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Old 03-27-2013, 10:23 AM   #1
AshleyO
 
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Bioshock Infinite

This game was good up until it drew some REALLY stupid conclusions.

I don't want to ruin for you guys, but I just want to say that I'm getting REALLY tired of the liberal narrative that all violence is the exact same violence so therefore, we should appeal to the established institution with a monopoly of violence so it'll do our dirty work for us.

I bet the writers thought they were being edgy when they were writing about revolution.

I hate how they tried to match up the bourgeois moral platitudes between revolution and state violence:

When you first come to columbia, it's racist, supremacist, evangelical, and all things WASPY. But then the workers rightfully revolt and start indiscriminately killing the privileged classes en mass. So how do they make the violence of anarchistic PoC and worker violence to state violence? They give us a scene where the leader of the rebellion has drawn conclusions that white people can't be trusted, even if they're a child and they must be eliminated outright. This is wrong and also draws the wrong conclusion. YES. In certain circumstances during a war, it can be understood why revolutionaries would execute bourgeois or privileged children. Basically, the revolution killed your family; so you'd most likely grow up to dedicate your life to destroying that revolution, thus it would make sense as to why revolutions might find it necessary to kill kids if they couldn't be re-educated first. Now weather you want to agree with that or not is on the reader. I could understand why a revolutionary would do this, though I'm not sure I'd have the stomach for it. BUT. The problem is that the entire point of the revolution is negated when the leader comes to these similar conclusions on racial/privileged lines instead. She believes that rich white people have some sort of... racial ingrained tendency to be supremacists. I disagree with that conclusion and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense being that some of the revolutionaries were poor white folk.

But the conclusion that the game draws is that revolutionary violence is no different or actually WORSE than the MASSIVE violence we're introduced to in the game. That it's worse than that hidden violence of politeness and employment and segregation and capitalist starvation and exploitation. That revolutions are somehow morally obligated to justify itself to outsiders or somehow justify itself to the ruling class in which it seeks to dismantle. Fuck that line that "all violence is the same" horseshit. It's not. But that's the conclusion that the game drew and THEN, instead of continuing to let the rising working class and the PoC have an identity that the player can continue to identify with, they're reduced to mindless bad guy fodder so that the powerful individualistic YOU can learn that all violence is the same so killing a revolutionary is just as good as killing a cop.

I was actually OKAY with the main character being an ex-Pinkerton. I think there's something to be said in a story where an agent of capitalist evil turns coat and becomes a helper of a worker's revolution.

But no. Let's draw the same ol' Post Modern moralism that we've had crammed down our throats ever since we've been children that violence doesn't solve anything and that all problems can be solved by some kind of meaningful dialogue because if you give a good argument for your position, the powers that be will be like the Grinch and grant us some autonomy by graciously committing a bit of class suicide and giving the oppressed their presents back. That is of course... that the ruling class doesn't have to stop being the boss completely. They STILL have to at least be pulling the strings for everyone else, even if they wont do it with the business end of a gun. You know... sometimes when a kid breaks the nose of a bully, it's perfectly justified, even if the white knights could imagine some new moral platitude that we can't nor even have much reason to strive for. Sometimes, the people responsible for systematic exploitation and damage to other people NEED to be violently taken down a notch or two. That IS fair.
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Old 04-03-2013, 11:28 AM   #2
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I'm gonna purchase it this week. Can't wait to play it!
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Old 04-03-2013, 06:51 PM   #3
AshleyO
 
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The gameplay is pretty good. Even if you don't like the conclusions, the game is worth playing because it makes you think and it makes you have fun.
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