Reflections on video games and literature

[felis_ultharus]

You know, two literary forms have all but vanished from the West: the tragedy and the epic. The tragedy lingers on in romance novels, and the epic occasionally surfaces for air in science fiction or fantasy, but on the whole they've been banished -- especially in mainstream media of any kind.

The explanation for tragedy is that we're addicted to happy endings, and don't want anything depressing. As for the epic, a professor of mine offered this explanation:

"Epics are about nations, societies, and peoples. We're too self-absorbed to care about anything on that scale."

But I don't think either is necessarily true. I can't help but wonder if the incredible popularity of Japanese pop culture -- anime, manga, and video games -- is in part because the Japanese are not afraid to work with tragedies and epics.

And the same pleasure that's always haunted these two forms is still very much there.

I got to thinking of the later Final Fantasies as visual epics -- and got to thinking that maybe that's deliberate. The grand scale of events, the beginning in media res, prophecy, the elements of tragedy mixed in. Even the summonings are like periodic invocations of muses.

And in Final Fantasy 10, at least, there's a deus and quite a few ex-machina ^_^

Seriously, though, it's not as farfetched as it sounds. Video games are very slowly drawing the attention of people who are willing to look at their literary qualities -- though most critics are still thinking of them as empty escapism, the way novels were thought of 300 years ago when people were told not to waste their time with them.

Comments

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

It's funny that you would choose to write your reflections on FF as I am currently writing my proposal for grad school on FF. :-P

Here's one of the quotes I am using in it:

Some of the directions that video games are moving in will look more and more like literature. If you take a game like Final Fantasy, you are certainly still in the trajectory of at least really good genre literature. Some of the things video games are going to do are what literature has long wanted to do.
- Henry Jenkins

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I like that quote.

Final Fantasy is always the first name on anybody's lips when they argue for the literary qualities of video games.

There are others of course -- for american games, there's always Plnescape: Torment, the story of a man who can't die, searching the various afterlives for his lost mortality.

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

I like it too. :)

Here's the other quote on video games in my proposal:

Prose is an art form, movies and acting in general are art forms, so is music, painting, graphics, sculpture, and so on. Some might even consider classic games like chess to be an art form. Video games use elements of all of these to create something new. Why wouldn’t video games be an art form?

- Sam Lake, writer for Max Payne

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I agree. Hell, I'm an art snob. I don't think all games are art -- and I do think there is a line between pure escapism and art.

I just don't think all video games are pure escape.

Totally off topic, I think you'll get a kick out of this picture (http://ewancient.lysator.liu.se/pic/art/s/a/samanthan2/raistlin_and_dalamar.jpg) ^_^

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

And, cute. ^_^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Is that icon Raistlin/Dalamar yaoi...?

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Can't you tell by the hand print? ;)

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

Dalamar is very proud of his shalafi's handprint. He shows it off at dinner parties.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten the hand print. It allowed Dalamar to enter the Tower of High Sorcery, didn't it...?

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

It is. ^^

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not necessary for all games to be art in order for games to be able to be art. I wouldn't call all novels art either.

Yay Raist and Dalamar! ^_^ (Doesn't mean I don't like escapism ;))

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

^__^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. 'Twould be like saying novels are worthless because of Danielle Steele.

And yeah, there is a place for escape as well :)

[em-fish.livejournal.com]

How do you pronounce "Lyly", anyway?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Same as the flower ^_^

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I am waving a GBA and a Margery Allingham novel at you now. I would agree with you (on all points -- that some of this stuff is art, some is good genre writing and little more, some is escapist, and some is crap) but I'm undergoing finals right now and I can only do so much. ^^;;;;

I've long figured that few people study video games officially because few PhDs can get past world 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. You don't need any particular skill to start studying, say, film, but you need reflexes to btie into games. Makes it tougher.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

True -- if skills were required of literature academics, fewer people would be attracted to literature ;)

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

You need to be able to read of course, but I've run into a startling number of faculty down here who seem to have successfully resisted being taught to think. I considered adding a polite caveat that it might be different where you are, but that would imply I haven't been paying attention to your trials and tribulations. ^_^;; The decent lit-critics that I know are always the ones who have enough outside interests to compare whatever they're staring at to something else, no matter how outlandish.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

True.

The province of literature is everything. Absolutely everything. Anything can find its way into a novel, and a good critic has to be flexible enough to learn about a wide range of subjects, to dance to the writer's dance.

A lot of critics loathe the idea of letting the writer lead the dance. Instead, they try to squeeze whatever subject they come across into their narrow hole of obsessions. Every mirror become's Lacan's mirror of identity, every cigar a Freudian metaphor.

Narrow critics generally accuse non-narrow critics of "passive reading," which is automatically a bad thing apparently. If I were more of a Freudian, I'd read penetration anxiety into that one.