BioShock Infinite

[SecretAsianMan]

To wit, I adore the calliope cover of that song and wish all songs in all games were played by calliopes.

 

I'm digging the old timey treatment of modern-ish songs in this game.  The barbershop God Only Knows and the gospel/soul Tainted Love actually made me stop and listen to them.

 

 

Ya the song didn't work for me either. It came so far out of left field. There was no discussion from either character about it. Aren't they also running for their lives at this point too? 

 

I wasn't actively being shot at or pursed at the time, but story wise there was a sense of urgency so it's more than a little incongruous to stop in a dank cellar and sing a little ditty.  Removed from everything else as an isolated moment I liked it but the placement was jarring.

[Dewar]

I must be the only person in whole world that hadn't heard of God Only Knows before playing. I didn't realize the music thing they were doing until almost half way through.

[Bjorn]

I must be the only person in whole world that hadn't heard of God Only Knows before playing. I didn't realize the music thing they were doing until almost half way through.

 

I was the same, didn't catch on until later, not until the Beach. 

[Dewar]

I was the same, didn't catch on until later, not until the Beach. 

 

I think I might have made it even further

 

It really didn't fully sink in for me until I flat out listened to the audio log.

[Architecture]

You mean the one slightly off the beaten path before you reach Comstock House?

 

Smh, gents. Smgdh.

[SecretAsianMan]

You mean the one slightly off the beaten path before you reach Comstock House?

 

Smh, gents. Smgdh.

 

I actually just passed that log, but I think there's one earlier that also refers to music coming from the tears.

[Architecture]

That's probably my least favorite part of the game--you're literally running in circles.

[Bjorn]

So I'm probably never going to play Burial at Sea, so I read some of the spoilers on it today.  A few more characters return, and Daisy Fitzroy gets explored a bit more.  The spoiler here details exactly what happens regarding more info about Daisy (nothing else).  Info taken from this wiki.

 

 

"Fitzroy is encountered upon Elizabeth's return to Columbia. Elizabeth witnesses a meeting between Fitzroy and the Lutece twins just minutes before her death. Fitzroy has captured Fink and his son. The Luteces explain to Fitzroy that she needs to give Elizabeth a reason to kill her. At first Fitzroy refuses to harm Fink's son, saying the sins of Fink should not be taken out on him and that she wants to see Comstock fall. The Luteces hint that she doesn't have to kill the boy, just threaten him so that Elizabeth will "mature" into a killer. Fitzroy is saddened that she will not be able to witness Comstock's death, but she accepts that she must die if it means that it will lead to Comstock's death as well."

 

Ultimately this strikes me as them recognizing they fucked up with Daisy, and were trying to retcon something better.  It...doesn't particularly impress me though, nor does it change any of the problems that whole arc has.  It might actually make them worse. 

 

The retcon makes it so that now she's a sacrifice so that the cute white girl can become god. Because god got to know how to murder.  Well, and god has to murder god's father, to maybe avoid ever becoming god, but that means...it's complicated.  Anyways, we'd hate to have her murder any nice white people, so it's probably better if she murders the only black person whose name she's ever heard.  And Daisy is suddenly going to trust the Luteces?  Why?  She's going to abandon her people?  On the hope that getting murdered might bring down Comstock?  Because that fits with her character so well.  But you know, poor black people need white people to tell them what to do, for the good of us all.  And Elizabeth seemed to basically become omnipotent there at the end, she certainly understood many of the variables affecting her and Booker's path.  Soooo, she would have suddenly understood that she had murdered a woman simply because she was manipulated by the Luteces.  And Elizabeth was totally fine with that?  

 

I really didn't think it was possible for me to be more disappointed in BI, or even angrier at the Daisy/Vox arc.  I was wrong.

[Gormongous]

I really didn't think it was possible for me to be more disappointed in BI, or even angrier at the Daisy/Vox arc.  I was wrong.

 

Funnily enough, Alec Meer over at RPS had the same reaction, but less for your specific criticisms and more for the audacity of trying to handwave one of the game's worst plotholes in a DLC.

 

While it can be powerfully maudlin when the approach is echoes through time, constants and variables rather than outright rewriting, some new reveals are outright ugly in their attempt to retroactively justify earlier narrative decisions. For instance – and a minor spoiler which doesn’t relate to the overall outcome here – we discover that the much-criticised ultimate depiction of Vox Populi leader Daisy Fitzroy as a murderous monster no better than the racist, cruel powers she sought to overthrow was in fact a feint, necessary in order to force a certain event, but really she hated what she was doing and knew it would lead to her own demise.

 

Honestly, what rot. What a preposterous and blatant attempt to shoot down one of the more persistent criticisms of Infinite after the event. It also speaks to Infinite and Burial At Sea’s use of the dimension-hopping Lutece twins as narrative get out of jail free cards: much as their dialogue continues to entertain, I sincerely hope this is the last we ever see of them.

 

Personally, I don't know if it's worse to leave an incredibly problematic moment like Fitzroy's downfall stand without comment or to rewrite its context in a way that might reveal ignorance of what was actually problematic about the moment. It's not an enviable place for a creator to put himself or herself, but it's representative to me of the mixed feelings surrounding Bioshock: Infinite.

[Ben X]

7. I actually didn't mind the ending to Battlestar Galactica. Lost was garbage though.

 

I don't want to derail this thread (especially as we have a LOST thread already), but I'll just say that I liked the ending to LOST and I think the show kept its quality up throughout. The weakest season is 4 imo, because although it's doing lots of cool flashforward stuff, the actual island plot is just moving groups of people back and forth for little to no reason (moreso than usual). It still has loads of great stuff in it, though. Season 3 does get off to a slow start after the amazing opening scene, thanks to the writers strike and a lack of end-date, but it picks up very quickly.

[BigJKO]

I don't want to derail this thread (especially as we have a LOST thread already), but I'll just say that I liked the ending to LOST and I think the show kept its quality up throughout. The weakest season is 4 imo, because although it's doing lots of cool flashforward stuff, the actual island plot is just moving groups of people back and forth for little to no reason (moreso than usual). It still has loads of great stuff in it, though. Season 3 does get off to a slow start after the amazing opening scene, thanks to the writers strike and a lack of end-date, but it picks up very quickly.

 

Agreed!

[Frenetic Pony]

Meh, Honestly I've no problem with Daisy being a mass murdering cunt. Most revolutions turn bad one way or another, only some still racist brain lodge would make you think it was "because she's black". The White Terror, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Hitler's near and for all intents and purposes actual revolution Germany. Revolutions like America are the exception to the rule that a bunch of people grown used to violence and newly drunk on power will just stop once the initial goal is accomplished.

 

Sad to hear they tried to retcon it for no reason. Sometimes reality isn't all nice and packaged up for political correct bullshit to be applied, and I don't see how entertainment has to be conformed to that either.

[Gormongous]

Meh, Honestly I've no problem with Daisy being a mass murdering cunt. Most revolutions turn bad one way or another, only some still racist brain lodge would make you think it was "because she's black". The White Terror, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Hitler's near and for all intents and purposes actual revolution Germany. Revolutions like America are the exception to the rule that a bunch of people grown used to violence and newly drunk on power will just stop once the initial goal is accomplished.

 

"Most revolutions turn bad" is really different from "revolutionary unjustly accused of murder becomes mass-murderer monster before the revolution's even won". What happens in the game is the Reign of Terror beginning immediately after the Tennis Court Oath has been made, with the Marquis de Lafayette as the perpetrator of both. It ain't good storytelling and it ain't good history.

 

It's also totally racist for the game to have so-called racists say, "You can't trust black people, they're bloodthirsty savages that'll skin you alive," and then have the black people later become bloodthirsty savages that skin people alive. That makes the racists right in the game, which unfortunately makes the game racist too, whether or not it was the creator's intention.

[SecretAsianMan]

Man, this is some pretty good timing.  I just got to the part with Fitzroy last night.  I wasn't totally sure what to expect going into it, but yeah it was not so great.  I'm kind of with Frenetic Pony in that I can understand and even expected the revolutionaries to become more violent than necessary, but what Gormongous said is also true in that Daisy becomes the horrible monster well before she's even close to the leader of her oppressors.  Fink is obviously one of those oppressors, but it doesn't seem like Daisy had any specific grudge against him the same way she does Comstock.  Honestly though, Daisy started giving me a bad taste when she turned the Vox against Booker because he was a complication.
 
Seeing all that try to be reconned to make Daisy seem more sympathetic and a martyr is just weird backpedaling.
 
Gameplay wise, I now have all the vigors (I assume, the wheel is full).  I thought the magnetic shield one was going to be a return of the telekinesis at first, but man it's super useful, especially against the mechanical forefathers.  I strongly dislike melee in FPS games so the charge one is not appealing to me.  Maybe it would be better if I could improve the melee attack the same way you can in the other Bioshocks, but the one slot for each type of gear means I'm never going to equip those pieces when I can recover health or salt instead. 
 
Moving around on skylines continues to be fun and my favorite part of the game.  I actually liked fighting a handyman in a area with a bunch of them because I could continually jump from line to ground to line and completely outmaneuver him.  I was afraid at first that it would make things too easy, but his ability to electrify the line meant I had to keep on the move which made the fight very fast paced and quite satisfying.  I especially enjoyed finishing him off with a skyline strike.
 
I'm now on my way to Comstock House.  This area is kind of a pain in the ass.  I think Architecture said it best.

That's probably my least favorite part of the game--you're literally running in circles.

[Bjorn]

Meh, Honestly I've no problem with Daisy being a mass murdering cunt. Most revolutions turn bad one way or another, only some still racist brain lodge would make you think it was "because she's black". The White Terror, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Hitler's near and for all intents and purposes actual revolution Germany. Revolutions like America are the exception to the rule that a bunch of people grown used to violence and newly drunk on power will just stop once the initial goal is accomplished.

 

Sad to hear they tried to retcon it for no reason. Sometimes reality isn't all nice and packaged up for political correct bullshit to be applied, and I don't see how entertainment has to be conformed to that either.

 

Of course the game is set during the same time period that Ghandi was developing non-violent "revolution" that would set the stage for civil rights movements around the world.  The game happens shortly before, but it is one of the culturally deaf elements of BI to force the hyper violence on a movement that in reality was dominated by non-violence.  Of course there's no way that Daisy could ever learn about people like Ghandi or MLK Jr., it's not like there are magical portals all over the city that give knowledge about the events of the future. 

 

There has been a lot of quality writing exploring why the handling of Daisy and the Vox Populi is racist.  If you haven't read any of it, you should.  It's not about conforming to some having an opinion.  Daisy could have ended up as a murdering shitbag at the end, and it could have been believable and non-racist.  But that's not what happened.  The game explicitly fucking says that the poor, black woman is JUST AS BAD as the enslaving, world conquering, possibly genocidal, kidnapping, torturing, dimension hopping psychopath running the city. 

 

And with the latest Burial at Sea, quite frankly the racism actually gets worse. 

Daisy's character, a strong black woman, something extremely rare in video games, exists for one reason. This strong black woman leading her people exists to be murdered by a white girl to further her character development. That's it. Burial at Sea makes this completely and unequivocally clear. Everything else is window dressing. She's not violent because power corrupts. She's violent because Elizabeth needs a reason to kill her. Her revolution doesn't spiral out of control because years of abuse are finally being vented, it turns violent to make the white protagonists hate and fear her. It's all about making sure the white girl is nice and empowered. It completely misses the point of what was wrong with Daisy.

 

Funnily enough, Alec Meer over at RPS had the same reaction, but less for your specific criticisms and more for the audacity of trying to handwave one of the game's worst plotholes in a DLC.

 

Thanks for that. I haven't been reading RPS much lately, I probably would have missed it.

 

Jeebus, I just read through that.  He gives another spoiler bit about Elizabeth, and this is a bit fucking disgusting:

 

Alec Meer said

 

There is, too, an uncalled for, drawn-out and horrifying torture scene, seen from the victim’s perspective. One the one hand it’s impressive in that the gruesomeness is achieved as much via sounds and description as it is mere image, but on the other it felt completely wanton. I suppose I won’t spoil it, but I did have to pause it half way through and go for a turn around the block before I could continue. Even thinking about it now makes my arms go limp – no doubt that’s to some degree my own near-phobic response to…. surgical procedures, but it’s also because this scene goes on so damn long and shows the torturer reveling in the detail of his actions.

As well as this moment seeming to me to crave shock-horror outrage, it’s both jarringly unlike anything else in any BioShock and – spoiler of a sort, although you’ve probably guessed this is already – there’s an uncomfortable undertone to the fact that we’re given so much detail for so long of a terrible thing happening to a female character when equally, if not more, gruesome situations that the BioShock series’ male characters suffer are, while grisly, rather more cursory and spared such horrific lingering. Like the torturer, the game seems to revel in what it’s doing to a woman, as opposed to a ‘strong’ man. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything more odious going on than shock factor, but I don’t think it was a smart choice to have the only time the series does something like this also be the only time it stars a woman. Especially given that said woman has already been repeatedly defined by her victim status.

 

So Elizabeth gets medically tortured for the second time in the series, but this time you get to experience it in First Person, in a nice drawn out scene. Fucking wonderful.

[SecretAsianMan]

Of course the game is set during the same time period that Ghandi was developing non-violent "revolution" that would set the stage for civil rights movements around the world.  The game happens shortly before, but it is one of the culturally deaf elements of BI to force the hyper violence on a movement that in reality was dominated by non-violence. 

 

There has been a lot of quality writing exploring why the handling of Daisy and the Vox Populi is racist.  If you haven't read any of it, you should.  It's not about conforming to having an opinion.  Daisy could have ended up as a murdering shitbag at the end, and it could have been believable and non-racist.  But that's not what happened.  The game explicitly fucking says that the poor, black woman is JUST AS BAD as the enslaving, world conquering, possibly genocidal, kidnapping, torturing, dimension hopping psychopath running the city. 

 

And with the latest Burial at Sea, quite frankly the racism actually gets worse. 

Daisy's character, a strong black woman, something extremely rare in video games, exists for one reason. This strong black woman leading her people exists to be murdered by a white girl to further her character development. That's it. Burial at Sea makes this completely and unequivocally clear. Everything else is window dressing. She's not violent because power corrupts. She's violent because Elizabeth needs a reason to kill her. Her revolution doesn't spiral out of control because years of abuse are finally being vented, it turns violent to make the white protagonists hate and fear her. It's all about making sure the white girl is nice and empowered. It completely misses the point of what was wrong with Daisy.

 

I hadn't thought about it that way, mostly because I'm not done with the game yet, but man that shit is super gross.  Not that I would expect them to make Daisy a shining moral paragon because that would also be pretty unbelievable, but reducing her existence to a single purpose like that is pretty disgusting.  I've stated before that I enjoy how Elizabeth just doesn't understand racism, but now it seems like the game is saying her point of view is WRONG and to prove it she has to kill the evil black woman who's threatening a child.  Her thoughts literally went from "I don't understand why they have to be separated" to "Fitzroy is just as bad as Comstock isn't she?".  It's really creepy and disturbing.

 

I kinda hate that I'm even asking this question, but are there any Chinese Vox?  I've seen Black and Irish Vox, but aren't there 3 minority groups being oppressed in this game?  Granted I haven't been paying that much attention so I've possibly missed it.  And I'm not counting the gunsmith Chen Lin.

[aperson]

Racists being right doesn't make a game racist - racists are right all the time. Life isn't so simple that racists are always wrong and evil. Sometimes racists are right, sometimes racists do noble things while still being racists. A racist person might still save a baby from a burning building or prove Fermat's Last Theorem or correctly predict the weather tomorrow.

 

800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were killed via machete over the course of a couple months. 10,000 a day. Sometimes black people are savages. Black people aren't always savages, no, and other races can be savages as well - that's why racists are wrong. Not because they are always wrong - that's pure wishful thinking. Is real life racist because the above real life event made some racist person correct?

 

"That makes the racists right in the game, which unfortunately makes the game racist too"

 

No, it doesn't. This is a non-sequitur. The racists being right doesn't mean racists are always right, and it doesn't mean the author believes that racists are always right. It means they were right in one instance in one reality out of an infinite number in a fictional story.

 

"A racist person looked across the street at some black kids on the street corner. 'I bet those kids are doing drugs' thought the racist person. Tyrone looked across the street at an aging white guy staring intently at him. 'I bet that old white dude is a racist fuck' thought Tyrone as he lit up his joint."

 

Incredibly racist tale?

 

 

When racism is a white-owned store refusing to serve a black family and also a game in which black people are as violent as other people (isn't this nihilism?) or when racist people are right in some particular instance then "racism" as a concept doesn't mean anything beyond "involves black people." So then BI is racist...ok...but who cares? According to some white people BI is racist against them! It's racist against all races - cool.

 

All this says to me is stop paying attention to accusations of racism (at least from some people) as they've become performative in function and serve mostly as a way for white people to congratulate themselves.

 

I think this is an interesting read:

 

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/10/newsweeks-ngai-croal-on-the-resident-evil-5-trailer-this-imagery-has-a-history/

 

It's also worth reading the links contained in it, like :

 

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/08/black-professionals-in-games-tomb-raider-producer-morgan-gray-on-diversity-resident-evil-5-and-the-problem-with-cole-train/

 

Compared to the current discussions on race in games this looks like something from an entirely different era. It's not snarky or flippant, it's not just "lol so racist" with little else. Morgan Gray doesn't say "Gears of War is totally racist" he says "it sort of reinforces casual racism" which is a lot less splashy.

[Bjorn]

I hadn't thought about it that way, mostly because I'm not done with the game yet, but man that shit is super gross.  Not that I would expect them to make Daisy a shining moral paragon because that would also be pretty unbelievable, but reducing her existence to a single purpose like that is pretty disgusting.  I've stated before that I enjoy how Elizabeth just doesn't understand racism, but now it seems like the game is saying her point of view is WRONG and to prove it she has to kill the evil black woman who's threatening a child.  Her thoughts literally went from "I don't understand why they have to be separated" to "Fitzroy is just as bad as Comstock isn't she?".  It's really creepy and disturbing.

 

I kinda hate that I'm even asking this question, but are there any Chinese Vox?  I've seen Black and Irish Vox, but aren't there 3 minority groups being oppressed in this game?  Granted I haven't been paying that much attention so I've possibly missed it.  And I'm not counting the gunsmith Chen Lin.

 

Chinese people are mentioned, but I don't remember there being anyone besides Chen.

 

I also edited my post with some other thoughts and another spoiler from that Alec Meer piece.

[aperson]

There has been a lot of quality writing exploring why the handling of Daisy and the Vox Populi is racist.  If you haven't read any of it, you should.  It's not about conforming to having an opinion.  Daisy could have ended up as a murdering shitbag at the end, and it could have been believable and non-racist.  But that's not what happened.  The game explicitly fucking says that the poor, black woman is JUST AS BAD as the enslaving, world conquering, possibly genocidal, kidnapping, torturing, dimension hopping psychopath running the city.

 

And? That's racist because?

 

You're trying to get the word "racist" to do a lot more work than it is capable of doing. Poor people can't be as bad as rich people? Black people can't be as bad as white people? It's not possible for an oppressed person to be as bad as an oppressor just without having the means to express it?

 

Your way of arguing that the game is racist is describing things then saying "and that's racist", when the thing you're describing has no relevance to racism. "Anyone can be equally a shitheel" is not a racist message, it's a message that doesn't differentiate race at all. This message is racist because...it contradicts your hierarchy of evil?

 

"And with the latest Burial at Sea, quite frankly the racism actually gets worse."

 

What you describe is a simple plot contrivance. The "racist" element is what...that it involves a black person? This sort of contrivance is incredibly common across fiction involving all sorts of races, gender, etc. It's the same contrivance people pointed out towards the end of the Robocop reboot.

 

When a very common plot contrivance occurs it goes from nothing notable to racist based on the race of the person acting in a contrived manner?

 

Edit: I don't want to argue that BI is or is not racist - I think that's a very poor way of framing any discussion, and consequently the vast majority of "it's racist / no it's not" discussions are almost entirely worthless, and boil down to "person who finds racism in almost everything argues with person who never sees racism."

 

Personally I don't like the idea of racism or accusations of it being treated flippantly - as a way to establish the moral high ground or lend weight to an opinion just using the power of the word. "I didn't like it" or "I thought the black characters in the game didn't have much agency and were secondary to the white characters" sure sounds namby-pamby compared to "it's racist!"

 

But when you lead off with "it's racist" either people have to agree or they're cast in the role of defending racism. They agree or they're too stupid or racist themselves to see the obvious. It also ignores how wide open things are to interpretation - the fact that a guy on the internet finds something racist (often that guy is white!) doesn't mean a whole lot in itself. And when accusing a work of fiction it's a weird bit of anthropomorphism - a video game doesn't hold opinions and cannot express opinions separate from being written or interpreted. "Unintentional racism" is usually just a punchy way of saying "thoughtlessness."

 

I think it's a lot more interesting to articulate what you do and don't like about the game, or any game, and let other people decide if that's racism or not, especially when your usage of the word is extremely broad and "racist" is often not the most precise term.

 

If there is a plot contrivance involving a black character describe it and let me interpret whether or not that's racist. Plot contrivances are bad, the main black characters being evil or poorly formed is a thing. Is it a bad thing? Is it a racist thing? Maybe.

 

If you watch Amnesia Fortnight how many black employees do you see? Is that racism? Walking Dead was created by some white guys and the black character is a convict. Racism? "It sort of reinforces casual racism" may very well be true. (See a recent study along similar lines) But I don't think that means the game is racist, or that debating whether it is or not is great idea.

 

If you really want to lead right off with "it's racist" you have to bring your A-game. Bjorn, you're calling Burial at Sea racist when you haven't even played it. (At least according to an earlier post) You accusation is based on a third-party characterization, and rather than quoting from the game you're quoting from that characterization. Everything you argue is being filtered through that characterization, rather than based on the source. That is not A-game. Rooting accusations of racism in ignorance is an awful idea.

 

Isn't this what religious right people do? Condemn works based on second-hand understandings of them? "Well I never played Mass Effect but it was described to me as an alien gay sex sim!" The fact that you're on the "right" side doesn't make this sort of reasoning any more logical, fair or intellectually honest. Wanting to be a good person or morally self-righteous doesn't justify intellectual dishonesty.

 

Edit: Removed a lie

[SecretAsianMan]

And? That's racist because?

You're trying to get the word "racist" to do a lot more work than it is capable of doing. Poor people can't be as bad as rich people? Black people can't be as bad as white people? It's not possible for an oppressed person to be as bad as an oppressor just without having the means to express it?

Your way of arguing that the game is racist is describing things then saying "and that's racist", when the thing you're describing has no relevance to racism. "Anyone can be equally a shitheel" is not a racist message, it's a message that doesn't differentiate race at all. This message is racist because...it contradicts your hierarchy of evil?

"And with the latest Burial at Sea, quite frankly the racism actually gets worse."

What you describe is a simple plot contrivance. The "racist" element is what...that it involves a black person? This sort of contrivance is incredibly common across fiction involving all sorts of races, gender, etc. It's the same contrivance people pointed out towards the end of the Robocop reboot.

When a very common plot contrivance occurs it goes from nothing notable to racist based on the race of the person acting in a contrived manner?

The game itself makes it about race.  Daisy specifically talks about the white man being oppressive.  The propaganda in the game isn't deriding the Vox because they're poor, but because they're not white (or in the case of the Irish, a specific kind of white).  Comstock, on several occasions, says that being white is inherently superior.  Here are 2 audio logs directly from the game

 

As a boy, I had a dog named Bill. Like all dogs, Bill was a loyal friend. If we had not fed him, Bill would have been loyal. If we had struck him, Bill would have been loyal. Only when the colored man can make that claim will he take his place in society.

What exactly was the “Great Emancipator” emancipating the Negro from? From his daily bread. From the nobility of honest work. From wealthy patrons who sponsored them from cradle to grave. From clothing and shelter. And what have they done with their freedom? Why, go to Finkton, and you shall find out. No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation.

You can argue that the game does or doesn't have a message about whether any of this is right/wrong or that the devs are/aren't racist themselves.  But when you have a character in the game say those kinds of things, then have another character say that a Black woman is just as bad as that guy, you can't really say that race has nothing to do with it.

[TychoCelchuuu]

aperson I think you are confusing fiction, which is necessarily an abstraction of reality and which makes certain narratives with certain meanings by making certain choices about what the characters do, with reality. So, for instance, that something occurs in reality means all sorts of complicated things, most of which are disputable, because reality is very complicated and there are many causes and many effects and many ways of understanding something, especially given that everyone has a different viewpoint and different information and different levels of knowledge. In fiction, we get to choose what the causes and effects are, we get to present all the relevant information and determine what information is relevant, we get to stage the occurrences with the specific lighting and timing and voice acting and graphics and so on that we want, we get to embed it in an overall narrative and use it to serve a certain function, we get to decide how characters comment on it and which characters say which things and why, and so on. All of these choices that we make in fiction give us something that means a thing much more easily and readily than reality gives us something that means a thing.

Some of the stuff you say also betrays a startling lack of understanding about what racism is and means. You say: "So then BI is racist...ok...but who cares? According to some white people BI is racist against them! It's racist against all races - cool." Not exactly cool, though, because in the actual world, certain races have experienced racism in ways that have been a lot more harmful. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which races these are, and also leave it up to you to try to figure out why translating the disparate experiences of various races into a homogenized experience of racism might be a really fucked up message for BI to be sending.

Infinite is the ultimate milquetoast statement about issues with respect to which we cannot be milquetoasts.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Also, I'm loathe to link to my own stuff, but if you've ignored literally all the stuff about how Bioshock Infinite is racist because you think it's just performative rather than in-depth like N'Gai Croal's talk about the RE5 trailer, my review of the game goes into the sort of depth that you might be looking for by pointing out specifically the way in which the game overtly makes racist statements. I think lots of other articles do that too but since you've been directed to them already and have dismissed them, I'll leave it be.

[aperson]

aperson I think you are confusing fiction, which is necessarily an abstraction of reality and which makes certain narratives with certain meanings by making certain choices about what the characters do, with reality.

 

 

"I think learning to make arguments without sounding like you think your interlocutors are idiots is a very valuable skill."

 

Are you interested in discussion or point-scoring?

 

All of these choices that we make in fiction give us something that means a thing much more easily and readily than reality gives us something that means a thing.

 

Thinking that you can diving authorial intent is in fact known as the "intentional fallacy." (I know you guys love your fallacies...) And rarely does anything beyond Aesop's Fables have some easily divined meaning. Playing "Spot the meaning" while believing that you're uniquely qualified to do so, even for works you haven't experienced yourself (!), is very silly.

 

Flannery O'Connor:

 

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you experience that meaning more fully.

 

Personally I think this is spot on. I this case we're not just talking about a reductive summary of the meaning of a work, we're talking about a reductive summary from someone who hasn't even experienced the work in question.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I think it's interesting that you read that as me calling you an idiot. I didn't intend it as such and I think the point I was making was a fairly subtle and difficult one to understand, not something obvious that only a stupid person could miss.

As for your assertion that I've committed the intentional fallacy, I'd have to disagree: we can remove all the "intent" language I used as a shorthand and just talk about what occurs in BioShock Infinite. My point is that we have a restricted set of information to make decisions with when it comes to a fictional world, and this is why fictional narratives can so easily mean things in ways that messy, complicated real life can't.

[Zeusthecat]

I'm probably being a bit of a hypocrite saying this, considering the part I played in the last few arguments with aperson, but it might be best to just start ignoring his inflammatory posts. There has been a lot of interesting debate in this thread and it would really suck if this one also ends up getting locked just because of one dude trying to start a fight.