Hideo Kojima's political mythologizing, which was so frustratingly absent from Metal Gear Solid 4, seems to have returned with a vengeance in Peace Walker. Returning to the Cold War era seems to have energized him and his team, with a game that looks to be more colorful and focused than MGS4's mish-mash of half-realized ideas. A lot of this might have to do with the fact that Peace Walker is clearly a game he wants to make, not one he thinks fans want him to make. No one asked for a euphoric, philosophical, Wagnerian extravaganza set against the backdrop of Nixon's resignation, but Kojima and Co. seem determined to deliver a bizarre, science-fiction version of the politically-charged 1970s whether you want it or not.
Cold War Punk. What else could you call it? MGS3, with its strange James Bond-inspired retro-futurism, certainly was this, and now that we have this label we could easy include things like the Fallout series. Such works exploit the iconography of that era to create fantastic worlds, alternate 20th centuries whose familiar symbolic landscapes are reconfigured into operatic counter-mythologies of world history. They mythologize the 50's, 60's, and 70's the way Sergio Leone mythologized the American West, turning it into a larger-than-life fantasy world that comments on the real world through exaggeration.
The symbolic universe of Peace Walker already seems a thousand times richer than MGS4. The use of television as a visual motif, of using what I can only assume is a riff on the emergency broadcast system (the TV images that was supposed to show if there was a nuclear attack), is instantly evocative. And the modification of the peace symbol, so that it looks like a bomber jet, perfectly embodies the contradiction at the center of the game's story, that war and peace are inseparable.
This is expressed in a Kant quote that presumably begins the game, that peace is an "unnatural" state, that the natural state of human affairs is war, that peace must be "created" by war. This doesn't seem to be a conclusion Kojima agrees with so much as a terrifying philosophical position that explains the madness of the Cold War. The title of the game is a reference to Metal Gear, the walking nuclear deterrent. By threatening war it ensures peace, thus it is the "peace walker", a walking machine that creates peace out of war. It is a monster that embodies the Kantian contradiction, just as the modified peace symbol does, as does the visual motif, seen in the Maurice Binder-style trailer, of one finger versus two fingers.
One finger extended can press a button and end everything, but raise another finger and you have "peace". The way the trailer ends, with the emergency broadcast system image, with the modified peace/war symbol at its center, being "pressed" by a single finger (as if it were a launch button), only to have a second finger at the last moment extend and create "peace", right before the TV image violently cuts and the world is plunged into (nuclear?) oblivion... this all represents a marvelously coherent appropriation of pop-cultural symbolic language to express what the game's about. It's the madness of nuclear brinkmanship distilled to a single, potent image.
It's because of this trailer that I did a little reading and realized that the peace symbol is, in fact, a direct reference to nuclear disarmament. It is an iconic abstraction of "N" and "D" in semaphore code, so the attempt to also associate "fingers" simultaneously with nuclear destruction and nuclear disarmament seems a fitting extension. If the difference between peace and war is one finger, how hard is it to extend that extra finger? But even then, what would it mean? One finger can press a button, but does two fingers necessarily mean peace? Kojima mentioned in an interview that even 'v' is ambiguous. It could be 'v' for victory. Is victory the same as peace? Is peace only created through victory, through war? Peace Walker layers all these double meanings on top of each other, so that they become a haze of contradictions we feel lost in.
It is a very Kubrickian view of war, and indeed Kojima seems to be drawing from Stanley Kubrick in both subtle and unsubtle ways. Not only is there a character in the game called "Strangelove", everything about the game seems to suggest war's absurd duality, a view that was most directly expressed in Full Metal Jacket, in the scene where Matthew Modine's character is questioned by his commander as to why he would wear a peace symbol on his helmet. His response is ""I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, the Jungian thing..."
"Jungian" would be a good way to describe the insane symbolic universe of Metal Gear, with its bizarre characters, technology, and iconography that seem to rise out of our (or at least Kojima's) pop-cultural unconscious. Kojima's graphic design team is incredible, and they seem fascinated by collecting symbols and icons that elegantly capture the big ideas they want to explore.
Unfortunately, Kojima doesn't seem able to capitalize on these rich symbolic systems--to really back them up with content--as well as you'd hope, the way people like Alan Moore do in Watchmen (another work we might call Cold War Punk). This has especially been a problem lately. MGS4 was more about oogling tits and teary reunions than really examining in detail the socio-political implications of a war-driven global economy. Kojima sometimes seems to make the mistake (which, I'd argue, is a common pattern among fans-turned-practitioners) of confusing symbolism with content. At his best moments, his symbolic labels and operatic exaggerations serve to reinforce an underlying depth (The Joy and The Sorrow in MGS3) but at other times they insist on a depth that just isn't there or--at worst--blatantly contradicted by crass presentation (the Beauty and the Beast Unit in MGS4).
What Kojima and his team are consistently excellent at is showmanship. What he's really promising with such ads is that his games will be about these ideas, and he has delivered enough in the past (mostly in MGS2 and MGS3) to still make such hype genuinely exciting. Most game makers don't even seem interested in promising such things. And even if Kojima doesn't keep these promises, maybe somebody inspired by his tantalizing sound and fury will.
UPDATE
It has been brought to my attention that what I thought was an artistic riff on the U.S. emergency broadcast system was, in fact, a PAL test pattern. The color bars that I showed above (known as the "SMPTE color bars") are the NTSC test pattern. The black and white image to its right, known as the "Indian Head test pattern", is what the NTSC test pattern was before the color era. Both test patterns have vague connotations of nuclear disaster in the U.S., because the Emergency Broadcast System used to show the test pattern on television and state that this is what would show in the case of a nuclear attack. I have personal memory of this, having grown up in the 80s in the U.S., which is perhaps why I and other American game makers associate the SMPTE color bars with national emergencies.
I had originally assumed that Peace Walker's test pattern was some combination of the SMPTE color bars and the Indian Head circles, but it's actually just a copy of the PAL test pattern. This makes me wonder if the theoretical practice of showing test patterns in the case of nuclear attack was as strong in PAL regions during the Cold War as it was in the U.S. Peace Walker seems to suggest it was, although I'd be interested to hear if this was (or still is) indeed the case.
Another possibility for the choice of the PAL test pattern is the association of "P-A-L" with "Peace At Last". PAL stands for "Phase Alternating Line" but when it was first introduced industry insiders sometimes joked it stood for "Peace At Last" or "Perfect At Last" because of how superior they felt it was to NTSC. Though somewhat oblique as a reference, it seems possible that this was one of the main reasons for the choice of the PAL pattern, since it would give Peace Walker's television motif the same contradictory connotations as the rest of its symbols. If the PAL test pattern simultaneously suggests nuclear attack and "Peace At Last" that seems to fit right in line with Kojima's dualism.
UPDATE
It has been brought to my attention that what I thought was an artistic riff on the U.S. emergency broadcast system was, in fact, a PAL test pattern. The color bars that I showed above (known as the "SMPTE color bars") are the NTSC test pattern. The black and white image to its right, known as the "Indian Head test pattern", is what the NTSC test pattern was before the color era. Both test patterns have vague connotations of nuclear disaster in the U.S., because the Emergency Broadcast System used to show the test pattern on television and state that this is what would show in the case of a nuclear attack. I have personal memory of this, having grown up in the 80s in the U.S., which is perhaps why I and other American game makers associate the SMPTE color bars with national emergencies.
I had originally assumed that Peace Walker's test pattern was some combination of the SMPTE color bars and the Indian Head circles, but it's actually just a copy of the PAL test pattern. This makes me wonder if the theoretical practice of showing test patterns in the case of nuclear attack was as strong in PAL regions during the Cold War as it was in the U.S. Peace Walker seems to suggest it was, although I'd be interested to hear if this was (or still is) indeed the case.
Another possibility for the choice of the PAL test pattern is the association of "P-A-L" with "Peace At Last". PAL stands for "Phase Alternating Line" but when it was first introduced industry insiders sometimes joked it stood for "Peace At Last" or "Perfect At Last" because of how superior they felt it was to NTSC. Though somewhat oblique as a reference, it seems possible that this was one of the main reasons for the choice of the PAL pattern, since it would give Peace Walker's television motif the same contradictory connotations as the rest of its symbols. If the PAL test pattern simultaneously suggests nuclear attack and "Peace At Last" that seems to fit right in line with Kojima's dualism.
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Well, you know we disagree about Kojima and the MGS series, so where you see intricately interlaced layers of meaning, I see a slapdash mish-mash of exoticist cultural appropriation. I think Kojima picked a random grab-bag of meaningful symbols, and reused them outside of any real context, and the sheer meaninglessness of the symbols in their new context begs those of us trained in seeing meaning and patterns in cultural products to impose our own meaning on it...
ReplyDelete...but this is a pretty interesting reading of the Cold War-retro aesthetic.
I think you might be a little mistaken in grouping the 60s spy aesthetic that's clearly evident in these images with the retro-futurist/modernist aesthetic of Fallout and the like. I feel there's an important distinction to be made there.
Also, the test pattern in your first image is a much later colour version, of the sort used in the 70s and 80s, and not actually related to the emergency broadcast signal at all.
I have a memory of being a kid in the early 80's and a voice coming on television saying "this is a test of the emergency broadcast system" which in my memory I associate with the color pattern. It's a test pattern, so I'm not sure if it's what they'd show in the case of a nuclear attack, but the voice implied it was somehow part of their system. In any case, for me the association remains.
ReplyDeleteAs for your other comments, I'm not sure what to say other than I don't see naive (mis)appropriation of cultural symbols as categorically bad. What makes a symbolic universe like Metal Gear interesting is how it *affords* interpretation, regardless of creator intention. It's rather obvious to me that Kojima lack of cultural context is partially what fuels his ability to combine meanings in such bizarre ways, but as an American I find the end result pretty fascinating regardless... or stupid, depending on the game. :)
The first picture is based on the test pattern used by most PAL TV stations in the 70's and 80's. PAL was pretty much the standard outside of the Americas, Japan, Russia, and France. I grew up with that image (sans bomber/peace logo, of course). I'm wondering how Kojima's art team would have been familiar with that image and associated it with the 70s, though. PAL is the TV standard in China, so I'm guessing you could have seen it in Japan if you had access to imported or multisystem TVs.
ReplyDeleteTV standards always had alternate names known among broadcast professionals... NTSC was "never twice the same color", for instance, for obvious reasons. Because of PAL's widespread availability, its nickname was "Peace At Last."
Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3s1KZdXN9I
Given that Japan uses the NTSC standard, it'd be unusual for Kojima to be familiar with it, and I'd be interested to know why he chose to use it, if he indeed had a particular reason for doing so.
ReplyDeleteAs to the usage of the test pattern in Cold War-era emergency broadcasts, I am myself probably a little young to remember any such usage here in Australia, but I'd be surprised if there were any at all. Emergency broadcasts are much more strongly associated here with weather warnings, and there's not the same strong cultural tradition of Cold War paranoia as the US has.
The PAL standard was/is used in Western Europe (apart from France and the tiny Andorra, Luxembourg & Monaco), so that'd be where I'd look. Again though, the cultural tradition around the Cold War is not as strong there as in the US - probably strongest in the UK, though not terribly strong even there. France, Andorra, Luxembourg, Monaco and the USSR/Warsaw pact used SECAM, a third, totally different standard.
Given all that, I'd be very surprised to discover any particularly strong cultural or symbolic associations of the PAL test pattern with nuclear emergency broadcasts - save perhaps in the UK, and I'd be a little surprised even then. The lack of prominent cultural association of the symbol with the thematic context in which it is used is precisely the kind of, well, call it symbolic dissonance, that I find problematic about a lot of Kojima's work. For me it becomes a kind of uncanny valley of meaning, where the symbols used are *almost* meaningful, but uncannily not.
Well, like I said, meaning is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and I tend to like the way he leverages Western symbols, regardless of how intentional it is. I suppose I just don't find it very different from other forms of cross-cultural appropriation--like Spaghetti Westerns or Hollywood martial arts movies--for example.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with taking the post-structuralist 'Death of the Author' position is that it denies the film-derived auteur theory that's the basis for praising Kojima's vision as a game designer. Either he's a visionary who deliberately layers meaning, or he's some crazy guy chucking a bunch of stuff together that you and others happen to find interesting. You can't have it both ways. :)
ReplyDeleteThe issue with cultural appropriation is that it's exoticist and Occidentalist. The difference between a spaghetti Western and, say, Japanese usage of Christian mythology and imagery, is that spaghetti Westerns developed as loving homage to American Westerns, and are embedded in an existing context of cultural exchange. Spaghetti Western film-makers knew, loved and understood American Westerns, and the themes and motifs used - whereas Japanese usage of Christian symbolism is typically because the Western symbols are exotic and 'other', and those using them rarely if ever have more than an extremely superficial understanding of the meanings of those symbols in their cultural context. It's a culturally insensitive use of the symbols, and a little exploitative of Western consumers of such media.
You seem to see these issues in extremely black and white ways. I think cultural awareness of appropriated symbols can vary greatly, even in the context of a single work, and I also think audiences have the agency to decide for themselves how they wish to respond to such usage. I subscribe neither to the auteur theory nor do I think the author is dead. I find these both to be silly constructions that don't allow for the complex interplay between practitioners and audiences.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to respond to your other points because they are so high generalized. *All* Spaghetti Westerns were like X, *all* Japanese appropriation of Western culture is like Y, etc. Only by viewing things in such reductionist, totalizing ways can you outright dismiss entire cultures and their practices, as you seem determined to do with Japan.
That's the whole point of the death of the author: that there *is* no one authoritative source for the meaning of a text. That the meaning of a text depends on the context within which that text is presented, and the context within which the 'reader' is situated.
ReplyDeleteI think you need to decide what your argument is. Is your argument that this array of symbols is constructed with a deliberate intent to convey a complex interplay of meaning by a visionary creator, or is it that the intent is irrelevant, but you find the array of symbols interesting because of the meaning you derive from them? To me it seems like you're making the second argument, but that's obscured by your defense of the authorial intent. Heck, you can make *both* arguments, but you can't use one as a defense for the other. If I'm calling into question the authorial intent, arguing that the meaning is in the eye of the beholder isn't a relevant counter-argument.
As for my other points, they were intentionally made in very general terms, because I was attempting to convey the general terms of my point in re: exoticism. I wasn't at all suggesting that *all* anything was anything, I was speaking in general terms to make a point.
I'm hardly dismissing entire cultures and their practices, and I'm honestly not sure what part of my comments suggested that.
What I am suggesting is that there *is* a common cultural practice of appropriation of Western symbols in Japanese media in a way that is exoticist - this is well-documented. Not all usage of Western symbols in Japanese media is exoticist, but much is - just as much usage of Japanese and other Asian symbols in Western media is. The juxtaposition of imagery in the work under discussion exhibits many inconsistencies and incoherencies (examples of which I've pointed out), and this media franchise has a history of similar inconsistency and incoherency in the usage of Western symbols. Given both of those points, I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest that some of these juxtapositions may be the result not of the intentional layering of meaning by a visionary creator, but of the usage of Western symbols in an exoticist manner. I do not dispute at all that these juxtapositions have a certain resonance for many Western consumers of these texts. However I think it may be a mistake to attribute all of this resonance to an intentional construction by a visionary creator.
"To me it seems like you're making the second argument, but that's obscured by your defense of the authorial intent. Heck, you can make *both* arguments, but you can't use one as a defense for the other."
ReplyDeleteI am making both arguments, and I am using one as a defense for the other. I am saying the way he as an author tends to group symbols often makes for rich interpretablity regardless of intent. Sometimes the intent feels savvy and spot-on, sometimes it feels ignorant and embarrassing, and sometimes it seems interesting but in a totally accidental way. I think this is a totally valid way to engage with an author, both for his conscious intent and his unconscious affordances.
In my opinion Kojima's use of symbols in Peace Walker falls mostly into the "savvy" category. He has been pretty vocal in interviews about saying more or less the things I said in my post, so I don't think I'm over-reading at all there. I'd also challenge the notion that the symbols used in the case of Peace Walker are exotic to the Japanese. The 'v' hand gesture, the peace symbol, and bomber planes have also been part of their culture.
Not *all* Kojima's appropriations of Western culture hover at the same level of arbitrary exoticism, and Peace Walker struck me as a good example of his using symbolism in an intelligent way. That's really all I was trying to get at.