The movie is the Game (On David Fincher's 'The Game')

So I only just watched Fincher's 'The Game' recently and went right to reading what other people thought of it across the interwebs and unsurprisingly, people were comparing it films like Dark City and others of the '90s that tried to really hit it home to us that reality is only a construct. But it would be quite stupid if that was all a 2 hour film tried to say, right? So, I've tried to look for more than just that simplistic message.

And I think I've found  something.

Like the horde of films from Dark City to Inception, the film can be seen as a a representation of Baudrillard's simulation and simulacra that tries to tell us that what we believe to be reality can simply be a construct and some of these narratives offer a cautionary tale while others tell us why buying into the con is all we can really do  since the simulation is a hyperreality and we don't have an alternative. This film seems to fall in this second category.
Nicholas Van Orten is a corporate biggie who is cold, uncaring and one who seems to care only about his work. Alright, we've heard waaayy too many stories along such lines, right? Hang on, and hear me out.
When Nickie's (as his brother calls hims) brother Conrad presents him for his birthday with a card that lets him into a game that's run by a company called CRS is when Nickie's life has already begun to change. But we must ask the question, is that only when the game began?

As the game takes Nickie through increasingly dangerous (apparently, at least) situations, we see his  paranoia set in and how he suspects every person, and every line and every movement to be a part of the game. And as an audience, we do this too. We don't know ourselves when the game stopped being a game and turned into an attempt to rob Nickie blind. And we're supposed to feel this way. We're meant to buy into the movie's con, because quite  overtly, the film is about among other things, a film's narrative structure which itself can be seen as a simulation where we temporarily believe that what is happening onscreen is real. A film only affects us the way it does if there is a suspension of disbelief on our part. And for most films, we are quite willing to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy film and its often ridiculous tales. Except, we're asked to question this very act in this film, but I'll get to that later.

Throughout the film, we see Nickie's reality being destroyed or rather deconstructed by the film. It starts with the creepy clown imitating the manner of his father's death which was by suicide and which has had an obvious effect on Nickie throughout his life. The game  is constantly re-contextualizing all the different aspects of Nickie's life, including his relationship with his brother, his brother's role in the game, his money, etc. Actually, speaking about money, you could see the film as also being about Marxist theory in the sense that Nickie's life centered around his money is not based on usefulness but rather based on the desire to have money. It's a simulation in itself, the money that is.

But to see the film merely as being about the uselessness of money and finding happiness in life would be to simplify it without understanding how we've arrived at that answer.
Towards the end of the film, when it is revealed to Nickie that it was all, in fact a con, we see how Nickie doesn't believe them. How could he, after all? It was them who told him that that they were robbing him, and they did try to kill him more than once. But a more appropriate question than how he could believe them would be "What can he believe?". If all of reality could be a construct, then what is left to believe in?
And in a haze of confusion, anger and tiredness, Nickie shoots his brother as he's bringing the champagne out. They'd tried to tell him it was only a con. In his guilt, Nickie jumps off the top of the building, but he's made it out alive. Turns out that his brother dying was a con too. This would be about when you start questioning how far the con goes, and this is where Nickie stops. He's just glad to see his brother alive, because  to him, it doesn't matter if it's all a con, as long as he doesn't have to feel the guilt he just did a moment ago when he'd shot his brother and as long as he can feel loved for and be able to love in return.Think of it from Nickie's point of view: he ended up shooting Conrad only because of his disbelief in what appeared to be real, and he realizes that he can't risk disbelieving things since it might cost him something he's unable to live with(or without). Nickie's life changes not because he realizes what is not real, but because he doesn't know- and cannot be sure of- what is real.

Even as Nickie runs after the girl at the closing scene, we can see the biggest con of all: the movie. Everything we're seeing is simply the work of elaborate sets and pretty good editing. Before Nickie had shot his brother, they try explaining that they were simply using movie props and that the people he'd come across were all simply actors. But you've known this, haven't you? You've known that the people you're seeing are actors. But you were  willing to suspend your disbelief in order to understand the movie and enjoy it. And I still couldn't believe them. I mean, how could they have known Nickie would jump into where they'd predicted, or that he'd escape from the car underwater? You could argue that they'd known from the tests and maybe they had security measures in place. But that isn't the point. The point is that the narrative from the start was a con. It was always a movie. We just chose to ignore that fact.
Nickie buys into the con because there is no other reality to look for. The girl he has a crush on, his brother, his ex-wife, his father's death: these things are as real as need be. They are real to Nickie. These things have defined him and there's no escaping them regardless of the fact that they may have all been a con.

And that's why the movie is the game. From the start, it was set up to con us, and to con Nickie if you look at it the way The Truman Show narrated its story.

What else can he do but buy into the con?

What else can we do?

The Problem of a Perfect World in Narratives

So, I've arrived at the conclusion that before I write any more articles, I'll need to establish a few centers for reference so that whoever reads stuff on my blog(assuming there are such beings) can know a bit of the context in which I say what I say.  So, in this article, I'd like to discuss one of the latest of a problem we are faced with in a long line of such problems.

So first, let's try and understand the historical basis so we can better understand the problem we are faced with.

Narratives always contain the opinions and thereby the prejudices of its authors. As such, it's only natural that an author living in a conservative society such as 16th century England will have some of these conservative ideas reflected in his work as well. So, if his society believes that a woman's primary role in society is to look pretty and provide a means of passing on the man's legacy (child- bearing machines), then it's quite likely that an author who belongs to this society will hold this or other such prejudicial views(Of course, there will always be artists who challenge the existing notion of what is considered proper by society).

"This kind of art needs to be done....again"

 And so, throughout time, we see these ideas get transformed into deep- rooted prejudices, and these are passed on from narrative to narrative. The interesting factor here is that even when the society abandons (overtly at least) its old ideas as having been too conservative, the narratives still continue using them in a case I like to call 'narrative prejudice'. A part of this at least can be explained by the fact that artists are always influenced by older artists and their older art that came before them. This does not mean that they always follow in their footsteps. On the contrary, artistic movements are constantly rejected and are replaced by newer ones that the artists connected to them feel are more relevant.It may even be cyclical in the way that ideas related to older movements may be later seen to be more important than the existing ones. And yet, certain elements which we now know as 'tropes' continue to be used for reasons such as their convenience(this being that someone's already done it before, so not much thought needs to be spent on it) and familiarity. So, even if society as a whole now believes it is wrong for women to be discriminated against, narratives continued to use the old tropes that portray women as anything but.

Because women need to be badass

But of course, it's not long before society catches up with narratives that use such 'regressive' tropes and demands for a reformation in the world of sexist, racist and otherist narratives. And so, all of a sudden, the writers and filmmakers are faced with a problem of having lost a trope they relied on all these years to pass their work off as art, and they turn around and find- what they think- is the only possible solution to the problem: to do the opposite. Before you think that the opposite of sexism is  no- sexism or equality of the sexes, think again because experience has taught us that the opposite is simply a different kind of sexism. 
So, suddenly, the old damsels in distress are replaced by gun- wielding, ass- kicking, superwomen which is still as sexist as the 'damsel' trope or maybe even more so.  Because what this says is that women need to do 'masculine' stuff to be accorded respect. And all the while, if such a strong female character is still incapable of exercising her agency, then  we are faced with a problem as is seen in The Hunger Games.
So, now that society has recognized the limitations and implications of the old tropes where women were helpless and all black guys were aggressive or short- tempered, writers are quickly abandoning them only to replace them with just as bad tropes such as the trope of the black best friend.
I find it disturbing to simply throw in a butt-kicking shallow female character, or a couple of African- Americans(as if they're ingredients: a kilo of Mexicans, a couple of Chinese dudes, etc and done!) to justify the moral sense of the work itself. But then again, things always tend to work this way. Reactionary ideas can be as problematic as  the ideas they reject, as evidenced by the problem of a work like Game of Thrones rejecting the moral premise of The Lord  of the Rings.

In part at least, I think such developments are the result of the kinds of criticisms that were levied against works that used the old tropes. I'm sure these criticisms were well- meaning, but good  intentions are not enough to make other people make well- realized art. And honestly, I think the writers themselves largely miss the point since they just jump from one kind of racism and sexism to another kind each time the one kind is criticized.


And then, in time, I started noticing a curious shift in the way texts were dealing with these problems, and one of the first places I noticed it was in video games, especially role- playing ones such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect where regardless of what race or sex you choose for your character, the narrative treats you the same. The implications of this is that regardless of what kind of character you choose to play, it is your actions that define your character.  Now this kind of works in such a scenario because of  the fact that it's an RPG and such games are all about showing you the effects or consequences of the decisions you've made along your quest/journey/etc. There's also an element of convenience involved where the developers don't have to write different scripts or lines of dialogue based on racial or sex differences. Also, no one can accuse these narratives of displaying racist or sexist prejudices since well, they do not have anything overtly racist or sexist in them. Now, critique of such works praised these elements of 'equality' present in these narratives.

And all this seems fine until you look at it from another perspective. Up until a while ago, narratives used physical deformities or 'ugliness' to portray evil or morally reprehensible characters. Of course, these tropes have been subverted in various texts throughout the ages. And when it comes to films of the '90s and before, you were bound to come across the comic- relief character with some physical abnormality who is funny specifically because of this physical abnormality. But of course, criticism was levied on texts which simply used  characters with physical deformities as something to be laughed at or made  fun of. And it must have been around this time that the writers and filmmakers struck upon an ingenious idea: to remove the source of the criticism itself. In other words, they realized that a solution would be to simply 'remove' ugly characters from the work itself. So, whereas earlier we had villains be ugly, now the villains are sexy too. Hell, everyone's sexy now: from the protagonist to the antagonist to the comic relief characters. It's one bright world filled with rainbows!.... except it isn't. These texts still have no problem having violence and other 'ugly' themes in them, but they just want to have these while being politically correct. At least before, there *were* ugly characters (though  not in enviable places). Now the ugly characters don't even get to have a place in a narrative. They are ignored.

And now, you see that with the example of the video games I mentioned earlier, the same is being done with the sexes and races. The narratives of women or men, and racial minorities who are discriminated against are  simply ignored. It's a subtle kind of racism to have no racism at all in the text, since you're refusing to address the real problems of someone who is discriminated against in favor of pretending these people are not faced with any problems at all. In part, at least the perspective of audiences are to blame since we seem to think that since the author is fully in control of his work (especially when it comes to fantasy genres), he can remove all the unpleasant stuff that exist in the real world from his fictional world.
But what's the point of any fictional world if it does not deal with the concerns we're daily faced with in the real one?

And this is what I mean by the problem of a perfect world. Narratives that use such a 'Perfect World' setting are nothing but imperfect. Writing a female character just like you would a male one is  well- meaning I'm sure, but this does lead to the disappearance of a large variety of narratives. Pretending like ugly characters don't exist is  more offensive than portraying them in a  negative light(at least they exist), I think. Besides, it's not as if the perfect world is really perfect, it's simply more politically correct. Comic- relief characters now tend to be intellectually lacking(though I'm sure it won't be long before we lose narratives involving stupid people as well) or something else if not that. What I mean is that when a criticism is levied saying that people who are not very intelligent shouldn't be made fun of, what's happening is that instead of writing meaningful stories involving these people, writers are finding it easier to simply get rid of them.

And so all in favor of badass women, and beautiful people, what's happened is that the narratives of the not-so-badass-women and ugly people who too have the right to have their stories told, have disappeared. And I know that  I'd  rather have an imperfect world narrative than a politically correct one any day of the week.

The role of perspectives in narratives Part I: The Third- Person narrative

The third person narrative is perhaps the most popular form of narrative across art mediums such as film and literature. This seems to be primarily because of the fact that the third person narrative offers a lot of freedom to the author of the text (film being included under the category of 'text' as well).
In a first person narrative, there are serious limitations as to what content can be explored by the author, mainly because the author is restricted to approaching a given idea or story from a singular perspective. This does not mean that the text itself cannot have nuance or that it does not support multiple interpretations.
In fact, I feel like the focus of the first- person narrative makes it more effective in many cases than a third- person one. This is not something pertaining to the particular forms themselves, but rather to the widespread use of them in our culture.

One of the general ideas associated with a third- person narrative is that the narrator himself (yes, it can be "herself" or "itself" too, so don't bother calling me out on it) is an omnipresent, omniscient impartial being who simply narrates a given story impartially. Firstly, I'd  like to address a fallacy associated with this idea which is that the fact that an omnipresent, omniscient being is even following the story of a select few people (presumably) or is interested in exploring a select few ideas, or that it is following the events on a planet- all of this makes the narrator partial, primarily because the story itself is taking a certain direction and it should be remembered that the story is given meaning because of this focus lent by the narration. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be such a focus, but rather that the pretense needs to be dropped for more meaningful narration.


The problem with the author playing God and us as an audience reading it as such is that his/her text then denies the role of Perspectivism and instead implies that the way we are shown the story is the way the story is, and not the way it is seen. Such a viewpoint reduces the role of nuance and is more or less redundant in its approach to narration. For example, look at the kind of narration used in 'Harry Potter'. The narrative shows us the story from many viewpoints but we can easily sympathize more with Harry and the rest of the 'good' side more than with the 'evil' side. This is mainly due to a lack of sympathetic qualities given to these 'bad' guys, and this may just be because we are not shown as much of the bad guys' story. After all, hiding or revealing information is what leads us to form our respective opinions on particular events and characters.

You could argue that the use of the 'good and evil' troupe is primary to what J.K Rowling is trying to communicate: that good will overcome evil despite many obstacles. But the problem here lies with the insistence of the existence of a binary morality; that the world is divided into 'good' and 'bad', and that certain actions are simply 'good' and others are simply 'bad', but such an approach destroys the complexities existing in our world, and how we understand situations differently dependent upon context. A person going on a killing spree we see as a psychopath, but make that person William Munny from 'Unforgiven' who is only avenging his dead friend and is anyway killing 'badder' people, and we root for the character in his bloody mission. It is our ability to interpret situations according to context that helps us understand a wide range of narratives that might deal with similar situations from various perspectives. So, arguing that only a single perspective exists is both redundant and fruitless in our aim to understand and interpret art.

Clint Eastwood as William Munny

Now the obvious response to my statements would be that the perspective is simply that of the author's, but this simply makes the author the God in the text and- as I'd written earlier- such a God or omnipresent and omniscient being will always be a partial one. We need to understand then that the narration in any work is only exploring another perspective and is not the perspective.

Looking at our earlier example of 'Harry Potter', the evident limitation with how the Third- Person narrative here is used is that the fact that there is a god's- narrative seems to justify the world with a binary morality more than the motivations and interpretations of morality of the characters themselves, meaning that more than it being that the 'good guys' are just interpreting Voldemort and his lackeys to be' evil', the narration itself suggests this to be the case. Now you could tell me that this notion is false and that the narrator never called a side 'good' or 'evil' but such obvious representation that is both physical (bad guys wearing black) and behavioral (good guys will help their friends) clearly shows us  the agenda of the narrative. An author does not have to say something to imply it in his work. I'm not saying a god's narrative cannot be used effectively, but rather that it should be realized what the functionality of such a narrative implies. But ultimately, stories such as those in Harry Potter and The Lord of the rings is looking at the world from a Christian perspective where good and evil exist absolutely, where good people struggle  with the temptations offered by the bad side but the bad people have no motivations to become good (yes, there are exceptions). These are narratives of the good, and more than the use of these symbols themselves, I find it more problematic that an author sides with the good as if trying to justify his moral sense.

Now it should be kept in mind that regardless of the fact that an idea is conceived only from a respective perspective, this does not mean that they are somehow less important or less valid than if the idea was objective. This is because our very understanding of objectivity is subjective, according to post- modern philosophy. For example, the existence of science in our world is also a matter of perspective, but it is largely accepted as truth by a majority of people. Similarly, the symbols of 'good' and 'evil' can be permeating in every aspect of the world that its existence and relevance is widely accepted and is almost absolute. Almost. It is important to not remove the hint of uncertainty in any reading. In this sense then, the narrator in a work such as Harry Potter can be at best, viewed as one who accepts the symbols of "good and evil" as true or important.

Good Vs Evil

Some have pointed out to me that by a common understanding established between the author author and reader, the assumption of the absolute existence of values can help convey important ideas. In fact, in many older  texts and works of fantasy like The Lord of The Rings series, it seems almost certain that the author both views the world and intends for his world to contain absolute values, reflecting the inspiration drawn from the ideas presented in the Christian Mythos in which the ideas about absolute existence of good and evil, and thereby of sin is essential to its central idea of salvation. But while I will agree that looking to both the inspirations and sources of these authors' ideas, as well as examining the social relations between the author and reader can be fruitful, I do not see the assumption of absolutes to be valuable or relevant in a post- modern reading.

On the other hand, in a work like The Gormenghast Trilogy, good and evil lie solely in perspective where one character may see another as 'evil' because of certain conflicts of interest. As an audience, we may still find some characters to be more sympathetic than others but this is usually not because the world itself suggests this to be the case.


Throughout many viewings and readings of texts, I have come across a few most prominent kind of narration forms that I will now discuss. It should be kept in mind that these forms aren't exclusive of one another, and may be used in conjunction with one another.

1) The Unchanging Narrator: 

Now what I mean by the use of this term refers to when the narrator's use of symbolism and imagery remains the same, regardless of whether different ideas or character arcs are being explored. This is perhaps the most popular narrative form that's present in the third- person. You could almost say that the narrator is essentially a character in the text. The narrator in this case uses meaningful imagery and symbols to communicate his idea regardless of whether the characters  themselves identify with these images or symbols. What I find interesting here is that there are at least two layers of perspectives present, one of the narrator and then of the narrator's perspective of the characters' perspectives. Reading it as a god's- narrative instead as we discussed earlier is not often used to effect. Most novels and films seem to prefer such a form of narration since it offers consistency to an extent as far as perspective is concerned.
When such a form of narrative is used, the narrator can often imply ideas and have a sense of awareness about a situation that the characters themselves do not have. 

2) The Adaptive Narrator: 

The adaptive narrator on the other hand is  one who chooses to explore a situation from the multiple perspectives of- usually- his characters. The finest example of this is Peake's Gormenghast books in which even the sense of imagery and tone changes when the narration focuses on different characters in the story. There are multiple perspectives being directly explored here, and there is also the reduced role of the narrator as a character. In film, an example that comes to mind is Inarritu's Babel in which tone, music, and color scheme all changes along with the different situations that are explored in a non- linear fashion. 

Another example in film could be Koreeda's Wandarfuru Raifu in which multiple characters' recollections of the past are explored as each of  them try to find a single important memory, and so it is all about a post- modern sense of individualistic meaning that this type of narration suits well.
You should keep  in mind though that the narrator in this case can still convey an overarching idea that the characters themselves are not aware of through the contextualization of how these multiple perspectives make sense in a space of coexistence.

3) The Titular Character's Sidekick:

In this case, the narrator (reminder: narrator, not author) more or less holds the opinions of the protagonist of the given text, and as a result even when you have 'beacon-of-good' protagonist and some other evil 'dude', the perspective of the evil dude is also explored from the perspective of 'good' moral impositions and all included. Most works today, especially modern fantasy works seem to make use of such a form of narration where we have a 'good' side and everyone else is judged or identified by the standards set by this 'good' side. Of course, it has been used differently as well. One example would be TV Show House M.D in which Dr. House's opinion that the world is a sad sorry place devoid of love and happiness is justified by the events that are shown to us in the show itself (unless you are  taking into account the subversion of the entire show's premise in that last episode). It should be noted that this use of form is appropriate for the show, since it seems to support the narcissistic worldview of House  himself since it seems that an objective narrative is only proving that House is right (most of the time, and only until that last episode of course).

On the other hand, we see that a film like Birdman employs such a form of narration with greater self- awareness if it is supposed that the narrator is the character of Birdman himself/itself. This is an interesting exploration since you have a fictional character in the story being the narrator and since Birdman represents both the success and failure of Michael Keaton's character, so it tries to narrate the incident of the washed- up actor's seemingly last attempt at being successful in his career.

4) The partial god- narrative:

Now this is one we have already discussed in the earlier parts of the article. In such a narrative, the narrator is one who accepts certain symbols and interpretations of a person or community as the more relevant or true interpretation and narrates the story from this perspective. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, almost everyone on Middle- Earth despite conflicts wit each other accept Sauron and his army to be the embodiment of something evil. As such, you could say that the narrator is one of these people, in that he is narrating their ideas, desires, and fears. It makes it easier if the 'evil' side consists of mainly unthinking orcs and a giant eye with a power- complex. As such, it is easy to accept the 'good' side as good since there is no alternate argument for us to go by.
On the other hand, in an anime series like Trigun, this sort of narrative device is used to another effect. In it, the protagonist during the early parts of the show does not kill any 'bad' guy due to a naive sense of morality (which as we see leads to large destruction, though no loss of life) even though the 'bad' guys are usually portrayed as having no redeeming qualities.

The Protagonist of 'Trigun', Vash. 

We see the world as the protagonist Vash does who cannot comprehend why these 'bad' guys can't just be, well, 'good'. From Vash's and the good guys' side(yes, that's how we see it as well), the bad guys' motivations appear too shallow and not worth listening to and it's fine to leave them incapable of causing  harm but well and alive, since they never made any sense or raised any points that threatened the good guys' sense of morality or identity in the first place and plus, they're physically weak enough to not cause worry. But by the end of the show when an equally valid  and comprehensive argument backed by physical prowess (as it is to Vash in his context) is put forth by the main antagonist (this might only be so because we are for once, shown an argument) we see that Vash finds no other way but to kill him. This could be understood as a deconstruction of the 'good- vs-evil' troupe where the 'good' side is shown to be right by the literal elimination of  the 'bad' side's argument. As such, it presents us with an interesting aspect of conflict since we as viewers who are told the story from the good side are also faced with the conflict faced by the protagonist at the end of the show.

Well, that's all for now. If I think of any others, I'll add them later.