Spoilers follow.
When Bioshock Infinite was released way back on March 26, it was the hip thing to laud its solid gameplay, its revolutionary addition of a genuinely helpful NPC, its attention to character development, and its truly riveting story. Well, that was then. Now, it seems the hip thing to do is to write cynical polemics on how a game that spends a great deal of time demonizing racism is actually a racist game. Soon, it will be the hip thing to rebut these claims. Let me jump on the bandwagon early.
The major contention that I've read has to do with the evolution of the Vox Populi movement as Booker and Elizabeth go reality-hopping through various iterations of Columbia, and the downtrodden racial minorities in the city become more and more serious about overthrowing their oppressors. The problem seems to be with the characterization of the leader of the Vox Populi, a black woman and former house servant named Daisy Fitzroy. As the revolution takes shape, Fitzroy's methods become increasingly brutal. She leads her people on a scorched earth, murderous rampage through the upper city, killing anyone with status, property, or, essentially, a non-Irish white face. Booker makes a comment just prior to confronting Fitzroy, saying that the only difference between her and Comstock is how they spell their names. Fitzroy is then revealed to be a callous, calculating psychopath, willing to go to any lengths to assure the destruction of the Founders, even to the point of killing innocent children.
Now, of course, this is a bridge too far. It's impossible to countenance such an ideology, and the game doesn't make you try. You fight a mix of Vox and Founder enemies throughout the rest of the story, all of whom want you dead for various reasons. The problem some folks seem to have with this is that it effectively demonizes a movement of criminally oppressed racial minorities in their effort to overthrow the racist theocracy that rules them. I have a problem with this assertion for a number of reasons.
First, history shows that revolutions tend to be bloodier and less humane in direct ratio to the concentration of power at the top of the overthrown regime. The American Revolution of 1776 and Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688 witnessed regime change with a minimum of violence (so far as revolutions go), and was a result of the bifurcation of power in the British Empire. Starting in 1215 with the signing of the Magna Carta, the power of the British crown slowly declined. What started as a limited power sharing agreement between the king and his vassals had by the mid 17th Century become a full-fledged constitutional monarchy, with Parliament holding a much greater share of power than could rightly be imagined in other monarchies of the time. When Oliver Cromwell conspired with Parliament to overthrow Charles I, the only person who lost his head was poor Charlie. In fact, the 1688 revolution in Britain was considered so glorious because of its other moniker: The Bloodless Revolution.
Conversely, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 literally resulted in rivers of blood in the streets. Why the difference? The French monarchy was absolute. Any attempt at parliamentary input had been abolished by Louis XIV, a policy continued by his feckless forebears. Similarly, the Russian monarchy was absolute. Serfdom in Russia was abolished in 1861. The nation was run by a detached, opulent aristocracy that engaged in ceaseless racial and ethnic oppression. The result of both the French and Russian revolutions was violent, chaotic bloodshed. There's a reason the newly minted U.S. government, which had just completed its own revolution, declined to assist the new French government with its uprising: the Founding Fathers thought the French revolutionaries were extremists.
The long belabored point is: Comstock's Columbia is much more 1917 Russia than it is 1776 Britain. When oppressed minorities or working classes are stomped under heel for long enough, denied any voice whatsoever, and constantly reminded by the upper classes that they are biologically inferior, the revolution overthrowing that upper class sect is not likely to involve much civil discussion. Cogent arguments can be made that Fitzroy's depiction borders on caricature, and that her bloodthirstiness is unrealistic. I would disagree. For any of his philosophical strengths, Vladimir Lenin was a brutal man surrounded by murderers. During the October Revolution, nearly all members of the landed gentry and clergy were killed, including women and children (recall the storied Anastasia Romanov legend). Had the Bolsheviks been led by another, less ruthless man, it's not clear that the royalists would have been overthrown. It's likely there would have been less death, but unclear as to whether much true change would have been affected. Fitzroy is merely a depiction of that kind of zealotry. Lenin's villains were royalists, capitalists, clergymen, and anti-semites. Fitzroy's villains are white supremacists, robber baron capitalists, and the acolytes of the Prophet. Their methods of rebellion are dark reflections of each other.
Would I have liked to see the Vox Populi better defined? Sure. Would I have preferred to have Bioshock Infinite take a more principled stand against the ills of racial bigotry? I'm not so sure about that one. What the game does is present a snapshot of a particular zeitgeist. It may seem cartoonish or unrealistic when we in the modern age listen to Comstock thunder about the "white man's burden" to be the lords of creation, but to deny that this was a respected and widely accepted point of view during the 19th Century, and a chunk of the 20th Century, is the real fairy tale. Instead of spoon-feeding us conclusions resulting from changing social mores during the decades-long struggle toward racial equality, Infinite shows us where the twisted Darwinism and übermensch ideals of early 20th Century totalitarian regimes could have led had they taken full root in the American tradition. Instead of the cold collectivist atheism of the Stalin's Russia, the fiery statist racism of Nazi Germany, or the hyper-military nationalism of Imperial Japan, Comstock's Columbia is a snapshot of comforting illusions papering over a paternal, white-supremacist theocracy. I would contend that Irrational Games has nearly perfectly captured what an extremist regime in 1912 America might have looked like, minus the floating city aspect.
Which brings me to my last point: the fact that this is a discussion at all is good for video games as an art form. We are talking about history, social policy, civics, urban planning, debating complex scientific theories, and, maybe most importantly, discussing a game's narrative with the seriousness attendant to respected literature. Irrational Games deserves all the plaudits and awards that will continue to shower upon it.
And anyway, why is anyone nitpicking the realism of Infinite's political machinations? The game takes place at 20,000 feet. Everyone who hadn't frozen to death in the -15º C (5º F) temperatures or been swept away by 100 mph winds would have succumbed to asphyxia within minutes. Think about that the next time you're swooping around on a skyline.
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