The Division 2?s story: Does it need to send a message?

[sXeth]

Yeah, I'ma have to counter that one with how often any given artist just says the song/movie means whatever. Or Jake the Snake Roberts (pro wrestler) says DDT stands for nothing. Its almost a guarantee that any political stance that may or may not be in the Divisions writing, came from somewhere, even if it wasn't the main directive.

People used to pull that shit constantly with Kubrick, too -- try to push him into making definitive statements about the politics of his work, when the reality is for what they're really looking is to be told what they want to hear. He didn't take the bait, either. Their work is their work, and the statements they have to make are built into the work, thus they've already said what they have to say. Asking the creative about it after the fact is, best-case, an insult to their intelligence and skills as a creator, and a tacit admission the person doing the asking, isn't doing the thinking.

Ray Bradbury, and Fahrenheit 451, is another fantastic example.

And on the flip side, if a creative constantly talks about the themes and theses of their work, chances are they probably didn't do a good job at communicating or portraying them, or lack confidence in either the final product or the messages therein. The work, and statements made thereby, ideally should speak for itself.

It's up to the audience to think about the material, themes, and theses made, and come to their own conclusions. Kubrick, for as brilliant and multi-layered a creative he is, wasn't that subtle when he actually set out to say something. Look at FMJ, for example, the entire movie is a commentary on how American culture glorifies war and dehumanizes soldiers by way of sexualizing violence. You just have to put that thing between your ears to work, for once in your miserable life, to get it.

Yeah, and I'm kind of paraphrasing Neil Gaiman talking about Brabury here. Its fine if an author wants to go say "This is what I wrote about, or wanted to write bout", and its equally fine (outside of some obvious direct conflict cases, Mein Kampf was not about the wisdom of Judaist theology by any means) for an audience to take their own message that may or may not conflict with that. Some creators greatly enjoy that just for its own sake, or to hear different dialogues they may have sparked. Others are, at the end of the day, writing things for a living and want to continue making that living, and can't afford to immediately shut down the people potentially buying their work by outright taking dissent.


If someone doesn't get any message at all from some creative work. That's kind of coin flip. Maybe the creator wasn't great at their presentation, maybe they just didn't have enough of an idea what to present, maybe the pacing (oh boy does that one apply to video games) dilutes the narrative too much. But its equally likely the audience member just was inattentive, or focus on whatever parts they personally attached to, whether positively or negatively. Or they came in with some bias that would alter the narrative presented.

 

[Worgen]

To which the alt-right moroni-verse inevitably interprets as "Leftist essjaydubbleyous say all games must make a political statement!!!!!".
God these people are fucking stupid.

It must be nice to live in a world where you feel good about just lying outright.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Ubisoft doesn't have to send any message. The problem isn't that they don't want to send any particular message, but because they co-opt political imagery, but try to remain apolitical. You can't do that. No matter what, they will have a message. They decided to make a game in which a plague brings the States to its knees, spread by its rampant consumerism. They decided to have the government "heroes" gun down Americans. Extra Credits said it best.
The problem is that they're trying to capitalize on topical issues without saying anything about it. At best, they create a bland and forgettable story. At worst, they unintentionally create something terrifying and/or insulting. If they don't want this type of attention, maybe they should avoid topical political themes.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...Maybe the creator wasn't great at their presentation, maybe they just didn't have enough of an idea what to present, maybe the pacing (oh boy does that one apply to video games) dilutes the narrative too much...

Sure, authorial intent only goes so far. But, just because part of an audience missed a work's message, or that a creator prefers remain silent about their message, doesn't mean the work has no message, and that's my point.

Since it came up, take Far Cry 5. The entire thesis of the work is that the trappings, symbolism, and rhetoric of a cult -- be it religious or ideological -- are instrumental to the acquisition and maintenance of power, not the end goal in and of itself. Cults are totalitarian in nature, which means control itself is the end goal.

The cult in Far Cry 5 takes its name from Heaven's Gate, Eden's Gate's iconography is modeled after Scientology, Joseph Seed is a composite character of Jim Jones and David Koresh, Joseph's Compound is directly modeled after the Aryan Nations' compound at Hayden Lake, and the cult's organization and use of hallucinogenics are modeled after the Manson Family. The Faith(s) have more in common with the Manson Family's actual methods, than the allegations regarding the treatment of women inside the Branch Davidian cult, but you can argue the Faiths are composited as well, and I wouldn't argue with you. And of course, Eden's Gate's apocalyptic ambitions were modeled more after Helter Skelter than a more straightforward read of the Turner Diaries, albeit with Jim Jones' post-apocalyptic utopian prophecies in place of race war.

[EDIT: What's interesting, and key, to note is Jim Jones was a leftist. The Peoples' Temple was a Christian cult with heavy emphasis on incorporating socialist and communist politics into theological practices, drawing heavily on the social gospel movement and liberation theology as inspiration. Jones and his followers were heavily involved in the civil rights movement, and regularly protested and practiced civil disobedience in pursuit of civil rights, and clashed frequently with white supremacists and evangelicals.]

Spoiler

And, most of that has a through line that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Randy Weaver was former military and a prepper kook, who moved to Idaho to do his prepper kook thing, ended up on the losing side of a land dispute, did the dumb thing and sent some death threats to very important people (including Reagan and the Pope) and got nailed on illegal firearms charges. The feds caught wind of his potential ties to the Aryan Nation, and tried to leverage his debts, the death threats, and the firearms charges to turn him informant against the AN. Weaver refused to play ball, and for some damned idiot reason the Feds tried to trump up some bank robbery charges atop the illegal firearms possession and trafficking charges, and bring him in. That caused the Ruby Ridge standoff.

Meanwhile, Waco happened.

So, when a pair of former military, deeply-indebted, conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, prepper kooks by the names of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols got together, they decided the best course of action to avenge Ruby Ridge and Waco was to kick start the Turner Diaries by driving a van full of ANFO up to the Murrah Building.

Little wonder why the game is bookend-ed by a joint law enforcement attempt to serve an arrest warrant (Ruby Ridge), and either a promised federal armed stand-off (Waco) or...well, a nuclear holocaust (Helter Skelter, Turner Diaries).

Of course, some of those things are not like the others -- Jones, Heaven's Gate, Scientology -- and that's the point. What they all have in common was the use of iconography, prophecy, ideology, and religiosity as a vehicle for control and nothing more. The point is made by having the player inserted at a point where Seed's cult has grown powerful enough to discard the facade; Seed's control has reached critical mass, has become self-perpetuating and for its own sake, and pretense is no longer necessary.

If you're looking for partisan politics, you're missing the forest for the trees. The point is, cults are fundamentally totalitarian, and totalitarianism is a paradoxically impartisan phenomenon.

 

[sXeth]

...Maybe the creator wasn't great at their presentation, maybe they just didn't have enough of an idea what to present, maybe the pacing (oh boy does that one apply to video games) dilutes the narrative too much...

Sure, authorial intent only goes so far. But, just because part of an audience missed a work's message, or that a creator prefers remain silent about their message, doesn't mean the work has no message, and that's my point.

Since it came up, take Far Cry 5. The entire thesis of the work is that the trappings, symbolism, and rhetoric of a cult -- be it religious or ideological -- are instrumental to the acquisition and maintenance of power, not the end goal in and of itself. Cults are totalitarian in nature, which means control itself is the end goal.

The cult in Far Cry 5 takes its name from Heaven's Gate, Eden's Gate's iconography is modeled after Scientology, Joseph Seed is a composite character of Jim Jones and David Koresh, Joseph's Compound is directly modeled after the Aryan Nations' compound at Hayden Lake, and the cult's organization and use of hallucinogenics are modeled after the Manson Family. The Faith(s) have more in common with the Manson Family's actual methods, than the allegations regarding the treatment of women inside the Branch Davidian cult, but you can argue the Faiths are composited as well, and I wouldn't argue with you. And of course, Eden's Gate's apocalyptic ambitions were modeled more after Helter Skelter than a more straightforward read of the Turner Diaries, albeit with Jim Jones' post-apocalyptic utopian prophecies in place of race war.

[EDIT: What's interesting, and key, to note is Jim Jones was a leftist. The Peoples' Temple was a Christian cult with heavy emphasis on incorporating socialist and communist politics into theological practices, drawing heavily on the social gospel movement and liberation theology as inspiration. Jones and his followers were heavily involved in the civil rights movement, and regularly protested and practiced civil disobedience in pursuit of civil rights, and clashed frequently with white supremacists and evangelicals.]

This is a good note, and kind of relevant as well. If Far Cry 5 had been explicitly about Scientology, well, Scientologists would never buy it of course, and it would be about Scientology. Not about dangerous idealogical cults, isolationist vacuums propagating dangerous unchecked power, poor implementation of law enforcement in rural areas, or the dangers of falling into a Cult of Personality around a charismatic individual. And possibly about the dangers of experimenting with psychoactive drugs, but that probably wasn't a major thrust of it.


As Jim Jones being a leftist goes, well, the broader social debate has to be acknowledged as having fundamentally altered the concepts of left and right wing politics (hence the Far Left, and the Alt Right labels). Most of the current debates about right v left aren't even in the spectrum of Left vs Right political thought, on either side. Generally if I see someone (that I know, not every random stranger wwho comments on the internet) start throwing Right and Left around I just kind of nudge them towards at least a basic resource on the many much more nuanced schools of thought we have on this at this point in history. Just to pull a basic example, Deregulation is actually a Left wing concept. While Communism and Socialism, the oft "left-labelled" platforms, have generally had a whole pile of regulation in them.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Just to pull a basic example, Deregulation is actually a Left wing concept.

First, classical liberalism is only "left wing" by comparison to competing theories and systems of governance during the time it arose. But, when we're discussing economic and political theories relative to concepts like the divine right of kings and Aristotelian hierarchies as justified by natural law, it's hard to not be "left wing". That said, yes it's true we no longer live in the 18th Century, which means Western political and economic thought has evolved somewhat and therefore ideological cleavages have adapted accordingly. The backbone of the contemporary left-right divide being, the primacy of economic or civil rights and liberties.

Which is why Socialism is considered a left-wing ideology. Economic inequality causes loss of civil rights and liberties, therefore the solution is to control for economic inequality. By necessity, that means curtailing economic rights and liberties.

Communism, at least as defined by Marx and Engels, should paradoxically not be considered left or right wing at all. Communism is simply a form of anarchism; anarchism is to libertarianism, what totalitarianism is to authoritarianism. A Communist would argue the mere existence of a state or state-like entity introduces inequality by default, which means in turn any and all collective action should be turned towards the preservation of statelessness. Just as a totalitarian would argue any and all collective action should be turned towards the preservation of the state and its power -- not to get lost in the weeds talking about Hohfeld, but a right imparts a duty upon the state to prevent interference with its pursuit and liberties exist where states have no right to interfere, and either case represents a loss of state power which a totalitarian cannot countenance.

But overall, American political discourse is a dumpster fire, because we love pointing fingers and projectile vomiting words we've been socialized to consider "bad", actual definitions be damned, at each other. None of which having any relevance to Jones, because at the end of the day he was a hippie-ass lefty.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Ubisoft doesn't have to send any message. The problem isn't that they don't want to send any particular message, but because they co-opt political imagery, but try to remain apolitical. You can't do that. No matter what, they will have a message. They decided to make a game in which a plague brings the States to its knees, spread by its rampant consumerism. They decided to have the government "heroes" gun down Americans. Extra Credits said it best.

The problem is that they're trying to capitalize on topical issues without saying anything about it. At best, they create a bland and forgettable story. At worst, they unintentionally create something terrifying and/or insulting. If they don't want this type of attention, maybe they should avoid topical political themes.

I mean, for anyone who's played the Division 2, there's an actual message at the core of the game. The message itself however is not nearly as politicized as a lot of people would like. TD2 clearly has a message about coming together and helping out to get through hard times. Not only is this the text of the story, uniting the struggling settlements of Washington DC and fending off those that would destroy them, it is reinforced in how the missions are structured and how the open world functions. By doing missions for the settlements they grow stronger, providing the player character with more tools to do more. On top of that the open world allows you to help groups of allies do stuff like gather resources or attack enemy positions.

But then, I'm also one of those people that will argue that you can use a ton of political symbolism without ever intending to send a political message when you're doing fiction. Enemy at the Gates is stepped in political symbolism but at its core it tells a love story and a coming of age story about Zaitsev, without any deeper meaning. The average Clancy fiction is similar, if it has a message it is often about how great America is, but most of the time Tom Clancy only used politics, political symbolism and political rhetoric to justify his particular brand of techno/military-thriller. Red Storm Rising can, if you are very generous, be about the futility of World War three, or it is just a guy obsessed with the military playing make belief based on his (surprisingly deep) understanding of the military strengths of NATO/WARPAC in the early 80's.

Really, Tom Clancy built his entire trademark around the concept that espionage, military hardware and armed conflict can be really cool and engaging to read about. Clancy had very little to say about what the use of espionage or military hardware meant or implied or about the ethics of US clandestine operations in foreign countries. Ubisoft has since carried that tradition with games that embrace that Clancy's style of thriller is prime game material, in that it allows the player to play pretend an elite military/spy operative that gets to use cool gadgets, fire cool weapons and save the world in a timely fashion. In the end Clancy's style is just a more techno-fetishistic variation on the same material as James Bond, and I don't see much clamoring for James Bond (a book/movie series about how cool it is to be an international playboy agent with no restrictions) to be scrutinized for what kind of message the various movies have. We just accept that, short of Quantum of Solace, a Bond movie is entertainment and any actual relation to real world spy work is purely coincidental.