Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

That last part is kinda true, kinda not: howard come from the time of pseudo historian that see three or four state of devoptment: the salvages, better represent by the pics who always psycothic(except in Kull of all things) man who sacrifice to dark goes and are more brutal than the usuall conan protagonist(in one story, he punch a servant girl so hard it broke her neck), then the barbarian who Strong enough to take what it wants but civilized enough to have concept of honor, the Cimmerian fit this description, then the imperial side who are morphing their barbarians for ambition and become corrupt with civilization(or rather they are hypocrits that mix the brutality of barbarism with self serving way of civilization), Aquilonia, Neomedia,etc fit this, for last is the decadence in which a civilization is shaming or indulging, Stygia feel this more than anything.

Indeed, of all this barbarism is the only one who get good rep and is the one who howard more intersting, in fact he said once that he was more intersting in the mongols, vikings, etc were they were a band of men doing their own thing and when they settle down and become kindoms or empire of their on he simple lost interest.

I did a political heavy review of CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE here: https://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2019/11/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2019-review.html

I think people would be interested in my conclusions.

I might be,but what did you conclude?

Yeah, isn't just posting links to somewhere without giving basic summaries a bit frowned upon, if not just against the rules?

Well I thought "analyzing the politics of Modern Warfare" was a conclusion itself. Also I used to post my entire arguments but was told just to post the link instead.

Not sure what the limit is but I discuss the fact that it might have actually tried to be unpolitical by making a straight forward Black-and-White Morality tale but the irony was that depicting the events and their complexities was a political stance itself.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 13th 2019 at 10:39:57 AM

Okay, I'm posting this because this is really annoying video youtube recommended to me.

Basically the guy is some young adult that thinks they have figured out everything in world(youtube also recommended me "censorship is bad" video from them, though title claims its about how Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE doesn't know which audience its targeting) and argues in video that game exploring ideas and game exploring politics is two different things as if it make sense that game exploring political ideas is apolitical. Comment section has about same level of maturity as this guy. But yeah, the part where I really was like "Seriously" was the part where he claims that Japanese games are more beloved than Western games for exploring ideas instead of politics.

I know thats not the most objective way of summarizing the video, but that last part about Japanese games being more beloved(no citation given) made me figure out "Okay, if they are going to be outright biased, might as well myself be as well". Plus the comment section is really annoying me

But yeah, I wanted to ask: does he have any point with the whole idea vs politics thing? Since to me, political ideas seem pretty political to me, I could see it as argument about difference of preachy politics and non preachy stuff, but that isn't what they were arguing.

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 14th 2019 at 12:44:28 PM

Making a very broad statement myself, Japan as a whole tends to present as a lot more homogeneous than it actually is, both in its society and in its pop culture. It's also not very common for minorities to speak out or to be given a chance to, so matters of social inequality, systemic racism, or social justice - that is, what most gamers mean when they talk about games "being too political" - don't tend to crop up nearly as often. (There's also a big case of "write what you know" - there are works out there that deal with being queer, for instance, but they're smaller-scale.)

And then there's the fact that themes like social isolation/reconnection (as in Death Stranding), relationship/sexual dysfunction (Catherine), and rebelling against corrupt authority figures (Persona 5), are political themes in Japan, because those are issues that are central to a lot of the country's most recent two or three generations. I haven't played any of those three so I can't talk specifics, but.

I guess you could say that things like certain JRPGs are less political, since they're pretty formulaic in general or have messages like "Evil Empire bad", but even those have statements to make.

Kojima is the preachiest when it comes to politics. He has the same level of subtlety in his games that Zack de la Rocha has in his lyrics. Metal Gear might as well be called NUCLEAR WEAPONS BAD, CHILD SOLDIERS BAD.

Regarding the idea vs politics notion, it's full on Distinction Without a Difference. I'm not talking about the political ideology of socialism, I'm discussing the idea that maybe the workers should seize the means of production! There's a difference!

The only distinction I think you could make in this area of discussion in media is between whether you're discussing/exploring political themes with an attempt at neutrality or just using your work to preach your ideology at the consumers. And it's really hard to do the former without letting some shades of the latter leak in. But that's all still political content in the work.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Nov 14th 2019 at 11:54:46 AM

I think that is a diference, that people said a lot of different thing when they mean political.

One of then and I think this what more people things is "dont write thing that reflect about what is happen now!" that mean taking a story for the author to gush or bitch about things he want to said, which is diferent from taking into generic but more timless stuff, there is a diference of "politician are corrupt" and "russia hacked the election".

More often that not for many being "Political" kinda means "preching" what I mean with this? than rather than the typical feel good Aesop of friendship being good there is a message that the work want to talk about, at time those get annoying as hell, just look green aseop in the nineties, they were so bloody bad it swear people to do it again, even a decade and half.

For last, is that fiction mean entertainment, what I mean with this is that it should be catch the view and stand on is own if it wants to have a message because otherwise people would just turn off, avatar is a good example of when this fail: it have a very clear anti colonialism messages and yet nobody could probably give less of a damn because the na vi were annoying, meanwhile people accepted the same messages for ragnarok because it was a very entreating movie.

I do find idea that fiction HAS to be entertainment or games have to be specific person's definition of fun annoying though And I say that as someone who wants to make art as entertainment :P

Well "entertainment" much like "fun" or "political" is something everyone has their own definition of.

Well to be fair though, it is hard to argue that entertainment isn't supposed to be entertaining (and I have to admit that I guess tragedy and drama can be entertaining to some people, but I have hard on grasping why xP)

But yeah, pretty much all "entertainment is supposed to be entertaining" arguments falls flat due to same reason as "games have to be fun" does: Different things are fun to different people, so its hard to argue that something isn't actually "fun".

Either way, I don't really see any thing that says all media or games HAVE to be entertainment even if entertainment/art(which I consider to be mostly the same thing) is something I prefer to whatever is best word for really miserable works

But yeah, another reason why I didn't find that video convincing is that they did nothing to address the possibility of not being able to tell what stuff in Persona 5 relate to politics of Japan due to not being that familiar with Japanese culture.

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 14th 2019 at 2:26:01 PM

I mean even taking knowledge of Japan aside the main villain for most of the game is a corrupt, emtpy populist politician who gains popularity by spouting vague platitudes to an unsatisfied public. It doesn't get more political than that.

A lot of the time for these kinds of people "politics" is basically "whatever makes me uncomfortable/I don't like".

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 14th 2019 at 8:40:25 AM

The people in those Youtube comments to draw a distinction almost purely between works that "happen to explore politics but also do their own thing" and "works that SHOVE POLITICS DOWN OUR THROATS". It seems to me that, depending on what kind of political discourse makes you uncomfortable, that difference is almost completely subjective. A game that certain people would decry as SHOVING THE LGBT AGENDA DOWN OUR THROATS might come across as a neat game that happens to have representation to other people. And as others have pointed out, if you're unfamiliar with Japanese political issues, you're not going to see them as the SHOVED DOWN OUR THROATS kind, because you don't feel personally attacked and defensive about it.

And again, this is Hideo MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN Kojima.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Nov 14th 2019 at 12:50:22 PM

Kojima didn't have much to do with the writing in that game and rising predates Trump's campaign by a few years. But yes, kojimas pretty upfront with politics and always has been.

Did he not? I thought he had full narrative control.

And yeah, I know it predates Trump. Reagan and Bill Clinton used the phrase during their campaigns too. I was using the quote as a shorthand for that entire scene and its balls-out political nature.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Nov 14th 2019 at 1:11:10 PM

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah, I find it especially ridiculous that he brought up Metal Gear as example of non political game because it focuses on "ideas" Video doesn't really do good job of explaining difference between "This character is not!Trump, so game is political" and "This game has character with same politics as Trump, so game isn't political".

(then again, I guess all it comes down to is Eastern vs Western games bias that video also had :P)

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 14th 2019 at 3:17:54 PM

From what I'm reading Kojima was more involved before the game was handed over to platinum and likely had a bigger hand in the script, but it had some pretty big rewrites by Etsu tamari who's the only person credited with the script in the final product. I can check this more in-depth later, I'm on mobile atm, but I don't think Kojima was too deeply involved with rising beyond supervising it/a general producer role.

Wasn't Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance also feature themes of "ineffective evil bureaucrats" and "fuck the law"?

Not really? The villain, Armstrong, is a corrupt politician and war profiteering social darwinist who wants people to struggle to determine their own fate. That's mostly what the game is about. There's not much of a focus on bureaucracy or laws being bad.

Metal Gear: Revengeance is a game I remember primarily about attacking war profiteering, media manipulation of an angry public for revenge attacks (you know, a classic of Kojima), as well as contempt for politicians that have a libertarian mindset. Oh and that its fucked up that even humanitarian organizations can't help all the starving kids of the world.

I mean, this is easily one of the greatest insane moments of all of Kojima's work.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 14th 2019 at 7:35:57 AM

They weren't really themes so much as a few opinions blurted out by the Big Bad during his Motive Rant. Social Darwinism as a practical reality (i.e. extreme Libertarianism) is the overarching theme during that speech.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Nov 14th 2019 at 3:35:24 PM

"Make America GREAT AGAINNN!" -Senator Armstrong

At 3:25 no less.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 14th 2019 at 7:35:44 AM

The one thing you could say is that some people apparently didn't get the memo that Armstrong was totally bananas, I guess because he's charismatic, is acting out of genuine conviction in his ideas, and has a larger than life presence. he's probably one of the most memetic videogame villains of the last few years.

"I HAVE A DREAM!"

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