The Rants and Raves of N. W. Clerk

CGI Violence vs. the violencia - Why Gamers and Politicians play the same game.

2007-08-16T16:01:00.001+12:00

I have been thinking for the last couple days about what i called the wolfenstien fantasy.

Put briefly the wolfenstein fantasy is any use of the media that seeks to make complex human issue straightforward and morally simple by invoking the uncanny, the demonic and the odd. Thus the namesake game (about an American soldier escaping from a Nazi prison) makes the violence easier to stomach by making Nazi's occultist's plumbing the depths of an un-dead evil in hopes of finding a weapon that will defeat the allies. The fantasy has its draw because it dehumanizes humans that commit disturbing acts. And as agents of the undead, demonic I can kill them with impunity. I am only doing my duty, after all, because left to their own they would eat my heart and draw pentagrams with my blood.

My fear isn't that computer games are adversely affecting young people. My fear is that the general discussion in the political arena has become a market of competing wolfenstein fantasies.

In America, the right have their fantasy of "terrorists" people entirely dedicated to the downfall of all that "we" hold dear. And their fantasy of the left, who would betray us and turn America over to Shiite rule if given a chance. The left have their fantasy of "oppression" of the faceless nameless power mongers set on destroying the environment and draining your retirement fund, and their fantasy of the right, who love war, drink oil from barrels like vampires and secretly plan the fate of the world while on corporate junkets. It a fun game to play, you create a fictitious media character hell-bent on your destruction and then you destroy it. It's why every shoot-em-up computer game is fun, everyone shoots at you first, Every shot fired is self defense, none of the dead are innocent.

It's a great way to design video games and draft movie scripts starring Californian republicans, it is a terrible way to run an informed public debate.

Perhaps the reason that you hear politicians complaining about computer games is that in them, we find a perfect working model of politics as it stands. Every computer game designer is a lobbyist, -sketching the enemy as demons, wholly committed to your cause, and your inevitable victory. Video games are almost entirely propaganda, mixed with a little user skill. As is politics. The same slight of hand that morphs "avoiding any actual constructive debate" into "staying on message" morphs a violent CGI killing spree into a quest of honor.

The media doesn't always dehumanize. It can, and does, deconstruct the various wolfenstien fantasies that we find. In movies like American History X, Schindlers List, the Shawshank Redemption in fact, in every great work of narrative fiction, every film making triumph. (The latest was Harry Potter, it took the entire series to baptize Severus Snape as a great noble and brave character, but it would take only a campaign ad to destroy him if he ran for president.)

We need to understand that the power of the "violencia", on both sides of the isle, resides in its ability to take a huge, epic, (seven book) issue and paint it in a 30 second black and white campaign ad. The first violence is directed toward the issue itself. Truth is always the first casualty.

Every computer game starts with a 30 second "ad" a small clip that explains, in the most concise terms possible why you need to destroy every moving graphic you see. And more importantly, why there you are able to do so without ethical scruples.

Politics aren't a computer game.
I'm keeping my scruples.

Technorati tags: wolfenstein, fear, politics, computer games, republicans, democrats

Reading Journal 2: On Belief by Slavoj Zizek - Marriage

2007-08-15T11:36:00.001+12:00

Zizek has this little peice on giving and sacrifice. In it he takes apart the standard concept of gift.

Gift ceases to be something given from someone to someone but something always already given. When I buy a gift I buy it for someone and never consider the object mine.
The giver never owns the gift, the sacrifice is always already made.

It made me think about my marriage vows.

When I promised myself to my wife, I merely articulated reality, that I was hers. I don't think it would have been possible to be otherwise. I be ready to make a vow of marriage, is to be already married, is to already have given yourself to that person. That commitment is always already present. Thus, I haven't yet kept my marriage vow, they've been descriptive rather than prescriptive.

One cay i may find myself in a place where my vows aren't descriptive, where I dont long to/want to be hers. At that point, and only at that point, does my marriage become living and active. Neverthelss not my will, but my word be done.

I was talking to my brother about a friend who has walked out on his wife. "You can live with a girl and no one cares, but if you're gonna marry her then you're in for the long hall" he said. Precisely. When men walk out on their wives (and vice versa) because they "don't feel in love" or "don't love her like I did" they have missed that magical moment where a farce can become a vow. Where a description can become a promise, where easy words become hard promises. Men who walk out when it becomes hard, when it requires sacrifice, or forgiveness, or change have only proved that they were never really married, that they spoke too soon, that they were tested and found wanting.

Marriage is an uncessecary promise made for when it will become necessary. It creates a void that will be filled with suffering rather than desertion, but that suffereing will produce hope and perfect faith.

No wonder the apostle Paul couldn't talk about marriage without talking about Christ and the church.
No wonder James told people suffering for Christ to rejoice.

One day when the gloss has worn off my marriage and life offers me a shinier, prettier, new, exciting other way and I turn aside and say "I can't I'm married" a little bit of me will rejoice, because for the first time I will know for certain I am.

I have heard people talking about Jean-Luc Marion's work on the phenomenology of the Gift, must track that down.

Del.icio.us tags: Zizek, Gift, marriage vows, sacrifice, apostle paul

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Reading Journal: On Belief By Slavoj Zizek - The Holocaust

2007-08-14T12:32:00.000+12:00

I've just finished reading On Belief by Slavoj Zizek which was counter-intuitive and brilliant. I don't think I've read nearly enough Freud and Lacan to take it all in so it merits some research reading before a (definite) rereading. He doesn't seem to be easy to find aroud these parts (neither is Lacan) so I'm thinking that I'll probably end up driving to buy/borrow the books I need.

One interesting passage about the Holocaust has gotten me thinking. (I married a into Dutch-Jewish family - decendants of Russian Jews which has lead me to think alot lately on the holocaust.) One of Zizek's points was that we do the holocaust a dis-service when he venerate it as "evil", "demonic", "horrible". When we invoke the uncanny to describe the holocaust, Zizek would argue, we venerate it beyond humanity's grasp, and thus also beyond humanity's responsibility. No Nazi took a "byronesque" vow to serve darkness, or made a Miltonesque vow "Evil, be my Good." No Nazi was a demon, every Nazi was human. Each death camp was a human death camp; each crime a human crime.

This is the draw of shadenfreude, or what I think I'd now call the wolfenstein fantasy. Shadenfruede is pleasure taken when other falls. Wolfenstein was a series of computer games in which you battle Nazi's in prisons and old gothic castles. In every game, you began fighting aginst humans but ended up fighting the undead, the demonic, the monsters in the catacombs. This fantasy latches onto our desire that Nazi's truly be byronesque EVIL men, instead of fallen men. The occult, the mutant are conjured to set us at ease in the midst of an evil that is human.

Movies like American History X are useful antidotes to the wolfenstein fantasy, watching the very human spiral from fear, to hatred, to violence, to revenge. I also wonder weather that is why we hear so much of terms like "axis of evil" or "islamic terrorism" lately. Are these terms employed precisely to invoke the uncanny and detach us from responsible thinking about how to destroy these HUMAN evils?

I went to see Fiddler on the Roof with my wife and was struck again by the detached character of the Russian Constable. Who likes Tevye "even though" he is a Jew. "Even though" is the mark of the uncanny. Even though you are a jew, or black, or Christian, or Arab. I agree with Zizek. Too often the uncanny is invoke so we don't have to deal with the world in its real human uglyness.

That's why we label, isn't it? That's why we have to us/them the world. So "we" can dismiss "them" into the realm of the unhuman, the ignored or the demonic. Which is really an admission that we cannot deal with others as they are...

But I deal with me as I am. I love me in spite of my history, in spite of my darkest shades, in spite of my most desteable actions, thoughts, and motivations. Damn, the hardest teaching in the world is "love your neighbour as yourself". Especially when the good samaritain makes "them" my neighbour. Treat "them" (no matter how scary thte scare quotes) how I would treat me.

There are more thoughts (on marriage) but they can wait for another post.

Next book: Renewing the Center by Stanley J. Grenz

Technorati tags: slavoj zizek, shadenfreude, nazi, holocaust, wolfenstein, lacan, jews

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