Games as Lit. 101 - Depiction vs. Endorsement 

There's a saying that "You can't make a truly anti-war movie, because war is so compelling on film." Likewise, films that are supposed to be cautionary tales about greed or the pursuit of power, like Scarface or Wall Street, are often viewed as fantasies of wealth and power. Games have a similar problem, in that the nature of the action may overwhelmed the message. E.g. in Bioshock Infinite, Booker is supposed to be a ruined shell of a man after his experience of violence at Wounded Knee, but once he gets to Columbia, he starts killing people by the hundreds without a second thought. Bioshock puts a lot of emphasis on saving the little sisters, but did anyone consider saving any of the hundreds of Splicers Jack mows down?

The problem that I find is a kind of accidental endorsement caused by the framing. The Lion King is a good example, because while the ultimate message of the story is taking responsibility and all of that, the framing of hakuna matata in such a positive light confuses the message of the story, especially for the young children which make up the film's target audience. Fight Club is another one that comes to mind- Tyler's philosophy and way of life is explicitly denounced, but only after spending much of the film's runtime glorifying it. I am of course not saying that art should never depict bad behavior (or bad ideologies, as it were), but that if a piece of media is attempting to tell a message and the vast majority of audience members walk away with the exact opposite message, it is experiencing a serious flaw in presentation. In terms of more concrete 'things' that are the subjects of controversy (e.g. violence and sexual assault) I would argue that engaging with a topic in a piece of visual media without directly depicting it is usually the best course of action if the goal is condemnation. Fury Road I think is the best recent example, dealing with and heavily signaling sexual abuse without the pitfall of having eroticized sexual violence literally depicted on screen. (Anyway, I did want to say that I enjoy your videos a lot, I've been going on kind of a marathon of your series ^^ I really appreciate the kind of fun, accessible presentation that you take without the tendency towards snark and rudeness that you get from most media analysis youtube personalities.)

I think the subject of this video explains a lot of the reaction and issues surrounding Anita Sarkeesian. Some gamers appear to believe that because Anita points out problematic depictions, then she also considers them endorsements. And thus she is completely denouncing the video game and video games in general. To be fair to them, she often demonstrates actions and events out of context. In other segments she seems to sees controversial optional decisions we can make (or not make) as the developers encouraging us to take those course of actions or endorsing them completely. Other times, she ventures into hyperbole. But just as we can't lump all of her critics as hateful mysognists, we can't dismiss any point she makes as meritless.

Talking about media other than video games, this problem occurs a lot in rap and hip-hop. A lot of the genre is maligned and dismissed for containing lyrics about violence, drugs, and sex, but the best artists of the genre don't endorse that lifestyle at all. Nas and Kendrick Lamar are two big examples of this, with their best albums discussing lives full of drug-dealing and violence but showing how those lifestyles were either necessary for their survival (as in Nas's case) or actively detrimental to their well-being (in Kendrick's music). If you want a pretty straightforward example, look at Kanye West's "All of the Lights." The song describes a (fictional) situation where the narrator hits his girlfriend, gets arrested, and then loses custody of his daughter. However, despite West doing a really good job of portraying the events and the narrator's intentions, this is clearly shown to be an awful series of choices and the narrator tries to redeem himself by trying to get back into his daughter's life because "she needs a daddy." It shows a complete 180 from the selfish, abusive character at the beginning and uses its "taboo" themes towards a really constructive end.

Good vid, but I'm not sure it gets to the heart of the issue. What about the cases when some negative behaviour is depicted but not manifestly condemned? Most literature and media today is not fairly tales and does not deal in outright condemnation but rather does it more implicitly or in some cases leaves it without comment for the audience to digest on their own. Say, a historical novel set in times where there was widespread oppression on the basis of race (not that I'm saying there is no oppression based on race in moder times, mind you). What if said novel did not deal with such themes directly, but used them as backdrop. Can it be said that constitutes endorsement? A lot of activists, or, say, cultural critics, claim that unless a work depicts characters struggling directly against unfair systems then it simply perpetuates negative stereotypes or is nothing but 'exploitation'. So where more specifically lies the line between depiction and endorsement? Can it be said, that, for instance, Call of Duty World at War is apologetic about Stalinism (in the game the hero fights alongside Soviet forces against Germans, is enticed to commit war crimes and finally hoists the hammer-and-sickle over ruins of Berlin)?

Yup I know exactly where you're going with this for The Last of Us

I've missed these. Very fundamental, very interesting and very informative. Even when these are about things I already knew, these vids align the things in my head. Keep it up man!

I'm still waiting for that Spec Ops episode

Have you ever read the Broken Empire series? It has one of the best anti-heroes I've ever read, and he clearly preforms evil and he himself endorses it, but does it in a way that we see him as evil and in doing so the author denounces his actions while the character endorses it.

The distinction between depiction and endorsement reminds me of a quote from a Doctor Who documentary "More than 30 Years in the TARDIS" concerning the depiction of violence in the series. I'll paraphrase here as I can neither find nor fully remember the quote or who said it but it goes something like: It's okay to show violence on television as long as you show that it hurts.

I'm also wondering what do think about stories where it's pretty hard to understand what those stories is actually trying to say. (Like most of David Lynch movies) Those movies/stories go against so many basic story structure rules, yet there are still able to find audience that really enjoys them.

Dungeon Keeper is a great example because the tagline is "it's good to be bad" but the tongue-in-cheek attitude ton, while humorous basically suggests that the entire theme is farcical.

It would be nice to see a full episode of Games as Lit, Spec Ops the Line.

Completely agree, this is the equivalent of saying that Star Wars endorses mass murder and genocide because of Revenge of the Sith even though it's obvious that Anakins choices in that are meant to serve as cautionary and tragic, not heroic and good. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Prince of Egypt and that movie has slavery and murder depicted in it but that doesn't mean the film is endorsing those things, the whole point is that God wants to bring an end to the Hebrews slavery through Moses but in order for that to happen they had to be slaves in the first place.

Well, I know this video focused in videogames, but I'll use a book that I've read recently this year as an example of depiction. The book "La Caida del Liberalismo Amarillo: Vida y obra de Antonio Paredes"/"The Fall of Yellow Liberalism: Life and times of Antonio Paredes" is a piece of literature written by Ramón J. Velásquez (A Historian that only wrote this book on his late years and managed to become a President for a few months in 1993 in Venezuela) which depicts how the Liberal Party came to power and dominated Venezuela for 29 years before being defeated by Cipriano Castro. What's interesting is that, while talking about history, the book shows how the Liberal Party (that used Yellow as their main color) came to power thanks to the dictator Antonio Guzmán Blanco in 1870 and put Liberals in the whole political system (Districts, Governorships, Parliament and Presidency. Hence, Yellow Liberalism) and while the dictator was in power, the Liberals were at their strongest moment in their history but, once Guzmán Blanco left, then the Liberal Party started to get weaker and weaker over time until the presidency of Ignacio Andrade (who was too indecisive to actually make something on the country) who couldn't stop Cipriano Castro and his guerrilla group who would install the andinos in the government for 46 years in Venezuela. What captivated me was how the book shows you moment by moment how the Liberal party start to destroy itself through corruption and greed and when they tried to get rid of him, they couldn't work together and cemented Castro in the presidency (and his dictatorship). I won't spoil you the best parts but I will add one of my favorite parts: After getting exiled from Venezuela, Ignacio Andrade made a letter explaining why and how the Liberal Party was defeated. In short words, he says that the party got corrupted and, in the end, all those persons that used to be a rolemodel for what liberalism represented were gone, leaving in charge of the party only those who didn't cared for honor, civility and thought of war and blood as good. I always liked that part because it depicts how can society (and political parties, what's supposed to represent the ideology of a country) dies over time and how easily can corruption kill anything. Again, that's just my favorite part, I haven't even mentioned the best parts of the book in case you're interested but its a book I heavily recommend. And if you want something shorter story, I recommend you "La Tienda de Muñecos"/"The Toy Store "(?) by Julio Garmendia in 1927, a story that, while innocent at first sight, it was used as a way to protest against the Dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908 - 1935) in case you're curious. I hope you enjoy this read, thank you for reading and have a nice day.

I thought you were going to mention the torture scene from GTA V. GTA as a whole never seems to take things too seriously, so the torture scene, at least for me, felt out of place. They seemed to want to make a statement about that, but then the mission just ends in a joke and it never gets brought up again. As for Modern Warfare 2, well, I hated that game. It felt like No Russian only exists for the sake of getting attention from the media and make MW2 sell bucketloads, even if the game isn't really endorsing that. Besides, I felt like it made no sense in the story either. Spec Ops: The Line, however, is a whole other matter. Really looking forward to an analysis of that game, one of the gems of the generation.

Oh, and yeah, forgot to comment on that: BE PREPAAAAAARED! I agree, it's absolutely amazing.

Great topic. I guess the same rule applies to the way a slight tonal change completely alters the experience you're supposed to get from one game, to another. Take Elder Scrolls: Oblivion vs. Dark Souls (the original) for example: In both you games you start out in some kind of dungeon/confinement etc. : In Oblivion you're immediately given a clear quest, one that apparently the fate of the empire depends upon. So right from the beginning you've got the greater good in sight (protecting the emperor), and hence all the guards you kill or see being killed have no major (or traumatic for that matter) effect on you as the player. Because, you're supposed to focus on the task at hand, and arguably feel the hero's burden in the end, as opposed to "guilt". But then in Dark Souls, the quest itself isn't that much clear to the player at first, and the state the patients/prisoners (?) are in in that starting level is to put it mildly, 'haunting'. This dying guy's just sitting in some pool and you can outright murder him for collecting soul credit...or you can just ignore him. How does that make the player feel? I bet the game isn't after heroic endorsement in the beginning, or at least if it is, then something's wrong; as the tone is something more similar to Silent Hill, than Lord of the Rings. Thanks for another insightful video. Can't wait for the next game analysis.

Great episode. I wish more people would think about this kind of stuff before making knee-jerk reactions about stuff. Although I have to say this does make me think about something I've been mulling over lately. I feel like there are a lot of things in games that a lot of people would say are not "okay" that I really don't see any problem with, even when I totally get the complaints. The objections seem unfair or arbitrary in some cases. I mean, it's not just people reacting to stuff they find unpleasant without thinking about context, but also when people criticise something with the context in mind. Like, does it really matter whether something is trying to send the "right" message? Why do we need to care about a message at all? I don't think any piece of media is necessarily worse just because it doesn't attempt to give some kind of message, or whether it does it the "right" way. We don't need all media to be some kind of commentary on morality for it to have value, and demanding that everything does, or rather looking down on that which doesn't, seems like a really narrow-minded way to think about it. Not that those kind of conversations can't be had, but I just think we shouldn't be getting too wrapped up in how morally conscious media should be. It can be so many other things too, and thinking of that as being somehow lesser just seems like it's missing the bigger picture to me, and can even come across as somewhat selfish too sometimes. Not that I'm making this criticism based on what's said in the video. It just reminded me of those thoughts I've been having of late.

What I think is more interesting is the duality of something being portrayed as bad in the script but audiovisually glorified. Gundam for example is about portraying anime robots as war machines (as opposed to an extension of the pilot and a way to make their actions appear as those of larger-than-life gods as was the standard in past series) in a serious, dark story, but the art, animation and music are all about portraying those war machines as cool and a ton of the money it makes from the male half of the fanbase is from selling them expensive toys of those war machines. The song Ai Senshi/Soldiers of Sorrow perfectly summarizes this and makes me feel like the staff were completely self-aware about this contradiction - it's a song with extremely depressing lyrics about the horrors of war but the melody sounds happy and at times outright glorious. A piece of popular media that actually explored this to an extent was the "Informative Murder Porn" episode of South Park even if it focused on a pretty extreme example of it.

OBEY WARIO. DESTROY MARIO GREED IS GOOD ARF NORFNOFNOFNOFNOFNOF. Who doesn't want to endorse in greed and avarice? It's the very foundation of our society! You're even rewarded a Castle at the end of Wario Land 1, the true canon ending which you start Wario Land 2 in.

What do you think about games that have multiple endings? Those endings, often can change message of the game story, but it feels a bit counter intuitive, cause often multiple endings are attached to linear stories and often they get triggered by final decision, or by different stats like "how many bullets collected, how many enemies killed etc." when player is not even aware that those actions will affect ending. Although, this topic probably deserves separate video.

I have two questions about Horror movies where evil wins at the end. 1. What do think those movies usually teach us? 2. Do you think those movies endorse evil?

Gonna offer some constructive criticism here: I don't think this was a very strong episode. Yes, it's important to say stories can depict evil things without condoning them, but surely that's common sense? Otherwise, we'd struggle with any story that has a villain. The interesting thing to talk about here is the issue of video games being interactive in their depiction of terrible things. Yes, a game can talk about how killing people is a bad thing to do, but then still encourage the player to do plenty of killing as part of the gameplay. Is it actually a condemnation of violence in that case? THAT is the interesting topic to discuss here, looking at games that deal with this contradiction well and those that don't, but as you said, that's a massive topic for another time. So why have this episode now then? I can see how it could be important for laying the groundwork before your Last Of Us analysis, but still...Sorry to be so critical! I love this channel and am just offering my thoughts which I hope will help you grow it to something even better than it already is!

Seeing the description of the title, I thought this video was about the "marketing" endorsement, and the first thought that came to my mind was that of MGS2 endorsement (Where they showed only Snake) and then the final product(where 85% of game is Raiden) Anyways, a solid video, though you should've atleast talked about a few examples.