Category: Comparative Horror

Battlefields: Postmodern Tropes and Technology in Men Against Fire and Battle Royale

kalebey

 

 

Governments in the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire and the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale use violent technology to subvert populations into obedience, thereby maintaining their power. Such premise sounds dystopian, but has and continues to be used in reality, encouraging questioning of where the viewers’ own ideologies came from. The pattern of media horrors representing those of reality’s frameworks has a long precedent, and it emerges clearly in Black Mirror episodes like this one especially and Battle Royale, as systemic

At no point in Men Against Fire, unlike most other horror-tech narratives, do most characters perceive any defect to their technology. In fact, the MASS implants shared across the mostly-military characters do enable good: soldiers can communicate with efficiency, scout out dangers without having to physically approach them, and even program fulfillments for one another like “a good night’s sleep”. However, rookie protagonist Stripe discovers that MASS literally changes perception and that use of this innovation enables manipulation on a, well, massive scale. This case highlights Nazi-like ideology as MASS and implied other propaganda condition people to perceive those deemed undesirable (the disabled, foreigners, homosexuals, and so on) as monstrous creatures worthy of naught but death, rather than as fellow humans. The tactic has a storied past. The American World War Two effort, in addition to its enemies, boosted commitment through production painting its enemies as a savage, less-than-human mob:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pearl-harbor-japanese-americans_us_5a283fb8e4b02d3bfc37b9f6

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky asserted in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Economy that media “mobilize(s) support for the special interests that dominate state and private activity” through “’cleansing’ information from the real world to leave only the ‘residue’ which is acceptable to established power systems,” (Pedro-Carañana). Creating a division between one group, especially a minority, and others diverts support to majority, authority-approved sources. A woman victimized by MASS describes in Men Against Fire how she and her son (allusions exist throughout the show about up-keeping a “pure bloodline”) were progressively dehumanized. Again, the process of these happenings mirrors reality: subtle negativity leads to registration which leads to persecution. Saul Friedlander chronicled in his book Nazi Germany and the Jews a timeline of Europe’s turning against Jews in the 20th century, beginning with increasingly broader propaganda and definitions of wrongness before proceeding to registration and, ultimately, to violence, (Friedlander). This timeline matches almost exactly to that revealed to Stripe. More recently, news and other sources of information or entertainment have been used to spread so-called “fake news” for agendas in North Korea, Russia, and even, debatably, the United States. The rise of social media increased that practice, with politicians themselves blogging and posting (Bjola). Drastic change of any kind incites hostility or fear, especially that which impacts the lives themselves of individuals. Yet, gradual change can afford space to extinguish resistance. It is worth noting that military/government motivations do not always involve such insidious ends as in Men Against Fire, but some do. Technology like MASS, or, in our reality, similar social and connective medias have enabled hate, violence, and death, not to mention the mechanical tools invented for fulfilling these goals.

Battle Royale revolves around a differentiation between young and old, a less permanent boundary one would not expect to erupt into violence due to its fluidity. In fact, at least one sympathetic adult character appears. However, the grown-ups of Battle Royale’s dystopian Japan fear the autonomy of their juniors and so employ psychological and technological means to institute their titular control mechanism. Each year, a supposedly randomly-selected school class of children undergoes drugged transport to a fortified island, then must battle to the death with resources ranging from paper fans to machine guns, until the government permits a single winner/survivor to leave. This obviously results in the deaths and traumatization of children, but more generally functions as a deterrent for youth questioning and misbehaving. That is, a troublemaker would fear their and their companions’ inclusion in the Battle or perhaps some other, awful alternative. Tasha Robinson wrote in her article read in class, “Modern Horror Films are Finding Their Scares in Dead Phone Batteries” that the postmodern world presents greater challenges to create isolation in horror, a needed feature because access to the larger world increases the potential to defeat or escape aggressors immensely (Robinson). The government in this movie accomplish separation by holding the Battle on an island accessible only by air or by high-grade boat. The children, of course, possess none of this transportation. In order to obtain one, and next to use it in escaping, the characters determine they must hack the military’s technology, isolating their captors while connecting themselves to navigation, etc. That plan showcases the neutrality of tech: only the manner of its usage deems it positive or negative. Battle Royale’s antagonists, for instance, use innovation to very gorily punish those who defy them, contain threats, and track those under their power (and to literally explode the heads of those who attempt to remove their trackers), while the children harness it to fight back. The horrors they face may seem themselves isolated to the island—one can survive them by winning aka killing everyone else, according to the promoted narrative–, but the first and final scene of the movie exhibit the falsehood of that distinction. This film opens with the announcement of the winner/survivor of the Battle directly before the one chronicled afterwards, in which an elaborate motorcade travels through throngs of rabid media, who represent these happenings to the public through live filming. Such context mires the Battle, especially as a manifestation for the brutality of the government, which otherwise receives little direct exposition, in a false righteousness and, perhaps even, desirability. Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Be Soft Rains” showcases how deviation from normalcy creates horror in itself; Battle Royale explains the fluidity of normalcy, that culture creates routine but does not instinctively adhere to any besides the basic needs of eating and drinking, sleeping, socialization, etc. as needed (Bradbury). Just as the Smart Home of Bradbury’s postwar landscape comes to demise through insistence of maintaining outdated norms (though, as a potentially inanimate being, it may have little agency to deviate), only through changing an imposed status-quo can any of the children survive their experiences without having become traumatized government tools. Conversely, the movie’s final scene features the two survivors/escapees, Noriko and Shuya, attempting to next smuggle themselves out of the country they are now fugitives of as Shuya instructs viewers via voiceover to “run for all you are worth!” before credits slowly appear onto a photograph of most of the people who died onscreen previously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAgjU9gxTB4&t=134s%29

The end indicates that neither Noriko and Shuya, nor any other living in the movie’s world, nor, in fact, the audience in the real world have not truly escaped their oppression. The horror does not self-contain on an island, to a specific government or country, or even to a finite movie. It pervades throughout, a consistent motivator to remember the atrocities all around us (the sequel movie finishes with a similarly tiny group of traumatized survivors with an unstable future). Finally, the Japan shown in this last scene of the film, as well as in some flashbacks, clearly earns the title dystopia for the overt manipulation, violence, and cruelty of and to its inhabitants. Yet, it looks remarkably like that and like civilization in general today: urban and rural areas, grade schools, grocery stores, traffic lights…the relative indistinguishability from our own setting cements the dissolution of isolationist confines. Altogether, this movie urges its audience to become aware of their own horrors through depiction of those same or like horrors brought to an awful extreme.

This episode and movie differ by 16 years, country and continent, background and plot, and techniques of production. While Men Against Fire uses a genocide storyline ripped from history to illustrate the effects of propaganda n instituting pain, oppression, and brainwashing in a postmodern situation; Battle Royale cautions against the harnessing of power and corruption via postmodern invention. They share, however, the motif that propaganda influences it audience unduly and has but gained ubiquity as technology advances. No impossible monster appears in either, only extensions of the world as is. Only the dark side of human nature, or ambition, magnifies through digital resources. These watchings implore greater attention to how humans use what they create.

Works Cited

Bjola, Corneliu. “The Ethics of Countering Digital Propaganda.” Roundtable: Alternatives to War, 1998.

Bradbury, Ray. There Will Come Soft Rains. 1950, www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury.pdf.

Chomsky, Noam, and Edward Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Economy . 1988.

Friedländer Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Phoenix, 2014.

Fukasaku, Kinji, director. Battle Royale. Toei Company, 2001.

Robinson, Tasha. “Modern Horror Films Are Finding Their Scares in Dead Phone Batteries.” The Verge, 2018.

Verbruggen, Jakob, director. Black Mirror: Men Against Fire. Black Mirror, 2016.

Yam, Kimberly. “These Anti-Japanese Signs From World War II Are A Warning Against Bigotry Today.” The Huffington Post, 2017.

Comparative Horror Analysis: A Podcast Report on Black Mirror’s “Playtest” and “Unfriended”

grpecheck

Check out my podcast report on the Black Mirror episode “Playtest” and the horror film Unfriended

 

 

 

Works cited:

Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media (Reprint edition). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2008). Cyberbullying: An Exploratory Analysis of Factors Related to Offending and Victimization. Deviant Behavior, 29(2), 129–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639620701457816
Pinedo, I. (1996). Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film. Journal of Film and Video, 48(1/2), 17–31.
Tryon, Chuck. 2009. “Video from the Void: Video Spectatorship, Domestic Film Cultures, and Contemporary Horror Film.” Journal of Film and Video 61 (3): 40–51. https://doi.org/10.1353/jfv.0.0034
(Edited 3/7/2019 at 10:30 am ET to accurately reflect the use of sources in the actual podcast)

Comparative Horror Analysis: “Until Dawn” & “Doki Doki Literature Club”

Claire B.

Video games offer a rich medium for exploring postmodern horror. Among other affordances, games invite users to step into Huizinga’s “magic circle”, connecting the player to the in-game world via the controller or keyboard (105). In addition, the length of games, (often anywhere from 10-30 hours) can provide a framework for producing compelling and complex narratives. When combined with the horror genre, the final product can be truly impressive. In this analysis, I will examine two well-executed examples of postmodern horror video games, Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn (2015), and Team Salvato’s Doki Doki Literature Club (2017), reflecting on the nature of their late postmodern elements and ultimately using each example to illuminate the other.

I’ll begin with Until Dawn. The game follows the well-worn premise of a group of unruly teens vacationing in a remote cabin. Chaos ensues, and the group must make critical decisions regarding who lives, who gets terrorized by a masked psycho, and who gets killed by a modern reimagining of the Algonquin Wendigo monster.

However, the developers at Supermassive Games know that to pull off a pulpy teen slasher nowadays, there needs to be an element of self-awareness. To achieve this, the game subverts several key elements typical to the horror genre through narrative and mechanics. Perhaps the most critical of these is the “Butterfly Effect” system. When players boot up the game, they are greeted with a screen stating, “A tiny butterfly flapping its wings today may lead to a devastating hurricane weeks from now”. In effect, the game features a choice-based narrative, wherein all actions have consequences. Choices are made during tense “quick-time events”, wherein the player must select a choice from several options or successfully complete a button sequence in a limited amount of time. This gives real weight to a player’s choices, and ensures that they are able to shape the story as they see fit. For example, all of the characters can die if certain choices are made, undermining the typical trope of there being a ‘final girl/boy’ to face off against the villain.

Along with the butterfly effect, the game also tailors aspects of its horrors specifically to the player. Each “chapter” of the game begins as a session with a mysterious psychiatrist named Dr. Hill who asks the player to answer questions about various images and scenarios. Depending on what personal insights are revealed, the game will modify certain scenes or jumpscares to reflect the appointment with Dr. Hill. For example, if a player expresses that they are more afraid of needles than storms or dogs, the Psycho will end up using a syringe to incapacite another character instead of a mask filled with sleeping gas. Through the modifications of these cutscenes, the game further subverts its role as a supposedly distanced narrative.

This transgressive sense of metalepsis upsets the boundaries of what is and isn’t within the game. In addition to the emphasis put on player choice and expression, the game uses a form of hypermediacy to further this confusion between the in-game and outside world. This is reflected through one of my favorite mechanics, the “Don’t Move” feature. When one of the antagonists is critically near, players are instructed to hold their Dualshock controllers still until the threat passes. See the video below for a compilation of “Don’t Move” moments.

Unlike a traditional horror film where a spectator may yell, “Don’t go in there!” or “Don’t do that!” to no avail, Until Dawn puts the character’s survival literally into the hands of the player, both reminding them of the medium and further emphasizing the importance of the player/author’s actions.

Mental illness and societal ignorance it is also a topic explored by Until Dawn. By the climax of the game, it is revealed that one of the main character’s, Josh, is actually the masked psycho figure. If players choose to read/watch collectible notes and videotapes, they’ll learn that Josh is suffering from schizophrenia and is wrongly being treated for depression by his psychiatrists, including the aforementioned Dr. Hill. Although the Wendigo monster is a capable and frightening killer, the game situates the true evil as a medical system that doesn’t know enough, or perhaps doesn’t care enough to provide adequate treatment for people like Josh, a character who ends up dead regardless of the choices made. On the other end of the aesthetic spectrum is Doki Doki Literature Club, another video game that has sparked a discussion surrounding mental illness.

On the surface, Doki Doki Literature Club is an entirely different beast. This anime-style PC game brands itself as a cute, brightly-colored dating sim. The story follows a male protagonist who is invited by his childhood best friend to join their school’s literature club. After joining the club, the player is led through mini-games and dialogue with the four female members. Once the player finds a distressing poem written by their best friend, Sayori, the game’s façade quickly cracks, revealing a psychological horror game that relies on metalepsis and heightened self-reflexivity.

Similar to Until Dawn, this game effectively rebels against all expectations of a typical Dating Sim. Although the main point of the first mini-game filled hour is to develop relationships with the girls, the main character’s role in the Literature Club quickly transforms from a possible romantic interest into that of an intervener. Through finding other poems, the player learns of the girls’ issues and troubled home lives, and must help them avoid self-destructive behaviors like self-harm and suicide.

In addition to this task, the user must figure out why the game keeps glitching and restarting. The developers at Team Salvato know how to successfully use hypermediation to create disturbing effects; after the childhood best friend of the main character commits suicide, the game’s graphics quickly devolve, with character animations twitching, glitching, or text boxes being replaced with gibberish. To combat these game-breaking mechanics and produce better endings for the characters, the player must venture outside the game-world to delete files associated with the game.

An example of one of the many glitched screens players will encounter.

These hypermediative mechanics achieve a similar sense of metalepsis to Until Dawn, albeit in quite a different form. At the end of the game, the villain is revealed to be the self-aware NPC Monica, who is trying to create the perfect in-game world to live in with the protagonist forever. She admits to amplifying the effects of the other character’s mental health problems in an attempt to make the player “hate them”. To get to the true ending of the game, the player must figure out how to escape the in-game world and delete Monica’s character file permanently, thus ending the cycle of abuse.

Go to 58:30 to see the file-deleting mechanic in action.

Although both games are aesthetically dissimilar, they intersect in a few key ways. Both produce a sense of metalepsis through calculated hypermediation. Where Until Dawn invites players into the game via the Butterfly effect and the “Don’t Move” mechanic, Doki Doki Literature Club uses glitching and file-manipulation to jolt players out of the game. In her essay on metalepsis in popular culture, Karin Kukkonen describes these two related types of metalepsis. According to Kukkonen, “metalepsis can be ascending across narrative levels, when a character moves out of the fictional world and enters the real world…or it can be descending across narrative levels, when authors or narrators enter the fictional world.” (2). As the ‘author’ of the action in Until Dawn, the player “descends” into the realm of the game, where in DDLC, Monica ascends to the player’s reality, even going so far as to address them by their Steam account name.

The two games also intersect in their sympathetic approaches to the topic of mental illness. Doki Doki Literature Club has been praised for its “clear and frank exploration of mental health” (Rose). Central to the narrative is how each character experiences their respective mental illness. In their role as friend and comforter, the main character must listen to and respond appropriately to their friends’ admissions of depression and suicidal thoughts. And although the game admits that these symptoms are being artificially exaggerated by Monica, the game “refuses to exploit mental health as a mechanic, or even as a gamble” (Rose). The literature club girls are all victims of circumstance; the player is pushed to help them not to gain experience or in-game currency, but because they care about their well-being.

Although Until Dawn ultimately expresses a similar attitude regarding Josh, the way his character is framed for much of the game is steeped in harmful tropes. In The Butler(s) DID it – Dissociative Identity Disorder in Cinema, Peter Byrne writes, “[Many] misrepresentations of schizophrenia invoke the discourse: “schizophrenics” are either a violent threat or figures of fun. In addition to the distress such stereotypes cause, these misconceptions have a bearing on negative attitudes in the community…” (Byrne). For much of the game, Josh is situated in this oscillating binary of “figure of fun” and “threat”, with the distinction becoming more pronounced after the player finds recordings of him practicing his “Psycho” voice, thereby revealing that the masked figure was him all along. Left at this, the game would appear to promote harmful stereotypes (and for many casual players, it may seem as such). However, as mentioned prior, careful examination of in-game collectibles proves Josh to be as much a victim as the other characters, making his inevitable death all the more tragic.

In conclusion, Doki Doki Literature Club and Until Dawn offer two examples of how video games can create richly interactive horror experiences by implementing hypermediative mechanics. Additionally, these works have pushed back against traditional narrativessurrounding mental health, sparking critical conversations surrounding stigma, treatment, and how to further rehabilitate mental health’s presence in popular media. 

Works Cited

Byrne, Peter. “The Butler(s) Did It – Dissociative Identity Disorder in Cinema.” Medical Humanities 27, no. 1 (June 1, 2001): 26–29. https://doi.org/10.1136/mh.27.1.26.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Einaudi, 2009.

Kukkonen, Karin, and Sonja Klimek. Metalepsis in Popular Culture. De Gruyter, 2011.

Rose, Victoria. “God of the Script: How Doki Doki Literature Club Gets Mental Health Right.” Medium.com, 16 Dec. 2017, medium.com/@riningear/god-of-the-script-how-doki-doki-literature-club-gets-mental-health-right-76762a7806c0.