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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29422 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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So…what did you think about celeste?

We definitely didn’t want it to be a big climactic thing. We didn’t want it to be like Samus removing her helmet at the end of Metroid to reveal that — surprise! — you were a trans woman all along. That kind of thing just feels like a cheap gimmick in this context. It doesn’t feel like it pays enough respect to Madeline, her story, or real life trans folks and the scrutiny they endure.

This is a game about getting thrown down a mountain by, then learning to cooperate with, your alter ego. It is a Rorschach blot of a concept, matching to gender, to puberty, to whatever. It’s also attached to what is apparently one of the best platformers of the decade. I have no doubt that a lot of people played the whole thing without scanning it as a trans allegory. Others surely felt like it was a heartfelt, personal message. Some of them were trans, and as it would later turn out, their interpretation was correct.

How does one make a respectful allegory?

Choose the conflict carefully. We like stories that make us feel strong emotions, empathy, sympathy, spite. We also like to feel that it’s genuine. Trek managed it by capturing a very particular zeitgeist. A more timeless approach is to make it personal, drawing from authorial experience. Something you know evokes strong emotions, because you’ve felt them. Getting personal also means getting niche, and reduces the chance your audience has already seen the same story, executed better.

Hollywood is not optimized for this. Neither is AAA gaming. When you’re already on the right side of the cultural-awareness bell curve, you have a lot more to lose by going for a niche appeal. Thus it converges on easier appeals. Coming-of-age and hero’s-journey stories. Tokenism and audience pandering.

And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.'

During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans.

Yeah, I believe that this story is really about being trans just as much as I believe that The Matrix is really about being trans. That is, not at all. The ability of people to mold their memories to reflect a new identity narrative is amazing.

Yeah, Celeste is a tough example for exactly that reason, and while I didn't mention it in the above post, I did have it in mind. It's kind of an example of how you can be about as careful as possible and still make it turn into a Big Political Thing. I'm not really sure how to do better than that with humans.

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