One of my students posted some interesting thoughts about what inspired the previous post, which he put up in his journal on DeviantArt.com (an interesting website, if you haven't checked it out. I can't vouch for its content, save that it's 'interesting' in all sorts of ways). His thoughts are, as always, lucid and fraught with potential. I'm glad he's in my class. Anyway, he has a very interesting post that touches on some of the video game philosophy (I've gotta come up with a better term than that...it needs something more poststructural) that he and I have worked on. It's too brief for my taste, though his essay on Xenogears is eye-opening, to say the least. He has some less-than-supportive/understanding friends on DeviantArt that commented on his ideas, leading his comments section to be less than worthwhile. I have the Shakespeare quote gadget on this blog, and it, ironically, has a very fitting motto that I would like to make a type of mantra for all online interactions for everybody (hey, a fellow can dream, right?).
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.
Apt, no? I think we all could benefit a lot from this sort of theme.
Close Item.
The Concept of Self
Reading again. Reading almost always leads me to the blogspot, which is not a bad thing. I was reading a bit about Deleuze and Spinoza (two philosophers--one extremely modern, the other Enlightened--that you can learn about by following the links; they're Wikipedia entries, so believe with caution) and how some of their philosophies and purviews could be reflected on zombies. This comes in the form of the aforementioned book, so that should be no surprise to hear where it came from. But today's blog isn't about zombies, directly (I can never say 100% that what I have to say will have NOTHING to do with ghouls, since they seem to have eaten my brain, of late). Instead it's a tiny little moan that I feel as though my feeble brain is too shallow to be able to touch what others have said before. In fact, the two philosophers I just mentioned are incredibly complex, and with the ache in my head and the lateness of the hour, I couldn't make any sense out of their words. So, consider this my 'poor me' paragraph: I'm not as smart as other (read: any) philosophers. This mini-treatise, then, is my own exploration, other people having thought this stuff up be gosh-darned.
Okay, onto the concept of self. Loosely, I've been wondering more and more about this topic as I've been exploring Frankenstein with my class. The kids are bright, they're understanding the material, and we've had some phenomenal discussions. We've been arguing about things like the relevancy of a one's way of being created and how that would impact one's locus in an afterlife, whether or not Victor Frankenstein is responsible for the actions of his monster/creation (and, if so, if God, then, would be culpable for our misdeeds), and other great thoughts. But one of the things that is most emphatically questioned in the book is what is identity? What makes us us? It's one of the bedrock questions of philosophy, and, as such, it applies to what I was saying earlier about video games.
The concept of self, then, must have a foundation somewhere: social, religious, philosophical, biological, scientific. Similarly, there are many avenues that we can take: Am I a mind first and a body second (or the two are one, as Spinoza claims)? Is thought a requisite to selfhood (as Descartes is famous for having declared)? Did I come from elsewhere or an elsewhen (as my religion posits)? While I feel that I have answers to some of these questions, it's definitely not an easy thing to dilute into a blog post, even one as notoriously (to me and the two other people who glance at it) long and pointless as mine. But the point remains that who I am is something that has to be considered carefully.
Insert Coins to Continue
Within the purview of video games comes up this same ontological crisis. No, I correct myself. Within the purview of video games, this same ontological crisis should surface, but it rarely, if ever, does. Here's what I mean, with Resident Evil 5 as an excellent example: In the game, your avatar is Chris Redfield (or Sheva, but that's not the point--let's not get distracted by tangents). You, the gamer, manipulate Chris via the handful (literal?) of buttons on the controller. You wish to aim your weapon--the L1 button will do that for you. Pull a knife on someone? L2 makes that desire come true. Plenty of control.
Now let's put Chris in action. A possessed Majini comes after you. Knowing the type of game it is, you ready your weapon (L1) and fire a shot into him (R1). Rinse and repeat until Evil is vanquished. You pwn3d him, FTW.
You (the individual) have overcome the Other (the Majini) via an intermediate resource (the avatar, Chris). You are only barely removed from the situation by a carefully placed camera, just above the shoulder of your avatar. Your self is not your self, but only just. Let me try to poke at this from a different angle.
Levels of Detachment
If I write the word 'dog' then you're going to conjure up a particular image. If you're one of my pals, you might imagine this. You will most likely imagine an animal that has a copious amount of fur, walks on four legs, drools when you cook bacon, etc. These characteristics are all part of an intersubjective agreement between us and the world, dialectical shortcuts that allow us to talk about 'doghood' without having to necessarily discuss a single dog and her characteristics. Moving away from concrete concepts into a more abstract one is requisite to understand a broad enough definition to encompass all of what we're discussing (doghood). This is detaching yourself, putting in levels of distance between what is real (what the dog Emmy looks like, acts like, smells like) and what is perceived (the commonalities between all dogs, the concept of doghood).
Okay, what's the point of the poststructuralist platitudes? Well, these levels of detachment get exacerbated the more we talk about them. There may be what Plato would call the Form of a dog, but every iteration on the planet is merely a shadow of that. Then, if we start to construct a type of meaning around 'doghood' and try to convey that through language, we've created an additional level of detachment from the Form: a copy of a copy (of a copy of a copy, depending on how many words we have to use to describe the brute). I argue that these levels of detachment are part of the loss of individuality that is rampant in society, and that video games are attempting to recapture that loss.
Tying it Together
Let's look at Chris in Africa in the midst of the biohazard breakout that must be averted by him (and lots of bullets). In the game, your avatar represents you. Whatever he desires, you desire--though, perhaps, for different reasons. Because he is a digital you, there is some loss in translation--a detachment from the Form--and those shortcomings have to be supplanted by giving the avatar some distinctly un-you-like qualities. F'rinstance:
- You (most likely) do not have biceps larger than most five-year-olds' heads.
- You (most likely) do not have the capacity to carry a rocket-launcher on top of an assault rifle on top of a shotgun.
- You (most likely) do not find it advantageous to cut open fruit in the hopes of finding ammo in the remains of it.
- You (most likely) have not punched a zombie-creating plague-ridden human so hard that his head explodes.
As I said earlier, overcoming the detachment is an attempt to regain what has been lost in translation. Indeed, this could be another reason that makes video games so compelling.
Lost In A Sea of Humanity
There's a deliberate misquote of the book (and movie) Fight Club that gets bandied about: "You're a unique and beautiful snowflake...just like everybody else." This is the same idea that's explored (a little) in the movie The Incredibles. "If everybody's special, nobody is." Our society is specifically built around the idea of the self being worthwhile--indeed, the very purpose of our government is to ensure personal freedoms, liberties, and rights. This expectation of the value of the one over the many has lead to its share (if not in equal portions, at least in equal terms of good and bad) of incredible creation and horrible depravity. The hedonistic tendencies that have ultimately corrupted and rotted our economic system are proof of what happens when everyone thinks they are the only one that matters. Conversely, we see stalwart examples of humanity that recognize the power of one: Mother Theresa springs instantly to my mind, though other philanthropists are just as deserving of the attention.
So in a world where if you aren't rich, famous, beautiful, or all of the above, it is difficult to feel the value of the self. An individual becomes one in a sea of similarities. All experiences are felt and shared alike (a tendency even more true with the ubiquity of the Internet and self-serving and -aggrandizing blog posts that wind on for eternity to no valid end), and the One become blurred into the Other.
Some would argue that this blurring is not at all a bad thing. No black, no white, a "beauty of gray" as the band Live croons in their debut album. But there's a counterpoint to the idea that lack of definition is superior, and video games fight that very concept--sometimes literally.
Busting Caps and Taking Names
There's an overt American aggression to a lot of video games (particularly titles like the Resident Evil series), and the aggression is not necessarily just on the violent side of things. Still, it's important to note what I mentioned earlier about the individual becoming one with the ideal world represented in a game. If inside of the fake African community portrayed in Resident Evil 5, what I do finally matters then it is of extreme importance that I do everything I can to matter. No longer am I simply a replaceable cog in a wheel. I have been imbued with almost supernatural strength, stamina, health, and reserves of ammo. I can finally make a difference. I can save the world, one head shot at a time. The gray is gone: there is right and wrong, good and evil, my death (and the death of the world) and my life (and the life of the world).
These fantasies, as it were, have been around as long as epic stories of heroic daring-do has existed. Poems and myths of men like Beowulf, Heracles, and King Arthur all attempt to appropriate the worth of an individual and make it extend outward--to have the actions carry significant and lasting weight. The purpose of those texts, among others, was to help the audience live vicariously--to matter vicariously. What danger lies in the story, then, when people feel they can almost save the world?
Video games, I submit, one up the long held traditions of vicarious self-worth, allowing the gamer to participate in her own future, to validate her own existence within that world. There is a danger, of course, of the digital imbricating upon the analog--the real world. But I'm more interested in seeing the analog infect the digital, of the real world mattering in the video game world. If we allow the game to replace real life, then we have lost. But if real life can replace the game--and the value of a person as an individual is celebrated--then we have won.
No comments:
Post a Comment