic Mania), how does that make you feel?
Given my own unique and idiosyncratic history with the series (although really at this point people who've been reading my work on this site should not at all be surprised to hear I have a weird history with a Pop Culture Thing) I have a fair few thoughts on this, but that's best saved for another essay. Right now I just wanted to call attention to a group of people whose voices seem to effaced by the current fervor in the industry rags, because that's not cool. Whether the journalists like it or not, a bunch of those “Modern Sonic” games have a much better reputation amongst people who are Not Them, because they were somebody's childhood. Everyone's childhood was different and formative in its own way, and nobody gets to say theirs was more important, meaningful and substantial than somebody else's. That “screaming cosmic abyss” has a lot of defenders: Characters like Shadow and Silver are extremely important to generations of kids who grew up on their games. You cannot disregard that history by mocking it just because you didn't grow up on or care for them, lest you unleash the Newton's Sleep of Hedgehogs upon us all.
And, y'know, there's Blaze the Cat. Who would also be lumped into that category. And who's kinda important to me for a couple of reasons.
But then again, maybe this doesn't matter to you, and maybe all this does is drive home my own age. If you grew up on one or more of the 21st Century Sonic the Hedgehog games, maybe you don't care about the 24 hour news-and-review grind on the industry rag sites. Indeed, maybe you don't even patronize game journalists. Maybe for you, as it is for so, so many other young people these days, you get your video game fix watching YouTube personalities, who are ostensibly independent from the insular and reactionary hardcore gamer-driven industry press. That they are the new Hollywood celebrities for your generations is an unmistakable vote of confidence in their ability to speak for you, and maybe they're giving you a far more tempered take on this year's Sonic games than the review outlets are. Given my crippling unfamiliarity with YouTube culture in spite of me starting my own channel this year, I wouldn't know.
The only thing I ask, as someone who has spent this year re-evaluating my history with this medium and seriously questioning whether it's appropriate for me to still be involved with it, is that other people take the same time to be mindful and introspective as I have. Christian Whitehead said his goal with Sonic Mania was to give players the same feelings he and his team had when they played the original Sonic games, and to me that's the noblest goal a video game can aspire to these days: To share an experience with somebody else. Please do not ever forget this, and please do not forget that video games should be for everyone, not any one individual ego.
August 22, 2017
The Proverbs of Hell 18/39: Mukōzuke
Sorry about the slow posting schedule of late - Jack's on a brief holiday while he finishes up the Austrian School essay for Neoreaction a Basilisk, and I'm really bad at remembering to queue these on Game of Peaks night. Normal service should resume soon, and your patience is appreciated.
MUKŌZUKE: Literally “set to the far side,” which refers to the dish’s placement on the tray, a small dish of seasonal sashimi. The key detail for our purposes is that the dish is sliced.
FREDDIE LOUNDS: Send someone else, Jack. She's one of yours.
Freddie is entirely sincere here, offering a genuine concern for Jack. This is not part of some larger heel turn on her part, a fact emphasized by her photographing Beverly’s body and, subsequently, Will in his face mask. Rather, it is out of a sense of genuine horror and, more broadly, a sense of clear morality - the same one that fuels her consistent loyalty to Abigail Hobbs, even after death. The grounds on which Freddie will take actual moral stands are few, but the resulting stands are a key part of her character.
As the saying goes, there’s always doubt until you see a body. This, then, is one of the more emphatic settlings of the matter in television history. In one sense, Beverly is quite literally fridged, or rather freezered, this being a necessary part of displaying her body like this. In most other regards, however, she avoids this trope, although it was actively discussed at the time, with Hettienne Park herself defending the show against accusations of both racism and sexism, pointing out (not unreasonably) that it’s more significant that an Asian woman got cast as a character with the last name “Katz” than that the character was killed off as had been planned since day one. The more substantive observation would be that the key point of fridging is that the character is killed to provide emotional drama for male leads. While Will, Jack, and the other (admittedly mostly male) characters do respond to her death with grief, this is not even the main point of “Mukōzuke.” Beverly’s death matters primarily for the ways in which it changes the state of play for the show, forcing Will to change his tactics and incrementally ratcheting up the inevitability of Jack eventually figuring out what’s actually going on with Hannibal.
At last, the image from the season two poster appears in the show. The appeal, of course, is much like the final lines of the first season - the inversion of one of the defining images of Hannibal Lecter.
BEVERLY KATZ: You said you just interpret the evidence. So interpret the evidence.
This is not the first time that Will’s investigative approach has been described as interpretation, but given the setup of Will being wheeled to a staged, framed tableau and the degree to which this particular work on Hannibal’s part is straightforwardly communicative the word stands out more in this context than many,
WILL GRAHAM: I strangle Beverly Katz, looking in her eyes. She knows me. I know her. I expertly squeeze the life from her, rendering her unconscious. I freeze her body, preserving shape and form so I can cleanly dismantle her. She cuts like stone. I pull her apart, layer by layer, like she would a crime scene. This is my design.
As Will subsequently admits to Jack, he did not come here to solve Beverly’s murder, and nothing he discerns here is useful as such - even for the audience its only exposition purpose is to give the explanation for how Beverly is displayed for anyone who missed the obvious. Instead he came to say goodbye. The revealing thing, then, is that his way of saying goodbye to his friend is to psychically reenact her murder.
WILL GRAHAM: Gideon knows who the Ripper is.
DR. CHILTON: And I suppose you do, too.
WILL GRAHAM: Wouldn't it be interesting if we both said it was the same man?
DR. CHILTON: Yes, it would.
WILL GRAHAM: Shame we can't talk to Abel Gideon about the Chesapeake Ripper. Just think, Frederick, you could be the one who catches him after all.
Will responds to the setback of losing Beverly by immediately escalating his manipulation of Chilton to bring Abel Gideon into play. This manipulation is so transparent that even Chilton can see it clearly, though this does not diminish its efficacy at all.
One of the more straightforward visuals Janice Poon has done for the show, the meat pie that Beverly is ground up into is fashioned after the iconic face mask that Will wears in this episode and that is most generally associated with Hannibal. Poon adamantly clarifies that the pie represents Will’s mask, not Hannibal’s, as “no one wants to keep him out of prison more than I do! Unless he can get a cell with an eat-in galley kitchen.” Stay tuned.
DR. GIDEON: The Ripper's playing out a mannerly dance, getting close, but not too close, offering tokens of goodwill, but not giving away too much.
WILL GRAHAM: He gave you away. I remember the night in Dr. Lecter's house. The night I took you there.
DR. GIDEON: The night you tried to kill me.
WILL GRAHAM: How do you think I found you? He sent me to kill you, Abel.
DR. GIDEON: Am I your evidence? Oh, you're in trouble, Mr. Graham.
WILL GRAHAM: Why would you protect him?
DR. GIDEON: He's done nothing to me. You were happy enough to try and kill me yourself. You have it "in you," as they say. I'm intrigued to see what you try when I say no. He's the Devil, Mr. Graham. He's smoke. You'll never "catch" the Ripper. He won't be caught. If you want him, you'll have to kill him.
WILL GRAHAM: Fair enough.
One of two key exchanges in the episode, as Will and Gideon begin to dig into one another. Gideon’s realization of what Will’s plan is and incredulous reaction of how fucked he must be if this is what he’s trying is probably the highlight, although Izzard’s delivery of the grandioise “he’s the Devil, Mr. Graham. He’s smoke” is a very close second. Will, meanwhile, is content to play a long game, letting Gideon get his good lines in while waiting for opportunities to present themselves. Which, to be fair, in the last line they do.
HANNIBAL: Neither of us controls our stories well enough to get anything from exposing the other's misdeeds.
DR. CHILTON: Here's to that.
Hannibal persistently talks in these terms of stories, and the question of successfully controlling his story is one that vexes him, both in his unusual tendency to help people cover up crimes and in lines like this. Hannibal cannot control his own story because he has gone in a different artistic path.
DR. GIDEON: I can see why Chilton both admires and resents you, Dr. Lecter. Esteem in psychiatric circles still eludes him, even as it clings to you. He very much wants to be you.
HANNIBAL: He should be more careful what he wishes for.
DR. GIDEON: You should have been more careful with Will Graham. That young man has got a bone to pick.
HANNIBAL: With me?
DR. GIDEON: Who's to say.
HANNIBAL: As a therapist, I'm concerned with finding ways to overcome resistance, not build it up.
DR. GIDEON: You built up something, Dr. Lecter.
A conversation in which both sides are speaking codedly. It is not entirely clear what Hannibal wants out of this conversation, and thus doubly unclear whether he gets it. The interesting lines are “he should be more careful what he wishes for,” which neatly foreshadows what Hannibal has in mind for both Gideon and Chilton, and “you built up something, Dr. Lecter,” with which Gideon shows a near-complete understanding of Hannibal’s aesthetic pathologies.
HANNIBAL: We evolved the ability to communicate disappointment to teach those around us good manners.
FREDDIE LOUNDS: Unfortunately, I didn't evolve the ability to feel shame.
Another scene in which Freddie gets to be Hannibal’s problematic fave - despite her taking a paparazzi photo of Hannibal, which he actively describes as “rude,” Hannibal is visibly fond of her in this scene, and seems to enjoy the conversation.
WILL GRAHAM: You killed the bailiff during my trial.
MATTHEW BROWN: Thought it might exonerate you. I read your file often enough. Easy to recreate your work. It was so specific. Though the bailiff was a bitch to get on that stag's head.
WILL GRAHAM: And the judge?
MATTHEW BROWN: I killed the Baliff; the judge was somebody else
This is treated as a revelation, although careful inspection of “Hassun” makes it clear from the start that the judge was Hannibal. Still, it’s useful information for Will, even if it does not come close to assuaging his anger at Hannibal, as we’ll see.
More interesting is Matthew’s boastfulness that it was easy to recreate Will’s work, not least because in fact his failure to successfully do that is why the murder failed to exonerate Will. Will does not get into this, however, instead moving straight to what it is he wanted from this meeting.
WILL GRAHAM: I need a favor.
MATTHEW BROWN: I’m always happy to do a favor for a friend. Just say the words.
WILL GRAHAM: I want you to kill Hannibal Lecter.
What is most interesting about this is that Will has enough information that it should be clear Hannibal is moving towards letting Will out. Certainly it’s clear to him by now that Hannibal killed the judge and thus prevented his execution. And the risk to Will here is considerable - indeed, this blows up in his face pretty straightforwardly. And so this move has to be taken primarily as heroic - Will is killing Hannibal because he has an opportunity to stop the Chesapeake Ripper and takes it, despite the cost.
ALANA BLOOM: Will's not the Chesapeake Ripper.
DR. GIDEON: No, he isn't. Not yet. All the things that make us who we are. What has to happen to change those things? So much has happened to Will Graham. He's a changed man.
ALANA BLOOM: Maybe he's looking for redemption.
DR. GIDEON Mr. Graham isn't interested in redemption. But revenge, now there's a trinket he'd value.
ALANA BLOOM: Revenge against who? He thinks he knows who killed Beverly Katz?
DR. GIDEON: For the courtesy you have always shown me, I am going to give you a gift. I'm going to give you the chance to save Will from himself.
The parallelism between Hannibal and Chilton’s treatment of their respective patients pays off as Gideon is able to understand the logic of transformation that underlies what’s happened to Will and, in an act of surprising empathy for the character, acts to help Will resist the transformation (as well as, of course, helping the show not lose its main character).
There are many reasons why Matthew’s attack on Hannibal has to fail, mostly involving the fact that you don’t have a show anymore if Hannibal goes down unsatisfyingly to a guy with only two speaking scenes in the whole show. But the fact that he so spectacularly misunderstands Hannibal as to think a crucifixion scene is an appropriate way for him to go is probably, in hindsight, the largest factor.
August 16, 2017
Digital Landfill
Just...stop it.
I want to apologise in advance if this turns into more of an angry, ranty polemic than what I'm comfortable presenting these days, but I'm deeply upset this week. I've always been exasperated and annoyed with the line of thinking in games criticism that graphics tech is the most important thing in the industry and needs to be privileged above all else, but at this point I've officially had it. The state of the current industry is so out of control I don't really even have words to express how stunned and aghast I am by the aggressive, mindless technofetishistic lust that seems to be driving almost everyone on both sides of the Pacific right now. The most blatantly obvious example is the grotesque display that is the current console market: We're supposed to have hardware cycles of 5 years or so between revisions and new machines, but then somebody told Microsoft and Sony about Apple's business model with smartphones and suddenly we're in an era of “mid-generation hardware revisions” for $500 computers. We didn't even get 3 years between the PlayStation 4, touted in 2013 as the most powerful thing to ever anything, and the PlayStation 4 “Pro” that supports 4K resolutions, which Sony seemed so embarrassed about they didn't even announce it until it came out. Meanwhile, Microsoft is about to unleash the XBOX One X, a machine that is so obscenely overpowered I'm convinced it comes from some outer space futurescape and that mere mortal humans aren't worthy to wield it. Certainly nobody I know is rich or crazy enough to be able to get it to do what it's supposed to do.
(Meanwhile, Nintendo came out with the Switch after just managing to squeak five years out of the WiiU, but that's primarily because with the WiiU and 3DS Nintendo momentarily forgot absolutely everything they learned about branding and marketing in over a century of trading. I'll come back to them a little later.)
None of this is of course new. Microsoft's strategy with the XBOX One X to push 4K reminds me of what they they tried to pull with the XBOX 360 in 2005 to push 1080p (the one that forced them to rebrand and slash prices a couple years later). And there is, of course, a precedent for this going back decades. I like to pick on Sony here for how they set the discourse for the fifth generation with the original PlayStation, but I probably also have to blame SEGA of America for how they marketed the Genesis in the United States, openly bullying Nintendo and Nintendo's fans by saying that faster processors and better graphics chips were blatantly, objectively better in every instance and anyone who thought otherwise was a dumb crybaby. Notably, SEGA of Japan did not do this, instead focusing on the Mega Drive's ability to deliver a home experience that was closer to that which you might find in an arcade. Which is probably part of the reason SEGA imploded spectacularly in the early 2000s, as SEGA of Japan and SEGA of America refused to speak to one another.
What bothers me more this time around is the sheer rapidity, and rabidness, with which it seems to be happening now. Sony appear to be back up to their old tricks by flat-out lying about what their console is capable of, as seen in the case of the recent controversy surrounding Anthem, which I can't see working out for them any better than when they did it with the PlayStation 3, which caused the near-collapse of the industry in the late 2000s by contributing to a climate wherein developers were forced to go bankrupt overbuilding and working with arcane and Byzantine architecture that was nowhere near as capable as they had been led to believe it was. More worryingly, I've seen quite a few developers come out recently with outright sneering disdain for anything that's not the latest and greatest cutting-edge technology.
Mostly, this discourse seems to be surrounding the Nintendo Switch. Now before I go any further, I want to formally make apologies for everything I said about Nintendo and its new console back in January: Over the course of the summer I've turned around on it immensely and will likely end up with one myself by year's end. In my defense, all I can say is that it's become evident I was outright misled by elements within hardcore gamer culture and the gaming press (even up to and including Nintendo enthusiast press) that seem driven by a desire to see the system fail for whatever reason. The biggest shock came when I realised that I'd been outright lied to about the functionality of the system's controllers by a relatively big-name outlet that seems to have produced a fake headline about needing to buy a separate accessory to charge the JoyCons in the aftermath of the reveal event, when in fact they can be charged when connected to the tablet or through the normal AC adapter. At the very least the website in question worded their article very poorly, implying that potential users would have to spend a lot more money to enjoy the base Switch package then they would in fact actually have to. There are also reports of angry and bitter gamers fabricating intentionally and deliberately inaccurate negative Amazon reviews on Switch consoles and accessories in an attempt to mislead customers and damage sales.
Why this is happening I can only speculate upon. Perhaps it comes from the same right-wing fundamentalism in gamer culture that is directly responsible for the current political situation in the United States, and if Nintendo has come under fire because of this it can only speak favourably for Nintendo. Certainly a console that preaches inclusivity and positive, constructive social fun would seem to be something that would draw the ire of Nerd Culture's basal desire for a New Atheist Nerd dictatorship. That's not something I want to get into today, though perhaps I'll revisit it when I “review” the system for Eruditorum Press whenever I get it. Rather, I want to use this as context for this latest backlash against Nintendo on the most hoary and hackneyed of battlefields, tech specs.
This has of course always been an argument leveled against the company and its machines as far back as at least the Wii, but with some precedent dating back to the Nintendo 64 era. It's also one of the reasons why hardcore gamers of the late 80s and early 90s wouldn't have anything to do with the Game Boy. For those mercifully unaware, Nintendo has historically been criticized by gamers and developers alike because their consoles tend not to use cutting-edge hardware in an effort to both keep costs down across the board and provide a framework that's easier to work with and understand. Nintendo's design philosophy in this area is best summed up by a quote from the late Gunpei Yokoi, inventor of the Game & Watch, Game Boy, WonderSwan and Metroid: “Lateral thinking with withered technology”. The “withered” referrers to technology that is well worn, time-tested and understood, while the “lateral thinking”, obviously refers to just that: In brief, Yokoi-san was telling us to look at old problems and solutions in new ways.
But withered does not mean impotent. In fact, a better understanding of Yokoi-san's meaning might be “tried and true” (and a better translation might be “seasoned” instead of “withered”). Julian Eggbrecht, former president of Factor 5, recently gave an interview in which he states the Nintendo Switch is somewhere between a WiiU (itself roughly comparable to, but more powerful than, the XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3) and an original XBOX One in terms of power, though obviously the resolution takes a hit if you're not playing on an HD TV. Eggbrecht and Factor 5 have always been big fans of and close defenders of Nintendo, even having a hand in developing the GameCube (and thus the Wii as well, which was built out of GameCube tech), and they worked technical wonders on their hardware with such games like Super Turrican 1 and 2, the original Star Wars Rogue Squadron and its spiritual successor Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo, the N64 port of Resident Evil 2 and the Pokémon Stadium series. Factor 5 did things with Nintendo consoles everyone else in the industry laughed at and said was impossible and yet, somehow, they did it anyway. If anyone embodies the spirit of “lateral thinking with withered technology” it's them, and so when they come out and give an interview enthusiastically defending and supporting the Switch, I believe them.
(And indeed, this is a lesson they had to learn the hard way and that cost them dearly. Factor 5's collapse in the late 2000s can be read as stemming rather directly from a doomed exclusivity deal they made with Sony and the PlayStation 3 for Lair and Animal Wars. A deal they struck *specifically because* they wanted to work with the latest and greatest console hardware and were initially “baffled” by Nintendo's business decisions with the Wii.)
The bottom line is that the Switch is not a weak machine (again, the original XBOX One, which came out in 2013, isn't even all that old), and even if it was that shouldn't matter to a genuine craftsman. But Eggbrecht's passion stands in stark contrast to the sentiments espoused by other developers: Oddworld creator Lorne Landing spoke very disparagingly of Nintendo's console, essentially saying it's doomed to failure because it's not as powerful as the other home consoles, it's a waste of time and money to invest in and that Nintendo is hopelessly backwards-thinking, even insinuating that this supposed conservatism killed the company's late former president Satoru Iwata. Landing similarly has no sympathy for the Wii, which he considers a failure in spite of being the industry leader by a considerable margin throughout the entire seventh generation because of a lack of third-party support.
Landing is right the Wii had little support in the way of AAA third party titles, but it's indicative not of some failing of Nintendo or the Wii, but rather the toxic culture of technofetishistic elitism pervading the video game industry. Any arguments that a lack of third party support on the Wii was due to Nintendo's dwindling market share as was the case on the GameCube are provably, factually nonsense. The simple reality is that the Wii could not run the games the AAA publishers wanted to make, and at the time they preferred to take a massive hit into potential profits than release a product custom-tailored to a platform deemed “inferior”. I'm sure the fact the Wii sold phenomenally well to people outside the hardcore gamer culture, especially women, probably played a part in it getting that reputation as well. Just like the Game Boy before it, another console built around “withered technology”.
We can already see this happening again to some degree on the Switch. The console is doing quite well, selling out everywhere and pushing up against the very limits of Nintendo's manufacturing capabilities (remember, Nintendo is manifestly not a tech giant like Sony or Microsoft: They're a toy company with massive brand recognition), but that's apparently not enough for some people. Capcom wants their new Monster Hunter game, World, to be a top-of-the-line, cutting-edge graphical powerhouse that will break the series into the Western market in a big way, so it's coming out on the XBOX One and PlayStation 4, but not the Nintendo Switch. This is in spite of the fact Monster Hunter games have traditionally sold phenomenally well on Nintendo handhelds because of Japanese gaming habits (and to be fair Japan is getting an exclusive Switch “port” of another Monster Hunter game that's also out on the 3DS).
I stress I'm not making the typical argument Nintendo fans have made in regards to Capcom these past few months, that they're somehow “abandoning” some special “relationship” the two companies supposedly had over the past two generations, that's silly-I'm merely expressing concern that Capcom is shooting themselves in the foot because of some potential hangup I fear they're having about tech specs. There's certainly no reason the Switch shouldn't be getting the likes of The Disney Afternoon Collection or Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, and they seem genuinely disinterested in the new platform: The Switch port of Super Street Fighter II was lackluster at best, and Capcom seemed shocked that the console was actually selling well, having to pledge their support to the system noticeably later than other publishing houses. I'm not even a fan of Capcom's games, but their business decision here doesn't make sense to me.
(In fact, some of the arguments raised about why the Switch is doomed to failure seem to me to go beyond elitist and ill-informed and swerve straight into bizarre “you're just trying to come up with any possible excuse to mock the platform no matter what” ravings. Dan Nanni of Boss Key Studios, headed by infamous ex-Epic dev Cliff Bleszinski, said their new arena shooter LawBreakers couldn't come to the Switch because Nintendo's system doesn't have enough buttons to play it. Except for the fact that, no matter which controller you use, the Switch has just as many buttons as the PlayStation 4's beloved DualShock, and that console can apparently run LawBreakers just fine.)
The controversy over the Switch seems part of a larger swerve towards elitism and classism that's only gotten worse in the past few years. Famous composer David Wise, a man whose work I typically respect, gave an interview a few months back about his time with Rare and Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s where he actually called the NES and Famicom a “doorbell” (in reference to the consoles' sound cards, which actually were based around the same technology used in doorbells) and expressed his constant frustration that Nintendo's hardware didn't give him the freedom of CD audio technology. This echoes the complaints of many, many other developers over the years, is the same sentiment behind why so many of them jumped ship to the original PlayStation in 1995, and is strikingly reminiscent of criticisms leveled against the Wii and Switch. Nevermind that “doorbell” was responsible for some of the most iconic and memorable music in the history of the video game medium (including many songs Wise himself composed), *specifically because* its limitations forced composers to craft instantly recognisable jingles that would stay with players without getting old.
Ironically, Sony's Jim Ryan has been one of the Switch's biggest champions, saying the industry is healthy when Nintendo is healthy, encouraging PlayStation fans to buy both a PS4 *and* a Switch, and even all but saying the Switch is the successor to the PlayStation Vita.
This isn't just worryingly noticeable in the discourse surrounding Nintendo and the Switch: I've already mentioned the rush to replace the PlayStation 4 and XBOX One after what seems like an appallingly brief time on the market, and there are other scary signs too. The otherwise reliable Digital Foundry just ran a reprehensibly clickbaity headline questioning whether Unreal Engine 4 was a “good fit” for the upcoming Dragon Quest XI, because it was “middleware”. Now, in case you're unfamiliar, Unreal Engine 4 looks like this. It's a famously developer-friendly engine known for being an accessible and easy-to-use way to quickly and effortlessly craft AAA-quality visuals and physics. It's a favourite of indie devs (Titanic: Honor and Glory uses it. Their game currently looks like this), but even the big names use it too: Square-Enix is using it in their much-ballyhooed remake of Final Fantasy VII, and Rocksteady uses it Batman: Arkham Knight. Digital Foundry eventually concludes their article by saying Dragon Quest XI looks fine (of course), but it's hard to read their headline as anything other than scaremongering for the benefit of hardcore gamers because Unreal Engine 4 is “casual-friendly” and used by a lot of first-time indie devs for games released on Steam.
A more benign, yet no less worrying, example comes from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi. The cult classic game, designed to recreate the experience of synaesthesia itself, just got a surprise release on the PC for the first time. When asked by Metro about where he'd like to go with Rez from here, Mizuguhi-san said
“I like to use the improvements from new technology all the time. But now I’m waiting for new technology after basic VR, mainly the resolution. We need to get from HD to 4K and from 4K to 8K. And when we have 8K for each eye, I think that is enough. I think that is kind of the singularity point. If we get to 8K it looks real and we can make a true illusion.
But I want to create more, if you can move and feel in 3D space maybe you can touch the sounds, you can touch the music. So in the future we can create a new type of experience. Whether that is a game or a new type of entertainment though, I don’t know.”
I'm not a vision specialist and can't comment on the specifics, but I'll just raise few more general concerns. Firstly...Do we actually need video games to look completely photorealistic? Who decided that was the end goal for the entire medium? I was perfectly happy with the way polygon graphics looked in 2011, just as I was with the way they looked in 2002. I was also perfectly happy with the way sprite art graphics looked in 1992, just as I was with the way they looked in 1985. It's a matter of art style, and I think the problem is not raw technical power, but the way developers accommodate for and design around it. I think the big problem with the seventh generation (and also the fifth) was that developers got overexcited and overambitious and wanted to make games well above and beyond what the current hardware could handle and, in the former case, were actually misled into thinking the hardware was more powerful than it was.
Here's a good case study of what I mean that's near and dear to me. I've recently been playing Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires as part of what is apparently my new life's mission to play every Omega Force musō game ever made. Now this one I think is incredible and would be just about everything I ever wanted out of a musō game (seriously, the Free Mode alone makes this one worth purchasing: I've logged almost 50 hours just on it) except for one thing: Omega Force released the Dynasty Warriors 8 series on both 7th and 8th generation hardware, and most people probably played this one on the PlayStation 4. But I'm playing the PC version, and Koei-Tecmo decided the PC should get a straight port of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita version of the game instead, which is noticeably technically handicapped. Dynasty Warriors never looks *amazing* graphically, but that's fine: All of the horsepower goes under the hood instead. Except, graphical fidelity is not the problem for this game. Rather, the reason Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires feels compromised on the PC, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita is because of so-called “spot turrets”.
In Dynasty Warriors, or any other musō game, the big draw is the 1 vs. 1000 gameplay, and it's exhilarating to stylishly flip, somersault and slash your way through an unceasing army of enemy mooks and monsters. The Samurai Warriors 4 series in particular just about perfects this feeling, with the ground seemingly alive and undulating with the mass of humanity you're up against, creating a tactile experience unlike anything else. Sadly however, this feeling is truncated in the otherwise-excellent Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires because the older build of the PC, PS3 and Vita version quite obviously cannot render that many models on screen at one time. Instead, the technical detail went into making the game look nice with god rays, fancy lighting effects and detailed terrain and environmental textures.
The goal of the Empires games is to capture enemy bases by and supply lines, thus increasing your army's range and defenses. You do this by whacking a bunch of dudes, which whittles down a given base's troop strength. It's a very Eastern approach to strategy, based around territory control, surrounding tactics and endurance. Well, this game gives you “spot turrets”, which, after you punch them a bit, disappear (like, literally clip out of existence), which counts for 100 or so guys. Every base has three or four of these things, and a completely effective approach is to just concentrate your efforts on taking them out, allowing you to capture a base within seconds without ever crossing swords (or throwing daggers, or whatever) with another soldier. I can't escape the nagging suspicion that the reason these things exist is to make up for the fact the game can't render all the character models it needs to, and the consequence is that this allows the player to handily sidestep the whole “1 vs. 1000” thing. You know, the entire point of Dynasty Warriors.
This is not to say the PS3 and PS Vita are in some ways “inferior” because of this. It was perfectly possible for Omega Force to design this version of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires in such a way that did not compromise the series' core gameplay for graphical fidelity. The original Hyrule Warriors for the WiiU, a machine that was at least comparable technically to the PlayStation 3, didn't have any problems like this, and that's because The Legend of Zelda's art style has never attempted to chase photorealism (in spite of certain entries kinda pretending they did to keep fans quiet). But they chose not to do that in this case, and I think that hurts what is otherwise a superlative game. In spite of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires offering all the game modes I want in a musō game, I have to admit it's a far more satisfyingly visceral experience to play Samurai Warriors 4-II, which is a modern build designed for 8th generation hardware...or the *original Samurai Warriors on the PlayStation 2! The PS2 was the weakest console of the 6th generation and boy does the original Samurai Warriors look spartan (some of the environments have next to no visible detail), but, crucially, it can still get all those character models onscreen and it's still every bit as satisfying as you'd hope.
But my second point inspired by Mizuguhi-san's statement would simply be a call for introspection. Is the reason we want photorealism in video games *really* so we can get to the point where games are indistinguishable from reality? And if so...Why? What's wrong with reality such that we feel we need to craft an artificial alternative to it? This is all beginning to sound alarmingly like Singularitarianism, and indeed Mizuguchi-san even *uses* the term “singularity”. Rez's creator seems to want to create a video game that can serve as a spiritual awakening, and I think using that language leads us to some dangerous places. No matter how powerful a work of art Rez may be (and I'm very much looking forward to playing it myself, as I never had the chance to before), it remains just that: A work of art. Art is by definition imperfect, a flawed artifice created as a form of self-expression for some very tangible creators. Once we get to the point where we think art, let alone video games, can replace something ephemeral and eternal we feel we've lost, we've let ourselves get too far gone. Art can help you learn things about yourself, maybe even set you on the correct path, but it can never replace that which is missing within yourself.
And even if it could, what would be the point if enlightenment was only available to the rich and affluent upper classes? The electronics industry is one of the most wasteful and ecologically destructive of an already-destructive capitalist system of overproduction. And I fear in our rush to create the perfect artistic simulacrum, we'll loose touch with what's truly important in our lives: Our environment, our natural homes, and each other.
August 14, 2017
The Proverbs of Hell 17/39: Takiawase
\TAKIAWASE: A mixture of vegetables and a protein in which the ingredients are cooked separately; on the whole a fair description of an episode in which the characters are unusually segregated.
WILL GRAHAM: Your father taught you how to hunt. I'm going to teach you how to fish.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: Same thing, isn't it? One you lure, the other you stalk?
WILL GRAHAM: One you catch, the other you shoot.
Will makes a second attempt at the hunting/fishing conversation that went so unsatisfyingly in “Relevés.” This time, instead of becoming obsessed with accusing Abigail, he comes up with a suitably witty retort to her comparison. Although the difference between catching and shooting is likely academic to the fish.
WILL GRAHAM: Last thing before casting a line: name the bait on your hook after somebody you cherished.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: So you can say good-bye?
WILL GRAHAM: If the person you name it after cherished you, as the superstition goes, you'll catch the fish.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: What did you name it?
WILL GRAHAM: Abigail.
It’s an interesting and quietly revealing character beat that Will stakes his successful catching of Hannibal on the question of whether Abigail cherished him. Not least because it’s very difficult to construct a credible argument for an answer other than “not nearly as much as she did Hannibal.”
BEVERLY KATZ: Hannibal Lecter has no reason--
WILL GRAHAM: That's exactly right. He has no discernible reason other than his own amusement and curiosity.
BEVERLY KATZ: That's hard to prove.
WILL GRAHAM: Whimsy. That's how you'll catch him. There will be a very clever detail to find on James Gray. He wouldn't be able to resist. Something that's probably been overlooked. Something hidden.
BEVERLY KATZ: I’ll look for clever details. But I'm not looking for Hannibal.
One of the purest instances of aesthetics being used as investigation techniques. It’s not even the relatively cliche aesthetic principle of Hannibal’s need to prove his superiority. Instead it comes out of his basic love of dramatic irony - the same thing that leads him to stitch the muralist into the center of his own design or to kill the judge in a way that comments on the flaws of his jurisprudence.
A straight-up killer of the week, but one that serves in most regards to highlight the rapidity with which returns are diminishing on that front. Its main appeal is this visual of a body that is partially other, and specifically partially an object of nature. But this is visibly just the mushroom people from “Amuse-Bouche” done with bees instead. Meanwhile, the case in general is completely segregated from the other plots - neither Will nor Hannibal do any work on it, and its only direct contribution to the plot at large is that an offhand comment that inspires Beverly, who literally pops her head into this plot just to hear that comment. For the most part, this just seems to be here to check a box. The box is certainly checked, but it’s tough to say more than that.
DR. CHILTON: What about Dr. Lecter?
WILL GRAHAM: Shouldn't you be my one and only psychiatrist, Dr. Chilton?
DR. CHILTON: Ideally.
WILL GRAHAM: Now about your "that" for my "this." Do not discuss me or my therapy with Hannibal Lecter. Tell him you've decided I'm no longer any of his business. I'm now under your exclusive care.
Will’s manipulation of Chilton is made considerably funnier by the repeated scenes of Will ignoring him and going fishing in his mind in previous episodes, a detail that emphasizes the degree to which there is no content to Will’s dialogue here beyond using Chilton. But in this regard the biggest praise ought be directed to Raul Esparza, who plays Chilton being manipulated with perfect dickbaggery.
BELLA CRAWFORD: Lazarus had it good. My social circle doesn't include a friend with power over death. I suppose I should've embraced Facebook while I had the chance.
The image that Bella and Hannibal are looking at is is Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus. Blake also did a treatment of the subject in the same series of Bible illustrations as The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, but the Aberdeen Art Gallery, which owns it, has not made a good quality copy available online, a decision for which I have faith Hannibal would eat them.
BELLA CRAWFORD: My veins have collapsed. I'm vomiting my stomach lining. On a good day, I sleep fifteen to eighteen hours. On a bad day, I don't sleep. My best-case scenario is prolonged pain management.
HANNIBAL: Jack will help you manage. He loves you and when you are gone, he will feel your silence like a draft.
BELLA CRAWFORD: My silence is inevitable. The war is over. Cancer is an occupying force. I want to surrender. While I still have my dignity.
If “silence like a draft” pinged your “that sounds like a line pilfered from Thomas Harris” detectors, well done. But if you guessed its context, describing Miggs’s empty cell in Silence of the Lambs after Hannibal manipulates him into swallowing his tongue, then I’m thoroughly impressed.
BELLA CRAWFORD: Suicide seems like a valid solution to my problem.
HANNIBAL: How does that make you feel?
BELLA CRAWFORD: Alive. How does that make you feel?
HANNIBAL: I’ve always found the idea of death comforting. The thought that my life could end at any moment frees me to fully appreciate the beauty, art and horror of everything this world has to offer.
This is possibly the most honest and open Hannibal has ever been in the series - a startlingly frank admission of his aesthetic philosophy. His fascination with death has been established before - consider his line “I think of my earliest memory and project forward to what I imagine will be my death. I never think about living beyond that span of time. Except by reputation” in “Savoureux.” But the explicit citation of mortality as the underpinning of his hedonism and the triptych of beauty, art, and horror is an appreciably more detailed picture.
The sequence of Will going under should be fantastic - a smooth and breathtaking transition from the mundane world to its psychic counterpart. Instead it looks inexplicably cheap, the ways in which it’s just flashing lights in a television studio unduly visible. As it’s unlikely that the sequence was actually made on the cheap (it’s generally not as though Hannibal’s hallucinatory instincts are particularly expensive), the blame would seem to fall on director David Semel, who notably does not make a return to the series. (For those who really want to be dishy - and what other way would we be in blogging Hannibal - one of the big conflicts Fuller had with CBS on Star Trek Discovery was apparently the hiring of Semel to direct the pilot.)
WILL GRAHAM: He was inducing seizures. That's how he created the blackouts. The lost time. It was strategic. Planned.
DR. CHILTON: You would only see a seizure response in a brain afflicted with photosensitive epilepsy.
WILL GRAHAM: Or afflicted with something just as damaging. Like encephalitis.
DR. CHILTON: That would suggest a radically unorthodox form of therapy.
WILL GRAHAM: Yes, it would.
Will’s game with Chilton yields results, although not ones of any particular utility (nothing recovered here being more convincing than the memory he recovered back in “Kaisecki.” Still, the particulars of Chilton’s being won over to Will’s side and the deadpan of his “radically unorthodox” line here are both delightful, if only because it’s relatively novel to see Chilton in the position of actually being useful to anybody.
DR. CHILTON: Dr. Lecter. I am so embarrassed. Didn't get my message? I canceled your appointment with Will Graham.
HANNIBAL: Is everything all right?
DR. CHILTON: I can explain. Shall we? Will's at a delicate place in his therapy. I don't want to confuse him any more than he already is.
Chilton, of course, immediately fucks it up by doing the exact thing Will asked him not to do. Was this Will’s intention, though? If so, it’s difficult to see what his game was. There seems little benefit to Will from Hannibal knowing what he knows. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that Hannibal wouldn’t figure out what being frozen out by Chilton implies, so there’s no particular reason why Chilton’s lack of discretion would be a worse situation either. Indeed, the closer one looks the harder it becomes to figure out why Will made this demand of Chilton in the first place.
JACK CRAWFORD: Last time I did this, this wasn't the way you did this.
BELLA CRAWFORD: A vaporizer. Easier on my lungs. The young man at the dispensary called this "Purple Kush." He told me all his cancer patients love its "deep-body stone."
JACK CRAWFORD: You have a marijuana sommelier?
BELLA CRAWFORD: Yes. Don't they still drug test you?
JACK CRAWFORD: I’m supporting my wife.
This scene continues the strong track record of utterly beautiful Jack/Bella scenes, both with the conceit of Jack getting stoned with his wife and the subsequent conversation about death and memory. The central conflict of these scenes, which hinges entirely on the fact that Jack and Bella love each other but are necessarily going to have irrevocably different experiences of Bella’s death, is essentially perfect - each character is utterly sympathetic, and yet there’s literally no good way forward for them.
One fundamental problem of the Will-in-prison half of the season (the back half having its own issues) is that the show has to make drama out of Will catching up with things the audience already knows. The approach used for this sequence, namely literally restaging a previous scene with Will as a spectral witness, seems like it shouldn’t work, and yet it does. Part of this is that the scene returned to is a meaty one that Will was actually there for, so there’s a sense of a wrong being righted. Part of it is also just that you can always get away with it a little easier when you’ve got a strong visual.
BEVERLY KATZ: The Chesapeake Ripper kept surgical trophies. If Hannibal's the Ripper, what's he doing with his trophies?
WILL GRAHAM: He's eating them.
This, on the other hand, falls oddly and unexpectedly flat for what is on the surface a much bigger realization. The fact that Hannibal was not only the copycat killer but the Chesapeake Ripper was not something Will knew without knowing he knew - it’s a major piece of information that Will is the first one to obtain. But it’s something the audience already knew that’s delivered in dialogue where the more immediately interesting thing is Beverly getting onto Hannibal’s trail at all, and so as a major dramatic beat (which it’s made to be via the flashbacks to Hannibal feeding Cassie Boyle to Will) it falls unfortunately short.
KATHERINE PIMMS: I can't make the pain go away, but I can make it so it doesn't matter. I protected them. I protected these people from hopelessness. And that’s beautiful.
As claims about the aesthetics of one’s art murders go, Katherine’s is one of the more defensible in the series. She’s right, at least, that offering peaceful, painless deaths surrounded by nature is an act of beauty. Her contention that non-consensually lobotomizing people and dumping them in parks is an acceptable way of doing this is, of course, pretty fucked up.
As scripted this scene was considerably stupider, with Jack growling some bullshit about how she won’t be able to help people where she’s going. Instead the script lets her case stand on its own merits and flaws, which strengthens its thematic parallels with Bella’s plot.
A middling episode ends intriguingly with two contrasting acts of cruelty on Hannibal’s part. This one is in all important regards (which is to say aesthetic ones) the crueler: he saves Bella from her deliberate overdose, effectively condemning her to die of her cancer instead of with the peace and dignity she sought. Worse, he does so out of, as Will would put it, whimsy, flipping a coin to make the decision. (Fuller, in interviews, suggests that it is strategic, to keep Jack off his game, but it is not as though the death of his wife would not also accomplish that, and it’s difficult to square away with the coin flip.) This apparent indifference to his course of action seems jarring in the context of what has seemed like his genuine regard for Bella. Simply put, it’s cruel in a way that doesn’t seem baked into the equation with Hannibal.
His other main act of cruelty, on the other hand, is entirely inevitable - literally the only thing that could possibly happen under the circumstances. In dramatic terms, the fact that Beverly is a characer in a horror narrative who has just gone down to the basement after being told not to puts limits on the degree to which the audience can sympathize with her, especially given that we don’t really want Hannibal to be caught because then the story’s over. The curious result is that murdering Beverly feels far less wrong and upsetting than not allowing Bella to die - a bit of perversity that almost redeems an otherwise awkward episode.
We'll address the gendered nature of Beverly's fate next week, of course, once her body's nice and cold.
August 9, 2017
Ikigami: Reflections on Shin Gojira in 2017
This past week I treated myself to two recent Blu-ray releases that oddly seem to compliment one another: The brand new Collector's Edition release of Species from Scream Factory (which gives the film a proper HD transfer for the first time and features a whole slew of interviews, making-of featurettes and commentary tracks), and Funimation's Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release of their localization of Shin Gojira, known as Shin Godzilla in the US.
I currently don't have access to an HD TV so I can't actually watch most of the material here yet...I haven't even touched Species, which is killing me because this set looks really interesting: Just the prospect of getting people like Natasha Henstridge and Michael Madsen to talk candidly about their experiences with that curio is tempting enough, but add to that the fact there's an alternate ending included and I truly cannot wait to be able to put this set through its paces. Whenever I get the chance I'll be sure to give this release a proper analysis and any re-evaluations I come to will definitely influence the revised version of the Species essay that will go in what will hopefully be next year's book release.
I also can't watch the main disc of Shin Gojira yet, but since a print of the film is included on DVD in this set I am able to watch that on my laptop. So the other night I sat down to watch the first new true Godzilla movie in twelve years for only my second time to see how it holds up a year later, and to see if I could hopefully make better sense of it this time around.
I've loved the Godzilla series forever. Godzilla 1984 is a movie whose imagery is burned into my psyche, and was probably one of the first pieces of genre fiction to really have a big impact on me. I always remember being mesmerized by the movie poster and the haunting, out-of-context movie stills of Godzilla prowling around an unnervingly empty Shinjuku Prefecture that’s still lit up as if the night shift salarymen were still making their rounds. In fact, it's probably directly responsible for a not-insignificant portion of my aesthetic preferences. In the 90s I remember being exposed to both the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla cartoon show and the Trendmasters Godzilla action figure line (which was my big clue the film series was still going) at about the same time, and I always made an attempt to watch the older movies whenever they would show up in horror movie marathons or if I found a copy at the local video store. When I first saw the original Gojira I was blown away by its maturity and tone, and it's a film that's only grown with me and I understand better the more I learn about Japan and East Asian history and culture. Then came 1998 and the TriStar reimagining and Godzilla was big in the West in a way I'd never seen before, and getting to see Godzilla 2000 in theatres two years later was a thrilling experience even if I was one of only four people there. I absolutely loved it, and it's still a series favourite of mine.
(I suppose another reason Species and Shin Gojira kinda feel like they go together for me is because they're both sci-fi stories that were huge influences on my development during the mid- to late-1990s, supplanting Star Trek in the focus of my genre fiction lens.)
I was beyond excited then to hear that Toho would be returning to the series with Shin Gojira last year and, in a rare event, it would actually be getting a Western theatrical release. When I saw it this past October though I confess I didn't really know what to make of it: This was unmistakably a unique and oversignified film, and it gave me more to think about and kept me thinking about it longer than any other work of scripted fiction I can remember of late, but at the time I felt it had pacing and tone issues and I wasn't quite sure what it wanted me to take away from it. I had scheduled a podcast with a fellow connoisseur of Japanese media around the time the movie was still in theatres to talk about it in which I was planning to air my simultaneous admiration of and frustration with Shin Gojira, but it kept falling through and in the end it never happened.
Now the film is out on home video though, and I'm incredibly glad to have another chance with it. The distance has afforded me time to reflect, learn and focus more on the Japanese and East Asian cultural and spiritual themes, and the privacy of getting to be alone with the movie helped me piece together a far more solid reading I can get behind. Also, I'm not sure if it's just not having the toxic and anxiety-inducing political climate of 2016 swirling around my head anymore or if the movie has actually been cut and edited for home video (there seem to be at least two scenes I swear I remember seeing in the theatrical cut that I don't recall seeing on the Funimation DVD-Provided I'm not hallucinating, one was a good cut in my opinion and the other I do kind of miss), but for whatever reason the movie seemed to flow much, much better this time and came across as far more thematically coherent and consistent. And with that, I'm easily comfortable calling Shin Gojira a masterpiece and a triumph of modern cinema: This is not only one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever made, I'd put in up there with Mad Max Fury Road as a blockbuster movie that, due to a confluence of factors, ends up transcending its medium to say something much more radical and profound.
Before we get into that though we'll need context. Personally, Godzilla appeals to me on a number of different levels, and I've found new ones as the years go on. Firstly it plays on my interest in zoology and natural history, particularly paleontology, as well as my love of adventure and exploration. But Godzilla is far more than that: The series and the creature both come out of a particularly East Asian and Japanese perspective that doesn't really translate well to Westerners, which is probably why the series has historically struggled so much to take real root over here. We've all heard of Godzilla, but not many of us, I would posit, know it as anything other than a rubbery B-movie icon. Godzilla is manifestly not this (though there are certainly points in its history where it becomes this), but the fundamental meaning and symbolism goes deeper than that. In order to get that though one needs a real anthropological and empathetic grounding in East Asian and Japanese culture, mythology and history.
Books could be written and college courses could be taught on this so that's well beyond the scope of this essay, but I'll try and fill in the blanks as they pertain to Shin Gojira whenever and wherever I can. The first thing to note is that the Godzilla movies would probably be best seen as natural disaster movies first and foremost, but in doing so it would also be best to remember what nature actually means within the context of traditional East Asian spirituality. Nature, all of nature, is sacred and natural creatures and objects are seen as manifestations of divine life energy and power. Humans are part of this melange, but their exact relationship with the rest of nature depends on which specific hyperlocal tradition you follow. At its most basic, Japanese Shinto (which is really a crass categorical label given to an uncountable number of varied and assorted folk spiritual beliefs) is about reverence for the exceptional and the awesome (in the original meaning of the word) in nature, called kami. Kami has often been translated in English as “God”, but that's actually not quite right, especially given most witches and theologians I've spoken with have no real conception of what “God” means to them anyway. Really, though they are at most basic nature spirits, anything seen as extraordinary and deserving of respect could be called kami, a concept which has loose parallels pretty much everywhere in East Asian philosophy.
So in Shin Gojira, Godzilla is explicitly called kami. The tagline for Funimation's US localization is even *literally* “A god incarnate. A city doomed”. This is not a presumptuous statement for the film to make, and in fact it's largely the entire point of it as the movie constantly reinforces this theme from beginning to end, starting with the title itself. The word “Shin” can mean a number of different things depending on the kanji used, namely, “New”, “Pure”, “True” or “God”. The intended meaning of this title given the context coming two years after a US-made Godzilla movie and twelve years after the last Japanese-made one is obvious, but it's the “New” translation paired with the “God” one that's the most interesting to me. The original Japanese tagline is similarly loaded, translating out to either “Japan vs. Godzilla” or “Reality vs. Fiction”.
Shin Gojira was written and directed by Hideaki Anno, famous for the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, while the special effects art direction was handled by Shinji Higuchi, of Attack on Titan and Gamera fame, who also shares a co-director credit with Anno. It's the connection to Neon Genesis Evangelion that was played up the most in marketing, and it does seem to be the leading informant into the film's tone: While Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show whose religious imagery and symbolism has been overstated and overrated, it's useful to look at in the context of Shin Gojira for other reasons. Evangelion has famously been called a “deconstruction” of the Hard SF giant robot series from the 80s anime period that followed Mobile Suit Gundam in much the same way Western Nerd Culture likes to say Alan Moore's Watchmen is a “deconstruction” of superhero comics. This, of course, means it's an utterly incorrect and misleading statement. What Nerds and otaku call “deconstruction” I tend to think has nothing whatsoever to do with the postmodern academic term “deconstruction” and rather everything to do with what I like to call “taking the implicit assumptions of fictional universes altogether too seriously”. The guiding theme being “What would happen if something like this happened in real life?” regardless of whether or not that is a productive or interesting question to ask.
So Shin Gojira, as many have commented on with varying degrees of snark, is fundamentally a contemporary drama about the inner workings and machinations of Japanese government bureaucracy when faced with a natural disaster for which there is no precedent. But this actually works in the case of Shin Gojira, because the Godzilla movies have always been natural disaster movies to one degree or another, so it's not a gigantic intellectual leap to go from that to delivering a starkly realistic take that shows what the procedure for dealing with that is really like in our world. And Anno and Higuchi have clearly done their research, as nothing in the film feels remotely out of place or unrealistic for how world powers would respond if a giant mutating postmodern radioactive deity suddenly emerged in Tokyo Bay and threw a shit fit.
(Indeed, Shin Gojira is reminiscent of Neon Genesis Evangelion in more ways than one. The film is a great ensemble piece with dozens of main characters, but the three cast standouts, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi, Special Envoy for the President of the United States Kayoko Anne Patterson and Environmental Ministry Bureaucrat Hiromi Ogashira are immediately reminiscent of Evangelion's breakout characters Shinji, Asuka and Rei, respectively, each of whom have gone on to inspire their own stock anime character archetypes. I could call Anno out for this, but there's really no shame in returning to themes and characters who have become a part of your style, and all three are used in pleasingly unexpected and counterintuitive ways.)
The film manages a shuddering condemnation of representative democracy without once pointing fingers at intellectual strawmen targets or lapsing into aesthetic fascism: Everyone up to the Prime Minister is depicted as equally human and heroic, earnestly wanting to save as many lives as possible while also constantly thinking about career advancement and things like GDP and international relations, and the military's eagerness to solve the problem with death-dealing weapons and masculinity is depicted as horrific, deplorable and backwards-thinking. And yet they, just like everyone else, are shown to be capable of human empathy and growth. Given Japan's current real-world Prime Minister is the reactionary-as-fuck Shinzō Abe, a man literally part of a secret society who explicitly wants to rebuild Shōwa-era Imperial Japan, remove the constitutional prohibition of war and make women second-class citizens, the importance of a movie like this depicting a noble and heroic government cabinet who are just trying to do their jobs and minimize death and destruction cannot be overstated.
This ties into Shin Gojira's quintessentially Japanese depiction of a struggle between generations. The dangerously inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy is shown to be a vestige of the old generation and Godzilla, whom former series producer Shogo Tomiyama once called “a Shinto God of Destruction”, can be seen as a cleansing fire come to bring the apocalypse and sweep away the old to usher in the new world, as gods of destruction do in so many world myths. That said though, there's a fundamental moral ambiguity to Shin Gojira and no one person or group is ever truly depicted as having the moral high ground permanently. As much as Yaguchi and the crack team of otaku he pulls together to save the day talk up how they're the future of Japan, this is just as frequently shown to be political power play, and most of them have less-than-noble ulterior motives to increase their own status and less than savoury personal infelicities.
There's a great scene where Hiromi speculates that Godzilla might be radioactive, only to be laughed at by one of her colleagues, who asks if she has a sense of humour. This man, visibly a nebbish otaku, then independently comes to the same conclusion as her, makes a big deal about it and tries to take credit for the discovery until Yaguchi makes him apologise to Hiromi directly. This mirrors a scene earlier on where Yaguchi is laughed at by the cabinet for suggesting the disturbance in Tokyo Bay could be a living creature and chastised for “telling jokes”. And at the end of the film, even though Yaguchi and the team pull everything together at the (literal) last minute, there's a real question over whether the future they'll build is going to be any better then the past they're “scrapping”. The overall tone reminds me of one of my favourite parts of Godzilla vs. Biollante: After the young, up-and-coming Major Sho Kuroki successfully implements a crack plan to delay Godzilla's arrival, one of his older superiors comments that it's time for his generation to retire and let the young people take over. But his suggestion is dismissed: “My generation is just like any other. There's good and bad people and we all learn and make mistakes”. The film's closing lines echo this, with one of the other main characters saying “Wherever you go, people are the same. There's good and there's bad in every country”.
And yet change is something shown to be positive and necessary. Japan is an island nation, and a deeply syncretic one, even if certain reactionary factions within its culture don't want to admit this. Central to many flavours of Shinto is the idea of recombinatory life force and creative energy, known as musubi, also translated as “the spirit of birth and becoming”. It is good to be constantly creating, evolving and adapting, and this is what Shin Gojira seems to posit will be the true future of Japan. Yaguchi and his team are frustrated by Japan's ossified government bureaucracy, while many of their superiors in that selfsame bureaucracy are frustrated that after all these years Japan is still functionally a periphery territory of the United States and the United Nations, which are functionally the same thing. Meanwhile, the US president patronizingly comments that Japan has “grown up enough to have backdoor deals”.
(As much as Shin Gojira is self-critique of Japanese society, what it says about the United States is sobering. In the end, it's up to the combined efforts of Japan, France, Germany, rogue American humanitarians and Godzilla to save Japan from the US and the US from itself. Shin Gojira may be fundamentally a Japanese movie for a Japanese audience, but this is a devastating call-out the film's periphery audience would do well to hear and internalize.)
And Godzilla itself changes and adapts. This film's Godzilla undergoes metamorphosis, changing between four different forms, constantly adapting to new environments and new challenges. Godzilla's ultimate goal, if any, seems to be, delightfully, self-preservation and reproduction: As in many movies of this type Godzilla doesn't seem to deliberately cause destruction, and various scientists point out how scales shed by Godzilla's final form could grow into new creatures. This Godzilla, like so many others before it, must then be female, or at least partially female, and the somber lament that plays when Godzilla uses its atomic blast for the first time called “Who Will Know (Tragedy)”, presumed to be sung from Godzilla's perspective, even has a female vocalist. Not only does this characterization put me in mind of a cleaner, more coherent depiction of Species' Sil, but it's also a charmingly impish and validating critique of the series' insular and broish Western fanbase. Kami knows no gender. Godzilla has always been portrayed as a tragic monster, and in spite of the unimaginable destruction it causes we're still meant to empathize with it (a theme the “suitimation”, so maligned in the West, actually emphasizes). After all, human and nature have always been one, and both are divine.
(This is very much a movie for a reclaimed and reappropriated postmodern Shinto perspective, and there other comparisons to be drawn between Shin Gojira and Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's previous work aside from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan and Gamera. The atomic blast scene is reminiscent of Anno's work on the God Warrior scene in Hayao Miayazki's anime adaptation of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a film that is very much about mankind's relationship with a preternatural animist reality. Anno and Higuchi even collaborated on a live-action prequel to Nausicaä showing a God Warrior destroying Tokyo, and Hayao Miyazaki himself even makes a cameo appearance, alongside fellow 80s anime legend Mamoru Oshii, in Shin Gojira. Given the former's statements about wanting to see Tokyo destroyed by a natural disaster, this adds a fun additional layer of subtext to the film by way of a metatextual endorsement.)
With a face like a deep sea angler fish, this Godzilla looks like something out of the darkest recesses of nature, but just as nothing is truly natural and unspoiled and no culture is truly pure, Godzilla itself is syncretic, born of human and natural forces. Traditionally, of course, Godzilla was a pre-existing creature awakened and affected by atomic radiation, both a victim and perpetrator of the ensuing violence. In Shin Gojira, however, the metaphor is literalized: Godzilla is a new form of life spawned by nuclear radiation, an advent of the modern world, and has adapted and evolved in new ways to metabolize it. It is by no accident then that Hiromi, Kayoko and others state at various times that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its terrible power, Godzilla is a perfect life form above humans. Just as the kami are of Earth but live in a perfect parallel world where they serve as the ideal aspirational role models, so does Godzilla embody the lessons we must learn in our own mortal existences and provide the blueprint for how best to adapt next. A living kami and God Incarnate, Godzilla is an example of who we must strive to be.
In Shin Gojira, Godzilla's backstory is connected intimately with the mysterious professor Goro Maki, a renegade scholar studying the effects of radioactive fallout who felt used by academia and betrayed by the governments of the US and Japan after he first discovered Godzilla sixty years ago. Right before the events of the film Maki sailed his boat out into Tokyo Bay where we are led to believe he committed suicide. As the film opens, the coast guard found his boat adrift with only an inexplicable cipher and origami figurine left behind aboard it as any sort of clue. Not long after, Godzilla first makes its presence known to the world. Right underneath Maki's abandoned pleasure craft. Perhaps, like many of us do if we're lucky, the professor found his true self in his life's work. Birth and death are always connected through apotheosis, and Goro Maki's parting words “Do as you will” sound quite a bit like “Do what thou wilt”.
There's far more to be gleaned from Shin Gojira then I can examine in this essay. If you're looking for an endorsement, that's it: This film reminds me that the vapid culture industry can occasionally be gamed to produce something truly remarkable, though perhaps that's not too surprising coming from a Japanese perspective where all art is considered considered equally valid and worthy of respect no matter what it's being made for. If you have never seen a Godzilla movie and are for whatever reason squeamish about checking out the first one, watch this one. If you want to understand what Godzilla means within a Japanese context, watch this movie. If you are skeptical about the artistic merit of the Godzilla series, watch this movie. If you're interested in things I like and recommend, watch this movie. Shin Gojira currently remains the definitive contemporary example of what I'm drawn to in pop culture and what I hope it can provide, and I would encourage anyone who feels they may share part of my perspective and aesthetics to give it their undivided attention.
August 8, 2017
The Proverbs of Hell 16/39: Hassun
HASSUN: A sushi course with small side dishes that sets a seasonal theme. Janice Poon discusses it in terms of balancing opposites, which could be made related to the weighing of guilt and innocence involved in a trial with relatively little critical legerdemain.
A bewildering and suggestive opening image as Will is shown imagining his own execution from the perspective of the executioner. This is an entirely plausible thing for Will to do - indeed the idea that Will would actively try to empathize with his potential executioner is really interesting. But its substance is in practice merely “unsettling cold open,” the impact of the image left entirely for the viewer instead of the narrative. In one sense this is emblematic of the episode, which is very much the season’s “Œuf.” It’s actively identified by Fuller as the weak link, and sees the show attempting its spin on courtroom drama instead of police procedural, only to find that the move to the second half of Law and Order is a step further than the forced perspective brilliance of its iconography can sustain.
This smirk off the line where the prosecutor asserts that Will is the smartest person in the courtroom is interesting; its most superficial reading is standard issue “Hannibal gloating about how clever he is,” and yet given the depth of his investment in Will’s development it’s equally likely that this is a smile of genuine satisfaction that his friend is finally getting the critical reception he deserves.
JACK CRAWFORD: My instincts have not yet arrived at conviction.
KADE PRURNELL: Mine have. With the benefit of no prior involvement and no personal connections to the accused.
JACK CRAWFORD: Meaning, I can't be impartial.
KADE PRURNELL: Of course you can be impartial. But right now, you're not. You have to believe something. As long as there is reason and evidence to believe. You have reason. You have evidence.
It’s interesting that Prurnell’s case here frames belief as a moral obligation as opposed to a logical consequence. She is, after all, presumably not saying that all things there is both evidence for and some reason to believe are true. Rather, she is suggesting that an FBI agent has a duty to believe in these circumstances that Jack is being lax in. For all his faults, even Jack ain’t buying that bullshit.
JACK CRAWFORD: He can think like anybody. He has pure empathy and projection. He can imprint profiles on the blank slate of his mind for us to read.
MARION VEGA: Sounds like a supervillain.
Transparently untrue; a supervillain with such a thoroughly non-offensive power would be an extremely bizarre idea. A power like this is far more suited to a superhero, or, better yet, the troubled protagonist of some overly pompous post-House cop drama. Which is to say that perhaps genre-based narratology is not a great alley for Hannibal to wander down.
HANNIBAL: Tell me, Jack. Was your testimony meant to be a resignation?
JACK CRAWFORD: Something very appealing about walking away from all the noise. I'm content to let the chips fall.
HANNIBAL: The magic door is always attractive. Step through and leave all your burdens behind.
In which Hannibal briefly touches on the central iconography of an altogether different show. Jack’s self-destructive streak, on the other hand, is a new and interesting turn in his character. His willingness to be cavalier with the lives of others in order to get what he wants is well-established, but now he is in effect treating himself like he has Miriam, Will, and Beverly.
JACK CRAWFORD: I've been thinking about taking my wife back to Italy. We could live there. Bella could die there.
HANNIBAL: You're not sick, Jack. You don't have to go into the ground with her. When Bella is lost to you, the FBI could still be there.
JACK CRAWFORD: You’re telling me not to commit professional suicide?
HANNIBAL: As a friend, I’m telling you not to force an issue for the short-term emotional satisfaction it can have.
As with basically all conversations Jack and Hannibal have about Bella, Hannibal’s motivations here seem to be a genuine desire to help. Notably (though it’s far from clear at this point in the episode) Hannibal is ultimately on Jack’s side in trying to save Will, and so pulling Jack back from this self-destructive move is counterproductive to him, further strengthening the case that it’s done out of compassion.
JACK CRAWFORD: The timing is deliberate, choreographed to drop the ear at the start of Will's trial.
HANNIBAL: Such a gift has great significance.
JACK CRAWFORD: A "gift." From who?
HANNIBAL: Will claimed someone else committed the crimes he's accused of.
JACK CRAWFORD: He said that someone was you.
HANNIBAL: Perhaps he was half right
BRIAN ZELLER: You gotta be kidding me.
The basic plot of “Hassun” - and part of its unsatisfying nature - is that Hannibal goes on one of his characteristic improvisational streaks when he jumps onto the “frame whoever sent Will the ear” plan to disastrous if ultimately inconsequential ends. In this regard he is unlucky that Zeller is not the sort of person he could confide in and get a needed sanity check.
HANNIBAL: It seems you have an admirer.
WILL GRAHAM: You think someone sent me an ear because they admire me?
HANNIBAL: The boundaries of what's considered normal are getting narrower. Outside those boundaries, this may be intended as a helpful gesture.
WILL GRAHAM: How far would you go to help me?
HANNIBAL: It hadn't occurred to me to send you an ear. But I'm grateful and intrigued that someone has.
WILL GRAHAM: Gratitude has a short half-life.
The most astonishing thing about this exchange (and indeed potentially the episode) is Hannibal’s suggestion that the reason the ear fails to clearly communicate admiration to Will is that people are just too narrow-minded these days. This exchange also marks the first point where the episode bothers to flag that Hannibal didn’t do this, an arguable oversight that means the episode’s central tension and mystery fails to come into view quite soon enough.
ALANA BLOOM: I don't have romantic feelings for Will Graham. I have a professional curiosity.
LEONARD BRAUER: I like "professional curiosity." It's so... indifferent. Unless you look like you're lying when you say it. But you didn't.
WILL GRAHAM: She wasn't lying.
A rare bit of Alana characterization that actually does follow sensibly from what’s come before with the character, in that Alana’s somewhat callous motivations in dealing with Will were well-established in the first season. And yet collapsing her obvious sexual interest in Will to a mere manifestation of her professional curiosity still feels cheap somehow, perhaps because the revelation that Alana is a far more callous person than the audience is inclined to think does not actually result in her developing in any way.
The script does not call for these cuts to Will’s mental world, which call back to Chilton’s interview with him in “Kaiseki.” Their insertion, however, is deeply funny and enlivens what would otherwise be one in an increasingly tedious sequence of scenes in which people talk about Will without anything actually happening per se.
WILL GRAHAM: Occam's broom. You intentionally ignored facts that refute your argument and hoped nobody noticed.
HANNIBAL: You noticed. I wanted to dispel your doubts once and for all.
WILL GRAHAM: My doubts about what?
HANNIBAL: Me. I want you to believe in the best of me, Will. Just as I believe in the best of you.
Occam’s broom was coined by the biologist Sydney Brenner, and is accurately described by Graham. Hannibal, meanwhile, is oversignifying more than usual - the context (the ear killer) makes it impossible to read “believe in the best of me” as anything other than Hannibal wanting Will not to think he’s a murderer, and yet Hannibal’s “believe in the best of you” can only be taken to refer to Will’s capacity for murder.
ALANA BLOOM: And the point you're trying to make is reasonable doubt.
LEONARD BRAUER: That's a win.
ALANA BLOOM: Best you can hope for is mistrial.
LEONARD BRAUER: Will Graham's alive. Also a win.
ALANA BLOOM: You won't be able to plead unconsciousness again.
Hannibal apparently takes place in a world where there’s no such thing as pleading in the alternative.
Having come up with the iconography of the Wendigo, the show wisely begins shoving it in all manner of places to see what odd and compelling images result. This is one of the best.
MARION VEGA: Your honor, the witness's personal beliefs and biases are driving his conclusions. These are clearly two different killers, two different cases. The prejudicial impact outweighs the probative value.
LEONARD BRAUER: There is sufficient similarity to consider this defense on the issue.
JUDGE DAVIES: I’m ruling this defense inadmissable, Mr. Brauer. All previous testimony on the matter will be stricken from the record.
A rather sudden ruling that ends up feeling completely unearned in the context of the episode. Although we, Will, and Hannibal all know that Vega is correct that there are two different killers, the judge doing so with sufficient decisiveness as to rule out the entire line of defense on the basis of no expert testimony save for Hannibal’s (who spoke in favor of the defense) seems excessive.
HANNIBAL: Not only is justice blind, it is mindless and heartless.
Hannibal makes another artist’s statement, though in this case the work would be better suited by being allowed to stand on its own without such an obvious and didactic explanation.
JACK CRAWFORD: I didn't know how much I wanted this to end, until it didn't. No verdict. No ending. It starts over. Right from the beginning. Like the trial never happened. Why?
HANNIBAL: Psychopathic violence is predominantly goal-oriented, a means to a very particular end.
JACK CRAWFORD: The killer wanted a mistrial?
HANNIBAL: It's an elegant, if rather unorthodox, solution.
JACK CRAWFORD: To what?
HANNIBAL: He spared Will a guilty verdict and, for the moment, spared Will's life.
Given that Hannibal is continuing to issue artist’s statements here, his invocation of motive is interesting, in that this crime is goal-oriented in a way that the bulk of his murders are not.
ALANA BLOOM: How are you feeling, Will?
WILL GRAHAM: I’m numb except for dreading the loss of numbness. I walked out of that courtroom and I could hear my blood like a hollow drumming of wings. I had the absurd feeling whoever this killer is, he walked out of that courtroom with me.
Will’s line is adapted from Red Dragon, where it originally describes his feelings walking out of his first meeting with Hannibal.
WILL GRAHAM: He’s going to reach out to me.
ALANA BLOOM: What does he want?
WILL GRAHAM: He wants to know me. What do you want?
ALANA BLOOM: I want to save you.
This contrasts with Alana’s earlier declaration of professional curiosity. A nuanced reading would suggest this speaks to her values as a psychiatrist - her professional duty is a desire to save people. Alas, it’s Alana so the nuanced reading is probably wrong.,
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