mr_world

The pit just got 10ft deeper.

The last 20 years of American history can be summarized by car size getting smaller after 9/11 due to rising gas prices. Then the domestication of the hummer because gas guzzling became a symbol of defiance against the A-rabs. Then the giant SUVs also getting steadily smaller due to even higher gas prices. Then finally settling on re-hummerization of cars by convincing people they need a giant pickup truck to haul a 2x4 from the hardware store for their weekend projects.

They spam a picture of a huge turd with two little pigs on the end of it.

Say yes and ask for $1M dollars. I would be completely fine with losing hexbear if that actually worked.

Bioshock Infinite.

The city of Columbia was built as a haven for the ruling class of 1800s America. Complete with a white underclass and, of course, slaves. It was built by a scientist who discovered a new technology and was to serve as a floating World's Fair showing the world how great and advanced America is. Pretty okay premise if done right. Many opportunities to talk about real history and draw comparisons to today. The city is politically divided among several factions, which isn't a fleshed out mechanic in the game due to development issues. But you have a cult that worships John Wilkes Booth and hates Lincoln for ending slavery. You have people who are hyper religious and treat the Founders as religious prophets. You have normal upper middle-class people who are tuned out to the politics. You also have the revolutionary group Vox Populi who are trying to overthrow Columbia's government and install actual democracy. Again, some great ideas in there for good stories based in real history. But then somewhere towards the end of the game it makes the Vox Populi just as bad as the imperialist, racists, sexists, zealots. When you start the game there is a couple being physically abused for miscegenation, in front of a cheering crowd. Yet the black lady trying to stop it is bad because her and other workers killed some cops and are pushing the middle class white people out of the city. It's total "both extremes are really the same" kind of thing. And to make the revolutionary leader bad they write her to kill a baby or something? It's been a while I can't remember if she tries to kill Elizabeth or just Comstock. She was also going to use Columbia's weapons and invade NYC to liberate people on land too. But that's bad because NYC in the late 1800s/early 1900s was good.

Some people might bring up the development troubles as a reason the story got so simplified into horseshoe theory. But there are early gameplay videos from before the troubles started that show Vox Populi implying they want to sexually assault Elizabeth. So they meant for them to be bad from the beginning. The only real thing that was different was that Comstock was supposed to me more nuanced. So the people's revolution of communists were pretty much always a political cartoon and they had to jam the right wing factions into one guy. Instead of getting the subtleties of "cleanse all the immigrants" from many different factions, we get it from one guy. Thanks 2k/Irrational.

Ken Levine is a fucking hack and always has been. Keep him away from games.

Star Wars was a product. Think of all the Star Wars that never got made because no studio would pick them up. Think about the vastness of human experience and commentary that exits outside of white guys in Hollywood, CA in the 1970s/80s. You're thinking too narrow. There could have been much more and overt anti-imperialist films being made and Star Wars would have been one thing in hundreds or thousands. The fact that it was a brand meant it had to be reinforced in culture and continued to keep churning profits. Thus it was further embedded in the mythology of Hollywood. Plus they were fine with making an anti-imperialist movie because Americans never saw themselves as the Empire. It was modeled after Nazis. Anti-imperialism was fine a long time ago in the US because it specifically meant anti-European imperial powers. The US wanted to cement US capitalism as the world order. JFK was all about anti-imperialism. Though we all know that American capitalism is just another form of imperialism, liberals don't. The average person doesn't.

Star Wars is not anti-imperialist because the movie had rebels fighting an evil empire. It's a product of empire. You can't separate it being a product of empire from the story or plot or message or whatever else. The idea that Star Wars planted a seed of anti-imperialism and therefore that's why people are leftists now is pretty immaterial. Don't get lost in idealism. People were anti-imperial before Star Wars but for different reasons than you think (as I said above) and people were anti-war because they could be drafted. Then, after Star Wars came out, Americans very much became okay with being the Empire. In fact they doubled down on it right around the time the Prequel Trilogy came out. Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005, during the height of Americans wanting to crush the rebels for blowing up their towers.

Movies are downstream from politics, not the other way around.

If it weren't for copyright these things wouldn't be major cultural signifiers.