The Real EDL

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Disco disco disco!

SmokeSignal

If you burned down an orchard
One hundred miles away
I'd see doves and butterflies
In all the smoke you'd make

Sorry Lana, maybe later

For the past couple of months I have been living in a house without a video games console. It must have been the first time in around twenty years that this had been the case, having cohabited with consoles since the McIntosh family owned a ZX Spectrum back in t' day. Since my housemate Tim's PS3 died of old age I can't say I had really been missing video games, despite them taking up quite a big part of most of my teenage life (who needs girls, right). They'd just not really fitted into the dynamic of our new house, with the living room much less prominent than before.

That was before Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch showed up.

It's like Studio Ghibli decided to mash up Pokemon and Final Fantasy!

Due to the existence of this game, Tim and I decided to club together to purchase a new PS3. Since acquiring the game on Saturday I have managed to play it for a few hours, and I know that this game poses a great threat to my ambitions of doing productive grown-up things like job hunting and regular cycles of laundry. It's like Studio Ghibli decided to mash up Pokemon and Final Fantasy. If you were asked to describe what the ultimate JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game, yo) would be like, responding with saying, "something like Studio Ghibli deciding to mash up Pokemon and Final Fantasy," would undoubtedly gain you some sage nods of approval.

In terms of culture, video games are still a long way behind the rest of the pack in the prestige stakes. Although the games industry is now able to boast higher earnings through sales than cinema, as this Guardian article rightly points out, it still has some way to go to compete in terms of the amount of people accessing its products. This will be mainly down to the relatively high cost per unit (Ni No Kuni, a new game, cost £45, whereas an adult cinema ticket will usually come in somewhere under a tenner at the moment), although in terms of how many hours of enjoyment you should be able to get out of a game the game should win every time. Now, working out how cost effective games are is a long road that I don't wish to go down right now. My position is that I think, in terms of enjoyment, they are more cost effective than films, but the fact that they reach out to a much smaller section of the population hampers their cultural impact severely. This is a great shame, as in my experience they have the potential to offer so much more than films can and generally do.

The line between films and games is blurring all the time. The game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is renowned for the length of its cinematic cut scenes. The average length of these, where the player watches passively as events pan out, is 9 minutes, with the epilogue at the end of the game clocking in at around 1 hour 9 minutes. The film adaptation of Coraline was structured incredibly like a computer game (well, both myself and Tim thought so); level, boss encounter, level, boss encounter etc. There have always been game adaptations of films, but film adaptations of games are becoming more prevalent. This illustrates that the ideas and patterns of creativity within both industries are mutually relevant, giving the relationship between the two a feeling of parity. Thus for me it seems as though both industries deserve an equal respect.

The strength of games for me comes with the agency that the consumer has with the act of playing. This is what sets film and game apart. The role of consumer is no longer a passive one but an active one; the gamer has a degree of control over the story. The extent of this agency varies from game to game, but as the best films are often those that deliver characterisation with subtlety so to are the best games those that do not restrict the gamer to a linear playing experience. When this agency is combined with interesting ideas, plot devices, philosophy, social commentary, you feel as though you are actively engaging with these concepts and the experience is heightened stratospherically. You are, in a sense, living them, in the same way that you would if reading a book for example. Reading is also a more active role than watching a film as you are having to create the scenes within the confines of your own self, rather than having them delivered to you. Sure, there is always some level of interpretation going on with watching a film, but this is dwarfed by the amount of world creation you get to do as a reader or gamer.

I also think that games (good ones in any case) tend to get the fun and intelligence factors balanced much easier than films do, which makes that intelligence more accessible. When it comes to writing, I have definitely been inspired more by games than by films. My MA dissertation piece, for example, as seen elsewhere on this blog, was inspired in parts by the ideas of cause and effect that are present in the masterpiece, Braid. I would compare it in many ways to the film Memento, which is currently ranked at number 33 in imdb.com's Top 250 Movies of All Time (tied on points with films such as Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove..., Alien and Spirited Away to name a few), and it is a sad thought that such a small percentage of the people that enjoyed that film will have even heard of this game, let alone experienced playing it.

As a result of my renewed zeal for video games, I shall endeavour to write about anything particularly exciting that may come up whilst I rediscover playing them. One of my favourite blogs in the past was that of Angelo Comet. I got reading his thoughts through his superb journal that followed the TV series Lost. He was able to write with an impressive amount of intelligence and knowledge and was basically producing one exciting mini-essay a week about the latest episode to air. Then I noticed he had other blogs going for games and films. It's a nice idea for charting one's progress, so if anything inspiring or interesting arises, I'll try and clear the floor for it on here.

 Now that I've finished splurging these thoughts out it's time for job-hunting and a laundry cycle.

Pissing In The Tiger's Mouth (RDDC)

There marches a company of wolves
The host emerges from the pines
Heralded by scarlet howls
Whispering up my spine
My father came down south
All because he heard you were a-pissing
Pissing in the tiger's mouth

Listen to the foxes shrieking
They're marauding up the street
I can hear the creaking of cradles
They can smell fresh meat
My father came down south
All because he heard you were a-pissing
Pissing in the tiger's mouth

There's a crocodile in the marital bed
I can see jagged tears down the side of yon head
You need to change the sheets, dear, they've all run red
And then I heard a voice from the other room, and this is what it said
My father came down south
All because he heard you were a-pissing
Pissing in the tiger's mouth

With their voices soft as thunder
And their eyes as wild as lightning
Would ye piss on a man in a suit
Or high-vis jacket?

The tortured scarecrows are a-waking up
They're wishing to curtail your stay
The great wood is marching up the hill
The statues are coming to take you away
My father came down south
All because he heard you were a-pissing
Pissing in the tiger's mouth

Fry me in butter and gobble me up

In an attempt to increase my knowledge, friendships and BMI, I have finally begun my breakfast project. You can read about my exploits at http://vegebreakfastclub.blogspot.co.uk/.

Here's one for autumn

"The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, and their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreaths that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up the hidden walls."

Peake, Mervyn. Titus Groan (1946) in The Gormenghast Trilogy. (St. Ives: Clays Ltd, 1994), p140.


(I'm currently wading through the first book in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Groan. His use of language is impressive; the text is constantly rich and dripping with poetry. It is like a thick, succulent gravy, which means that it has taken me a while to make any significant in-roads into it. If Joseph Conrad had written in this style he'd probably be my favourite author.)

Literary Resolutions

There was once a small village at the foot of a great mountain. The folk dwelling there were strong-willed and worked well together, happily farming the surrounding land successfully and bringing great prosperity to the village. One day, a wandering god came to the village and offered his patronage on seeing their fine produce. The villagers were content with their lot however, and politely declined the god's offer, preferring to focus their attention on their farming instead of worship. This angered the god. In revenge he created a great monster; a gigantic mis-shapen beast with the body of a bear and the head of a donkey, representing the god's rage and the stubbornness of the villagers. The god proclaimed that every month when the moon was full the beast would descend from the mountain to destroy the labours of the village, unless an offering of a human child was made. Upon seeing the beast roaming the mountain and hearing its terrifying braying on the wind, the villagers took to tying up a child to a tree at the foot of the mountain every month in order to protect their farming. And, just as the god declared, every month the beast would come at full moon and tear the poor child to pieces. The villagers were able to continue their work without further disturbance, but from then on the joy was removed from their labour, and their produce never tasted quite the same again.

This afternoon I began one of my major projects for 2013; going for a cooked breakfast with a friend once a week. This is something I will document more in depth at a different time, but one of the many interesting things that cropped up in conversation with Stu was thinking about a literary analysis of social history, and taking that through and developing ideas around conflict resolution. This lead towards thinking about mythology, as this is generally the earliest form of story-telling within societies. Stu began thinking about recent events in Egypt, and how current Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi had been referred to by some quarters as having 'given himself the power of the pharaoh', in a manner not dissimilar to Akhenaten; this pharaoh being the one that steered Egyptian society away from polytheism towards the monotheistic worship of the Aten, or disk of the sun. The pharaohs were intrinsically linked up with Egyptian mythology, and so there is a line that can be traced back from the present to the past. This is something that I believe Stu is going to be meditating upon in the future.

When thinking of mythology, my mind automatically leaps to Greek mythology. These were the stories that captivated me the most when growing up, mainly due to the myriad of exciting monsters that roamed about the ancient lands of the Mediterranean. In thinking about being able to trace a link from Egypt's present to its historical mythologies, I began to wonder if the same could be done with Greece, and in particular with its current state of economic trouble. My knowledge of global politics is, I must admit, relatively poor, so apologies for any inaccuracies or naivete from this point onwards. In any case, the Greek myth that most readily springs to mind from what I've read other people write about it is that of Daedalus and Icarus; the father and son who attempted to escape captivity with home-made wings,with the son flying too close to the sun and inadvertently destroying his wings as a result, and plummeting to his doom. The myth is usually interpreted as a cautionary tale warning against over-ambition, with pride coming before a fall, which one could, if they chose to do so, equate with Greece's spending when it switched to the Euro near the start of the last decade.

However, looking a bit closer at the myth can lead us to look a bit closer at the crisis. In the myth the individual that suffers most is Icarus. In the crisis, the suffering is done largely by the Greek public. Why was Icarus put in this precarious position? Ultimately, others were responsible for him finding himself up in the air. It was King Minos who had decreed that Daedalus and his family were not to leave Crete for fear of losing the secret of the Labyrinth. It was Daedalus who had fled to Crete after murdering his gifted nephew in an act of jealousy. Poor Icarus was placed in this situation as a consequence of these two individual's actions, amongst others. If we can expand the scope of inquiry with the myth, equally it can be done with the economic crisis, to take in the actions of the Greek government, private creditors, fellow Eurozone member states and the IMF and assess their responsibility here.

Again, my knowledge of Greece's economic situation is relatively limited and so I do not wish to fumble around clumsily with such an intricate and delicate subject, but I believe that the literary interrogation of mythology is something that can be applied to contemporary events. Mythology has long been utilised in areas such as psychology, where its reliance on archetypes comes in useful for both explaining particular tendencies and syndromes and exploring ways of dealing with them. If they can be used successfully within this sphere then why not successfully in others, such as conflict resolution?

The story of how Iceland dealt with its own economic crisis had a very mythical edge to it. When a monster is laying waste to a village the solution is more often than not for a hero to be sent out to slay it, rather than trying to ween the beast off humans and onto vegetables. And so, instead of austerely removing food from their own table to feed the monster, the Icelanders worked together to take up their swords and chop the beast up where possible. And they'll all probably live happily ever after.

Many years passed, and the village sent many of its children off to their death at the foot of the mountain. One day though, a parent had had enough. Angered by this way of living in fear, she began confronting the mayor of the village and ordering him to organise for a party to climb the mountain and kill the beast. Eventually, after weeks of protestation, the mayor relented and decreed that a group of armed villagers be sent up the mountain to the monster's lair. The climb was treacherous; harsh winds lashed against the brave souls who had volunteered to make the climb, and icy rain raked fiercely across their faces. All the while they could hear the braying of the beast getting louder as they drew closer and closer to where it had made its home. Finally, the party reached a vast opening in the mountainside around which was scattered the skeletal remains of dismembered limbs. It was the lair of the beast. Waiting until night-fall, when the monster was slumbering, the party rushed into the cave bearing torches and swords, hacking the creature to pieces. The god witnessed this, and being impressed by the villagers' bravery, decided to leave them be. Peace and prosperity finally returned to the village, and from that day onwards the produce of the village became famed as the most delicious in all the land.