imaginedworldsmagazine-blog

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

Balancing Story and Gameplay: How The Last of Us Walks the Fine Line Between Cinema and Video Games

The year is 2033. A highly contagious and incurable fungal infection has spread across the United States, turning the vast majority of the population in to aggressive, cannibalistic mutants who roam the decaying urban sprawls left behind, viciously attacking any uninfected person they may find. You are perched in the crow’s nest of an abandoned house, overlooking your 14-year old companion, Ellie, and 2 other friendly survivors – 13-year old Sam and his older brother Henry – as they cower under cover beneath the machine gun fire of an armoured truck commandeered by bandits. Using a bolt-action sniper rifle, you pick off the bandits one by one, eventually sniping the gunner of the truck as he goes to throw a Molotov cocktail. The truck bursts in to a ball of flame and you watch as the enemy driver hurls himself out of the truck, completely alight. 

You have only a moment to relax before Sam and Henry are tackled to the ground by two infected “Runners” who appear from the doorway of a nearby house. You and Ellie manage to kill the attackers and the two companions are seemingly, miraculously, uninjured - as all four of you know, even the tiniest cut from an infected can be enough to make you turn. You escape with your comrades through the hole of a nearby fence, leaving behind a swarm of infected to tear apart what is left of the chaos.

That evening, in the relative safety of a nearby radio tower, Henry tells you about his dreams of one day riding a Harley Davidson. Ellie and Sam share their fears - Ellie, of being left alone in this world; Sam, of turning in to one of the infected. By morning, his nightmare has become a reality. A wound that Sam has been hiding from his brother has taken its toll. Now overcome by the fungus, Sam leaps at Ellie, clawing at her face. As Ellie fights for her life you reach for your gun, but Henry points his weapon at you first.

“That’s my fucking brother!”

Ellie screams and Henry fires. Sam rolls off of Ellie, dead.

“Sam? Oh God, Sam…”

Before you can stop him, Henry puts the gun to his own head and pulls the trigger.

The Last of Us is, in short, unforgivingly brutal. From the outset, the game throws its audience in to a violent post-apocalyptic world characterised by questionable morality and the fight for survival. The game’s primary narrative follows protagonists Joel and Ellie as they travel together across the broken shell of the United States. Players mostly control Joel, a black-market smuggler who is unwillingly coerced in to escorting Ellie to a hospital run by the rebel militia group “the Fireflies” after it is found that Ellie is immune to the fungal infection. The story sees Ellie and Joel develop a strong paternal relationship as they battle infected, bandits, police, cannibals and the Fireflies across a textually rich but dilapidated world.

And while the characterisation of its protagonists is a powerful element that contributed immensely to the game’s success (→), the depth of the world created by The Last of Us is equally impressive - if not more so. The post-apocalyptic horror-survival game is not a new trope within the industry, as games such as Left 4 Dead, Dead Island, and even zombie game modes in Call of Duty incite hordes of mutated or undead creatures that players must survive against (→). Although these games have enjoyed their fair share of critical acclaim, they have failed to solidify themselves as “masterpieces�� in the same way that The Last of Us has (→). Despite their strikingly similar settings, many horror-survival games focus heavily on the action elements of the post-apocalyptic environment in a way that detracts from the game-world itself. Narrative is often overlooked in favour of action and intensity: the goal is to simply kill the undead, and the world provides little value beyond being purely cosmetic. On the other hand, The Last of Us emphasises characters, plot and setting in an attempt to bridge the divide between the cinematic and the video game – something more easily said than done. The balance between the two is a delicate one. Rely too much on the ‘dramatic’ elements and the game can feel forced or synthetic, as if it’s “emoting at the player to try and make him or her feel”; rely too much on the gameplay and the game feels unrewarding and hollow (→). The narrative needs to be compelling and exciting, but also allow the player a certain level of agency to avoid being overbearing. For The Last of Us, a great deal of its success comes from the attention to detail given to the design of the world. Worldbuilding informs both the narrative and the gameplay in a way that allows for a logically consistent plot structure paired with game mechanics that are both rewarding and engaging.  

The Last of Us is by no means an RPG (role-playing game). While players make choices on how they approach a given encounter – whether that be through stealth, aggression, or avoiding it all together – these options have no effect on the ultimate outcome of the story. No matter what the player does, the main questline will progress in a pre-determined manner. Instead, The Last of Us gives players agency through exploration, mostly incentivised by the collection of resources used to craft weapons, upgrades, and medical kits. According to The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann, “we really wanted to give you a reason to go explore this space. You need to look for supplies that will help you survive another day in this world” (00:58 →). Scavenging plays an instrumental role in the characters’ survival and reflects the reality of their situation: given the twenty years between the outbreak and the game’s present day, widespread looting has made resources and ammunition scarce. The crafting mechanic forces players to interact with the world to find valuable loot and, as such, the player feels inclined to take their time moving through the world. On top of this, scavenging directly contributes to worldbuilding in that it imitates the stark reality of a post-apocalyptic world – crafting is a part of the greater ‘survival’ narrative at play within The Last of Us. There is a logical consistency (→) between the gameplay and the story culminating in a gritty realism which encourages the player to engage directly with the world. As game designer Ricky Cambier explains, “we wanted you to be forced to make some choices in the world that showed how depleted the resources were” (00:45 →), and these resources are just as depleted for Joel and Ellie as they are for every other character. The player is seen to be given no special treatment, and thus made to feel truly a part of the world: if you are out of ammunition, you have to find another way through the encounter. The Last of Us creates the illusion that the player (focalised through Joel and Ellie) are subject to the same laws as the non-playable characters (NPCs), thereby formulating a degree of empathy between the player and other characters within the world.

Minor characters and secondary narratives within The Last of Us also play a significant role in worldbuilding. The Last of Us invites players to collect minor items throughout the game that solidify the greater scale of the apocalypse outside of the player’s experience – collectibles such as hand-written notes, photos, comic books, or military dog-tags often provide no tactical advantage but instead contribute to the over-arching survival theme. Sometimes, notes may provide clues that point players in the direction of more loot (such as is the case for this note found in an abandoned hotel) or warn of dangers ahead. Generally, however, collectibles within The Last of Us are used to provide a glimpse in to the experiences of other characters in a way that doesn’t hinder gameplay. While the element of scavenging encourages players to interact with these collectibles as they search every room of every building, they are by no means forced to engage with the narratives they tell. Curious players are rewarded with secondary narratives that are entirely unrelated to Joel and Ellie’s story. The way in which they are told are interactive and left to the player’s discretion, avoiding an over-saturation of drama that “bogs down” the gameplay (→). Once the item is picked up, the player can choose to read its contents or simply disregard it altogether. A particularly memorable example of this is the story of an unseen character known only as “Ish”. (→)

“Ish” is never met in person, nor does he have any impact on Joel and Ellie’s plotline. Instead, his story is told through eight collectibles – notes that are penned by Ish or notes penned by other survivors that reference him directly – found by the player as they move through the sewers of Pittsburgh. After first meeting Henry and Sam (but before their deaths), the group are forced to escape bandits by diving in to the river, later resurfacing at a small beach. As they find a route through a complex series of sewers, Ellie points to a marooned trawler on the beach and encourages Joel to search it for loot. Here the player finds the first note penned by Ish, recounting his attempts to escape the infection by going out to sea and his inevitable return due to a lack of supplies. (→) In the sewers, more notes are found that tell Ish’s story while also relating directly to the environment that the player moves through. The notes reveal Ish’s initial loneliness and subsequent development of a small community within the sewers, composed of other survivors he traded with and their children. However, the player quickly becomes aware that the community met a ghastly end as they encounter dozens of infected, scattered throughout the many rooms that acted as schools, nurseries, bathrooms and dining halls for the community. The story of Ish and his group of survivors is not important to the protagonists’ plot in The Last of Us. Even without collecting the items, players can easily determine that the sewers were repurposed as a hideout for a group of survivors. Ish’s story is used not as a major plot device, but rather a chance for players to delve deeper in to the hope, fear, despair and ultimate humanity that permeates the post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us, climaxing with the discovery of Kyle’s note found next to a corpse behind a nondescript door:

“We’re trapped. I think everyone else is dead. Some of the little ones are with me. I got infected pounding at the door. I don’t know how long we’ll hold out. If Ish and the others are alive, maybe they can reach us. They have to reach us.

If it comes down to it I’ll make it quick.

—      Kyle” (→)

On the floor, scrawled in red, are the words “THEY DIDN’T SUFFER.” There is no cutscene here, nor any camera panning that draws the attention of the player to the children’s bodies hastily concealed beneath a white sheet in the corner of the room. The story of this community is one that is told completely through interactive mediums, making it feel like a story that the player stumbles upon rather than one that is thrust upon them in “interminable cut scenes which just don’t seem to matter to the literal game” (→). After exiting the sewers and travelling through the next neighbourhood, players may stumble upon Ish’s final note that leaves his final fate unresolved: the player hears no more of Ish throughout the game, reflecting a world that is ultimately uncertain.

So where do Henry and Sam fall in to this dichotomy of cinema and video games? The story of Henry and Sam is told primarily through cutscenes and forced dialogue, negating any agency that the player might have had in their interaction with those characters. They do little to forward the plot beyond providing some direction to Ellie and Joel’s journey out of Pittsburgh, but the player is unable to pass over these characters in the same way that they can with Ish. Henry and Sam are indicative of the linear narrative at play within The Last of Us. Joel and Ellie’s story is unalterable and unavoidable: The Last of Us is not about how the player survives in a post-apocalyptic world, it is about how the characters survive. As the main character of focalisation, Joel is inherently flawed, doing “…what’s necessary to stay alive,” which “…often means someone else’s untimely death.” (→)  

Joel’s jaded persona is born at the very beginning of the game with the death of his daughter Sara during the initial outbreak of the infection, but is expounded upon throughout the game in interactions like those he has with Henry and Sam. The relationship formed between the four characters exposes the compassionately human elements within the world of The Last of Us, but the sudden deaths of Henry and Sam further hammers home the terrifying reality of the infection. Henry and Sam provide a necessary face to the myriad of secondary narratives – such as Ish’s – that are present within the game. They act as an antithesis to the countless unnamed enemies (both human and infected) that are a constant threat to Joel and Ellie by providing friendly allies that are equally flawed, scared, and ultimately mortal.

The Last of Us owes its success not to the intrinsic violence of the genre but to the gritty realism that permeates the story. Despite the widespread infection, the world is inescapably human – whether it is found in the minor collectible items, the actions of both major and minor characters, or in the gameplay itself. The Last of Us weaves emotional drama in to an interactive medium that encourages player engagement without forcing it upon them; the world rewards players that take their time moving through the environment, emulating the necessity of scavenging for ensuring one’s survival but also allowing the game to reveal its many hidden facets. Shards of human experience are scattered throughout the world, hidden just out of view for any player curious enough to venture beyond the primary narrative.  The resulting portrait of dystopian humanity is so vividly complex that the player can’t help but feel their moral compass begin to blur in the mad struggle to survive.

Bibliography

Dinicola, N 2012, ‘To build a world or to tell a story?’, POPmatters, found at: https://www.popmatters.com/to-build-a-world-or-to-tell-a-story-2495851588.html

Hussain, T 2013, ‘The Last of Us review round-up: ‘easily Naughty Dog’s finest moment’,’ Computer and Video Games, found at: https://archive.is/20130608062740/http://www.computerandvideogames.com/410928/the-last-of-us-review-round-up-easily-naughty-dogs-finest-moment

Kelly, T 2012, ‘On player characters and self expression’, What Games Are, found at: https://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/07/on-player-characters-and-self-expression-game-design.html

Klappenbach, M 2018, ‘Top survival horror games,’ lifewire, found at: https://www.lifewire.com/top-survival-horror-games-813101

Moriarty, C 2013, ‘The Last of Us review’, IGN, found at: https://au.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/the-last-of-us-review

Moriarty, C 2014, ‘The Last of Us: Remastered review’, IGN, found at: https://au.ign.com/articles/2014/07/28/the-last-of-us-remastered-review

Novack, H 2017, ‘The importance of worldbuilding in video games’, Game Design Junkie, found at: https://www.gamedesignjunkie.com/2017/10/02/the-importance-of-worldbuilding-in-video-games/

Playstation 2013, The Last of Us development series episode 3: death and choices, online video, found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbO7D9YkP-c&list=PLXEtpj0fLbRT20VbnVGn_GqVl_0KunQWd&index=3

Further reading

Sakey, M 2005, ‘Understanding character in video games’, ACMI, found at: https://2015.acmi.net.au/acmi-channel/2005/game-essay-character-in-video-games/

Wolf, MJP 2018, ‘Contemplation, subcreation and video games’, Religions, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 142-9

Wood, Z 2013, ‘Characters and worldbuilding: analysing the strength of Japanese games’, Gamasutra, found at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/193315/characters_and_worldbuilding_.php

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

Soundtrack vs. music score: The creation of the Guardians of the Galaxy world and its influence on the audience

The soundtrack and music score within a film work together to create an imagined world which emotionally affects the audience.

The similarities between music score and soundtrack become overlapping in their purpose. Although Guardians of the Galaxy displays a clear separation between soundtrack and score, in general a movies soundtrack can include a music score - created for the movie and possible purely instrumental, this creates a confusion in understanding the difference between the two. Not only the difference in their definition, but a difference in what affect they have when creating an imagined world for an audience. An article from The Edge explains that “where a score sets the tone, a good soundtrack gives a movie personality.”

The distance that any kind of non-diegetic music creates between the film’s narrative and real life is obvious in the fact that we do not have a song start to play that perfectly matches the mood of the moment in real life, nor do we have a constant melody that matches how we feel. However, the presence of these sounds within a movie helps structure a particular reality in the way the producer perceives it.

Guardians of the Galaxy is known and loved for its iconic, classic soundtrack that allows the movie to become quiet original within its superhero genre. The Awesome mix vol. 1 accompanies Peter’s quirky references to 1970’s trends and pop culture which give the super hero movie that is set in space a cool 70’s vibe throughout.

This soundtrack gives the story line a depth that allows the imagined reality to look and feel more meaningful. This occurs in its consistency - introduced as a precious tape owned by a child containing songs which reflect his mother’s life as well as his own adventures throughout the movie. The consistency of the soundtrack throughout the film also creates a sense of realness right from the start mostly because every time a song from the soundtrack appears in the movie it begins diegetic and sometimes is purely diegetic, being played through head phones or on a tape player.

 The first song played in the movie begins diegetic, played in a young boy’s (Peter Quill) head phones. “I’m not in Love” by 10cc has a soft sombre sound that matches the setting of a boy in a waiting room hospital waiting to see his sick mother. The English rock band were most successful in the 1970s and went on to top UK charts.

The next song “Come and Get your Love” by Rebone plays in the ear phones of a now older “Star-Lord” (Peter Quill), who is exploring dismal looking planet. The funk-rock song has energising beats that match his playful nature as he dances around until the music abruptly stops, interrupted by the image of the infinity stone in a room filled with silence.

It is implied that both songs mean something to Peter’s mother, Meredith Quill, who made the mix tape for his son which he holds dear, and suggest experiences that she has gone through. However, The Boardwalk Times suggest that some songs such as “Escape” by Rupert Holmes reflect Peter’s experiences. They explore the way that the song becomes paralleled with Peter and Gamora’s relationship through its conclusion of two lovers realising they have more in common than they thought. “They don’t have to look any further than each other for what they seek in a relationship.”. This connection could be made within the back story of both Peter and Gamora in which they both have not known love and meaning from family relationships or otherwise.

The meaning of the sound track runs deep within the movie in the way that it is represented and the way that each song is played in the movie. However, the use of these famous, chart topping, 1970’s hits carry meaning and experience respectively. This may connect with the audience in a way separate from the movie, altering certain feelings that the producer is trying to invoke. A qualitative content analysis by Claudia Bullerjahn (Bullerjahn, C 1994, ‘Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition’, vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp.99-118) explains that the role of individual differences and past experience of viewers is typically not considered. I wonder if this is the case here or if that is part of the reason that the producer has chosen these songs specifically, because they already have personal meaning attached to many people watching. (p.99).

On the one hand it is the perceptions of the producer that are being portrayed but on the other the audience brings their own interpretation and emotional reaction to the specific music being matched with each scene.

The music score on the other hand becomes something that is constant throughout the entire movie, repeating certain sounds for certain scenarios. Guardians of the Galaxy uses the same four sounds throughout the movie the most common is quite intense, deep and dark which gets louder and more fast pace during any action. Bullerjahn (Bullerjahn, C 1994, ‘Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition’, vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp.99-118) looks at this as a dramatic function used to accentuate a cinematic climax by accelerating the tempo. This can provide specific messages which can anticipate action and contribute to the narration. Other than this there is music which sounds like the same instruments but played in a more positive way, suggesting something heroic is happening or something triumphant has happened. Other music is sad and sombre and plays in moments when someone important and likable has died or when a deep and meaningful moment is happening between two characters.

When “Come and Get your Love” plays while Peter dances around in the opening scene it suddenly stops, interrupted by the sight of the infinity stone which Peter plans on taking. This is followed by the accompanying non-diegetic sound of deep, slow, intense music which plays behind the image of Nova Corp agents stepping off of a ship.

The way that both types of music are used allows them to almost complement each other in the successful effect they have on the audience. The soundtrack in this moment allows the audience to connect with Peter, to understand his personality, giving the imagined world a depth that connects to the character’s backstory and life in that moment. When the soundtrack stops and there is silence there is a sense of uncertainty and when the score kicks in so does a sense of seriousness. This changes to a deep, high tempo, intense music when they begin to chase Peter, this creates a sense of worry that the audience physically feels, making their heart beat faster and feel a sense of anxiety for the character we now know a bit about. Further into the scene Peter jumps away from a group of agents in which moment all music stops and time is slowed, again creating a sense of uncertainty. The silence, soundtrack and music score are carefully placed throughout a scene to allow a manipulation of emotions.

Bullerjahn explains that the music score influenced the mood of the entire film more than non-verbal reactions of the protagonists. They concluded that more than anything the score influenced the emotional components of film perception. (Bullerjahn, C 1994, ‘Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition’, vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp.99-118)

Long moments that had no music at all connected with each other through a common factor of the five guardians of the galaxy being together. It seemed to me that the moments where the five characters where alone with each other were moments of safety and certainty, no one attacking them, no outside interference. They are moments which allow the relationship between them to build and relationship dynamics to form. This becomes clear with funny banter, laughter and serious conversation. Although there are other moments with no music at all that only last a few seconds, these go for a minute or two and last a whole conversation, it allowed these moments to stand out throughout the movie.

The article concludes that the genre influences the expectations of feeling for the audience whilst the music score guides their emotions allowing the moment in the movie to be interpreted differently but not too far from the producer’s own interpretation. Polarising the emotional atmosphere, influencing the understanding of the plot. (Bullerjahn, C 1994, ‘Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition’, vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp.99-118) (p.116). The soundtrack in Guardians of the Galaxy adds to the depth of the actual imagined world being created, giving more elements to the story that the audience is being given. Both have the effect of manipulating the emotions of the audience, however, I have come to the conclusion that the score manipulates emotions in the moment, whilst the soundtrack has a longer term effect, building upon the emotions the audience feels toward particular characters or scenes.

Written by Bree Zammit

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world … or am I?

The world of Barbie becomes what you make it, the limit is your imagination. In this instance, the imagined world becomes play time, which becomes an important part of child development.

Imaginative play is a common theme in child development and is done in many different ways through different toys and games. The way that imagined worlds display our world in a familiar way is presented in playing with dolls through what Jerome Singer explains is a child’s fundamental need to shrink the large, loud world down to a manageable size so they can test their ideas in everyday situations. The differences between the imagined world and the real world can be explained with child development.

The influences surrounding doll play open up a lot of ways to understand this imagined world. Gender stereotypes and gendered marketing become embedded within this world and impacts children’s creativity and development. Jody Devos explains that when a child selects a doll and they begin to create a world of adventure, “he or she is crafting a narrative or story line, involving literacy skills, flexible thinking, self-expression, taking initiative, and more”. This gender neutral statement came with a lot of questions for me and allowed me to contemplate the way dolls and specifically Barbie branded dolls influence the imagined world that a child creates, the gender influences and possible pressures of this combination.

The characteristics given to Barbie have gender implications that interact with child development and the imagined worlds that are created by each child. In a podcast produced by Leital Molad, is the history of Barbie, within which lies the core characteristics and inspiration for Barbie revealing important gender implications embedded in Barbies character.

Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959 and was inspired two things: one was a doll that Ruth saw in a shop window in Europe named Lilly. Lilly was a sexy novelty gift for grown men, based on a sexy character from a raunchy comic strip. The second inspiration was Ruth’s daughter who played with child-like, paper dolls which she used to fantasise about adult life. So Barbie was created as a way for young girls to imitate the world around them through a sexualised, wholesome, American woman.

Barbie’s values became about fashion, looking sexy in those clothes, and being an independent woman that collects occupations rather than building a relationship with a man.

I would like to acknowledge all gender related arguments when it comes to children playing with Barbie dolls and Barbie’s existence. These arguments seem to have remained the same over time, adding and subtracting points for each side depending on the context of the time, mainly these arguments have surrounded the female gender and impacts of Barbie of young girls.

Gender continues to be disputed in contemporary society and because of this it is important to understand the ways in which boys are influenced by Barbies messages - the worlds that are set up for boys and girls within Barbie as well as the worlds imagined by boys and girls. DeVos explores the benefits of all children playing with Barbie dolls explaining that playing with Barbies is helpful for boys who need to develop the same emotional skills as girls and sometimes aren’t allowed to participate in that sort of emotional exploration and self-expression.

From the very beginning Barbie has been a gendered toy, created and marketed for a young girl to play with. In general, creating an imagined world with dolls influences a child’s development in a positive way. However, the gender stereotypes embedded within Barbie have a substantial impact on the worlds created. These stereotypes reinforce toys that fit into the male gender and masculine stereotypes by excluding them from the Barbie world and supporting the gender binary. A Conversation article explains that these stereotypes embedded within toys is justified with letting, or forcing, “girls be girls” or “boys be boys”. This implies that there are a natural set of likes and dislikes for each gender that are unaffected by the culture in which we live. Without this culture in media, advertising or being enforced by parents and peers, boys are likely to continue playing with Barbie’s and the one’s that do anyway would do so without negative pressures that tell them what they are doing is wrong.

DeVos explains that marketing images take away from a child’s perspective of self and others. So do the toys that are given to them represent the world?

In Barbie’s creation was the intention to give young girls a toy to recreate and understand experiences in their life with an adult figure more realistically representing who they are playing out, however, the realistic nature of Barbie creates the idea of an ideal woman’s form. Although Barbie’s ability to do anything and everything creates a message that anything is possible, even if you are a girl, her form creates a connotation of un-achievability through an unrealistic physical appearance.

Barbie is a figure representing a matured adult whose options in life are limitless. In 1959 this was important as she was a mode for children to create an imagined world beneficial for their development, as a figure that can more realistically represent the images seen in real life, compared with child-like figures that toys depicted. Her contribution to childhood imagination only becomes toxic in her gendered nature, from the way she is marketed to the embodiment of some kind of ideal woman’s form. This form solidifies and perpetuates gender stereotypes within the environment of a child’s creation of an imagined world, an environment which helps develop a child emotionally. This allows the message to become so much more real for a child, as the game becomes a tool to understand what is real, what is right and wrong. It turns a positive message of independence and financial autonomy into something that seems unrealistic and unachievable when matched with her physical appearance.

Written by Bree Zammit

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

How The Village trains its audience to be critical of their own lives

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 film The Village reveals that many people in society have been deceived by their perceptions of reality. Thankfully, the film doesn’t leave us stranded with that realisation.

The film gives its audience the tools they need to start questioning their perceptions. It does this by actively including the audience in the imagined world of the film…only to then pull the audience back into being objective viewers. This encourages the audience to reflect over the experiences the film just made them go through.

An introduction to Shyamalan’s imagined world

The Village is about a quaint 19th century village which is haunted by monsters. To prevent angering the monsters, the village leaders (a group of adults who have the upmost authority) forbid anyone from trespassing in the forest, which is where the monsters live.

However, it is eventually revealed that this is not a period film, but that it takes place in current day.

We discover that the all village leaders had faced death and crime when they used to live in normal society. As such, they decided to move to a secluded area and raise their families there, away from the immorality of the contemporary world. The monsters are explained as a manipulative tactic to prevent anyone from wanting to leave the ‘safe’ village.

What is truly fascinating about this narrative is that it delivers its moral through a reproduction of Plato’s cave allegory.

Ok… so what is Plato’s allegory all about?

In his Republic work, Socrates writes about his allegory of the cave which highlights how people are imprisoned by their own impressions of reality.

Plato’s allegory details that a group of people, called the prisoners, are chained up in a cave and are forced to stare at the blank wall in front of them for their entire lives. Behind the prisoners is a fire which the puppeteers use to cast shadows upon the wall in front of the prisoners. The prisoners, having never known any other kind of life, accept the shadows as real beings.

Yet one of these prisoners, called the philosopher, breaks free of their shackles and realises that their reality was a mere deception created by the puppeteers.

The Village is a modern reproduction of Plato’s allegory

We can interpret the village people as the prisoners and the village leaders as the puppeteers who steer everyone to believe in a false reality.

That leaves the question of who are the philosophers?

We can see the characters Lucius and Ivy as philosophers considering Lucius becomes increasingly aware of being deceived by the elders and Ivy is told the truth of the Village’s history so she can collect lifesaving medicine for Lucius. But this is only the first diegetic level of the film.

On a higher diegetic level, the film relates to the tangible world of the audience as they are also positioned as philosophers. Through various camera techniques, Shyamalan actively positions his audience to feel as though they are characters within the imaged world.

But Shyamalan also harshly juxtaposes this positioning by pulling the audience right back to the position of an objective viewer. Why would he do this?

To answer that question, we need to analyse specific examples from the film to see how the experience of character and viewer is actualised.

Audience becomes active character

About halfway through the film, there is a village meeting in which Lucius admits to trespassing into the haunted forest. At the beginning of the scene, we are shown a side angle shot of the elders sitting in front of everyone as they read out Lucius’s note about his actions. This side-angle view allows the audience to see the reaction from the village community from an objective viewpoint as they are positioned separately from all other characters.

This shot is then cut and replaced by a shot positioned from the back of the room. All the villagers begin to slowly turn around and stare at the camera. It is revealed that this shot is the POV of Lucius. This POV shot creates the illusion that the audience are being watched and judged by the characters in the film as if they were a part of the cinematic world. Hence, the audience has been shifted from their objective perspective to the active position of a character.

When an elder walk’s over to talk to Lucius (hence, the audience) he towers over the frame because he is shot from a low angle. This shot creates anxiety within the viewer, replicating Lucius’s anxiety for the audience. We feel as though we are there, as much a part of this world as the characters on screen. Roger Deakins, the cinematographer of The Village, stated in an interview that “Night created a world through the way the camera moves…”. Thus, the audience becomes immersed within this imagined world through clever camera movement, even though they were originally positioned as a viewer who would only observe the elders and other characters.

The divide between viewer and character is further blurred

Towards the end of the film, the elders argue about whether Ivy should be allowed to leave the village to retrieve medicine. Within this scene, the audience’s perspective is constantly shifting from character to viewer, and back again.

This scene is shot by a hand-held camera, so when the camera moves in closer to the group as they assemble, it feels as though we are a character involved in the meeting. This involvement occurs because the shakiness of the camera replicates the feeling of walking and viewing from the perspective of one of the elders.

However, for much of this scene, the audience is shown the character’s backs. In fact, most scenes in this film are often shot with the characters facing away from the camera. This has the effect of excluding the audience from the events on screen, which again positions them as an objective observer. Hence the perspective of the audience becomes muddled between viewer and character in this scene example.

So why would Shyamalan juxtapose the audiences positioning in this way?

The Village is training you to be critical of your own reality

Deakins states that “Night’s vision is based on one particular viewpoint.” This viewpoint is that of the audience. When Shyamalan presents one long shot of the characters backs, but then decides to move the camera up to a close-up on a character’s face, he is reinforcing the audience positioning as both character and observer.

This positioning occurs because the film desires to train its audience about being reflective over their own life. By making the audience an active character, the film immerses the audience into (what feels like) first hand experiences. Then, the film juxtaposes this by pulling the audience back into the position of a viewer. In doing so, the audience become spectators to their own experiences and learn to be critical of these experiences.

The most important thing about the reality displayed in The Village is that it is familiar. Shyamalan understands that at its core, this film is very human, it’s a story about grief and love after all. The familiarity of this imagined world allows the audience to transfer their new-found reflection skills onto their own reality with ease.

The allusions to Plato’s allegory are no mistake. This film is attempting to create a philosopher out of its viewer so that they too can begin to question their own world.

Written by Serena Barsby.

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

Ted Chiang’s Story of your life asserts one key thing: language is the most powerful tool you wield.

Literature transports us to imagined worlds. These worlds depict our own reality but with some striking differences. By presenting our world in a slightly altered way, defamiliarisation can occur which blurs the line between the imagined world of the text and the tangible world of the reader. Through defamiliarisation, imagined worlds can offer up alternative perspectives of our own reality as readers are shown new insights.

The science fiction genre is particularly interesting to analyse when we think about imagined worlds. Samuel R. Delany, the author of the science fiction novel Trouble on Triton, has stated that “…science fiction is not about the future. It works by setting up a dialogue with the here-and-now…”. Here, Delany captures the true power of imagined worlds which is their ability to represent our contemporary reality within their fictional recreations.

A great example of a science fiction text is Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, the short story that inspired the major Hollywood film Arrival. The world presented in Chiang’s text seems familiar in every way…except the world has suddenly been invaded by aliens. Yet, the most curious thing about this text is that it’s not really about the aliens. It’s about us. Through the clever manipulation of language and literary techniques, the text creates defamiliarisation and as such reveals ourselves to us.

An Introduction to Ted Chiang’s imagined world

In Chiang’s short story giant alien devices, called ‘looking glasses’, land in various places on Earth. The looking glasses act as a two-way communication system between humans and aliens. Dr. Louis Banks, a linguist, communicates with the aliens through a looking glass to decipher their language.

We soon discover that the alien’s written language is not sequential like our own, instead they write in cyclic patterns. To read this language you must read an entire sentence simultaneously as there is no start or finish to their sentences.

As banks begins to learn the alien language, a very strange thing starts to happen…she starts to think in a non-linear fashion. By learning to read and think in a language which is non-sequential, Banks begins to experience her past, present and future instantaneously. This concept is based on a real linguistic theory known as the Sapir-Whorf theory.

The Sapir-what theory?

The Sapir-Whorf theory states that language does not just communicate our thoughts: it creates them. There are two variations of this theory. The weak version proclaims that our language merely influences our thoughts whilst the strong version asserts that all thoughts are determined by language.

Many criticise Chiang’s story (and the movie adaptation Arrival) for taking the Sapir-Whorf theory to an extreme that is too unrealistic.

Yet I think it’s irrelevant whether Chiang’s story is realistic or not because it’s an imagined world. And the true power of imagined worlds are their ability to reflect a variation of our reality back to us and give us new insights. They don’t need to be realistic, they just have to produce meaning.

So what can be learned from analysing Story of your life?

Story of your life shows that learning an alien language can synthesise new understandings about human language and communication.

Chiang makes use of literary techniques to manipulate the emotions and thoughts of his reader. Juxtaposition is used throughout the entire text to intersect past events with future events. This technique is brilliant for several reasons.

Juxtaposition reproduces an effect of time travel

Firstly, the constant interception of contrasting time periods reproduces the simultaneous method of awareness that Banks acquires from learning the alien language.

The story is narrated by banks, but it’s done so in disjointed parts. There is the chronological narrative of Banks learning the alien language but then there is also another narrative, which occurs in the future in which Banks is raising her daughter. This means that the readers get to experience the past and future all at once.

The interception of different time sequences brings the Sapir-Whorf theory to life by replicating how it would feel to have our cognitive awareness alter due to language acquisition.

Furthermore, by presenting reality in this time-skewed way, a process of defamiliarisation occurs. As literary critic Victor Shklovsky has said, the defamiliarisation that Chiang creates, through reproducing the Sapir-Whorf theory, allows him to “….remove the automatism of perception…”. This means that reader’s perceptions can be challenged and altered due to being shown a new viewpoint.

Juxtaposition requires readers to connect events to divulge meaning

Secondly, the constant interruption of different time periods achieves a similar result as a film editing technique called the Kuleshov effect. This effect refers to how people will automatically find connections between two sequential shots and derive meaning from their juxtaposition. The contrast of time events in Story of your life also compels the reader to draw out the similarities and connections between narrative events that may not have been as clearly identifiable without juxtaposition. Hence, Chiang’s text acts as a literary version of the Kuleshov effect.

We see Banks learning the alien language alongside her daughter growing up and learning the nuances of human language. When Banks first begins to attempt communication with the aliens, she has to work hard to ensure the aliens weren’t responding to her questions with ‘aren’t the humans cute’. This situation is juxtaposed by Banks daughter coming home from school and asking her mum if she “can…be made of honour?” because her friend got to be maid of honour at her sister’s wedding.

The juxtaposition between these two situations generates a language-learning anecdote. By contrasting a child’s language acquisition to the alien language acquisition, readers are coerced to find the connections between these two experiences. The contrast between alien and human child language acquisition highlights how even slight communicative misunderstandings can hinder comprehension.

Ultimately, juxtaposition enables a focus on human connection

This leads me to my final argument: the effect of juxtaposition in the text firmly establishes it’s focus on humanity. Both the reproduction of time travel and the literary Kuleshov effect draw attention to language. More specifically, they draw attention to communication and how this facilitated the parent-child relationship between Banks and her daughter.

Through juxtaposition, the relationships between human characters are propelled to the forefront whilst the alien invasion narrative is increasingly portrayed as a backdrop. The time travel effect allows for the text to interweave Banks personal family history and future events with her daughter into the alien narrative. The literary Kuleshov effect highlights that the true focus of the text is Banks’ daughter because every time the readers discover how important language and perception is when communicating with the aliens, these moments are juxtaposed by Bank’s daughter learning how to communicate with her parents and friends as she grows up. Hence, the alien narrative mainly performs as an analogy for how crucial communication is within human relationships.

The lesson to be learnt

Chiang’s story actively engages the audience by allowing readers to experience the same time travelling ability as the main character which intensifies the defamiliarisation between reality and fiction.

As a result, the exciting alien plot is long forgotten, and in its place is an appreciation for how central language is to our own lives. The reader recognises how language functions in the story and as such can apply this new perspective towards their own world. The text highlights that language has a real, tangible power over our lives.

Written by Serena Barsby.

[imaginedworldsmagazine-blog]

Cities as Settings: Calvino, Shakespeare, & Venice

The most significant aspect of an imagined world is often the setting imagined – or reimagined – for it. Masterful and subtle worldbuilding can mean the difference between wilful suspension of disbelief and an audience full of raised eyebrows. 

As a result, authors often choose to use pre-established setting forms that have already had a complex network of implied meanings conferred upon them. One of the most common of these forms is the city. The meanings can come from the form of the city itself as opposed to other settings – such as a small town, a colony, a spacecraft, a military base, or a farm. The meanings can also come from the complex set of cultural perceptions around a particular real city – such as Venice, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Cairo, or Sydney. All these images and meanings inevitably shape the narrative’s mood, themes, and eventually plot. A family drama set in Melbourne will not be the same as one set on a Mars colony, even if all the characters and the plot structure are identical.

This article is not an exploration of these settings and their influence on narrative. It is, however, an exploration of the city, its importance as a narrative setting when mythologised by authors, and its influence on how we perceive stories. It is also a case study of Venice in fictional texts, specifically in Italo Calvino’s novel “Invisible Cities” and William Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice”. In two very different but equally complex ways, Venice – and especially how Calvino and Shakespeare reimagine it – becomes the crux of these texts. It acts as a spectral influence: unobtrusive but significant; taciturn, discreet, even absent – yet emphatically omnipresent. Venice is more than just a city in “Invisible Cities” and “Merchant”. It is a latent character in its own right.

By way of a brief summary, Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” is an almost surreal novel written as a cross between travelogue, fable anthology, and oral recount. The reader is a figurative fly on the wall observing Venetian explorer Marco Polo recounting to the emperor Kublai Khan stories and descriptions of diverse cities in the Khan’s great empire. The Khan, concerned with the inevitable downfall of his empire, listens to Polo’s stories and argues, requests, encourages, demands. Each chapter is rarely over two pages long and deals with an intriguing new city that has some sort of message or moral or revelation built within it. All the cities are – to us – fictional. However, half-way through the book, when the time comes for the Khan to ask Polo about his home city, Venice, the following exchange takes place:

“Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”

“There is still one of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”

And Polo said: “Every time I mention a city I am saying something about Venice.”

“When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.”

“To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.” (p. 78)

Venice receives no further memorable mention in the text beyond this exchange. But perhaps this is because it does not need any. Frustrating though it may be to the reader to hear all these fantastical descriptions of impossible cities and to be thwarted at the critical moment when they are to learn something about a character’s backstory, the mention of Venice serves its purpose. The remaining half of the book is coloured by this exchange. Curious for information about Marco Polo’s home city, the reader attempts to extrapolate subtly alluded to meanings from the cities they have already read about and those they are yet to read. All other cities become palimpsests of Venice.

While the book in its entirety is a remarkable study of imagined worlds, it is this subtle dynamic that boasts just how much cities can do for imagined worlds in a text. Venice is absent in “Invisible Cities”, yet it is the cornerstone of the novel. It is the only real city that receives any attention (until the last few pages) and its intrusion, such as it is, into the novel stands out sharply against an empire of cities that pay tribute to the heavens, spider-web cities, cities with earth instead of air. Mythologising real cities as well as fictional cities, even as a brief aside, gives Calvino’s text a complex set of meanings, implications, and nuances. Venice transcends city, sublimes setting, and becomes nothing less than an anchor to fact in a surreal world. 

What Venice achieves in this text is entangling itself with all other cities – at least in Marco Polo’s eyes, and therefore in the reader’s. What does this mean for Venice, for all cities? Is Venice the archetypal city? Or is Venice only relevant to other Venetian-born travellers? Do all cities have similarities that can be understood with just one other city as a frame of reference? Are all cities actually exactly the same, simply parading under different names? You could answer yes to any of these questions and find your argument supported somewhere throughout “Invisible Cities”. Calvino himself says it is a book scattered with different messages – more importantly, with different conclusions. (p. 41 →) It is easy to see how a writer can mythologise a city to achieve all sorts of things in their work. We will return to the importance of Venice shortly, but for now we will move onto the next writer and how he used Venice in his work: Mr William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” tells a far more conventional narrative than “Invisible Cities”. It has a traditional recognisable plot structure to follow, with compelling well-written characters, a complication, a climax, a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is not a treatise on cities the way our other text is. At least not to a casual viewer. To a critical viewer with some understanding of the context in which the play was written, “Merchant” reveals a great deal about how Shakespeare’s London regarded Venice and, more importantly, what it meant to his audience to include it in the play.

The view of Venice from London was as one of a very far away place. London did have its similarities with Venice – they were both bustling port cities, melting pots of cultures, accents, stories, religions, and ethnicities. But this is not to say that all was well. Intolerance was a big problem in London around 1600, as “Merchant” illustrates to us. Venice was another story. It could not trust outsiders but depended on them all the same.  It was a merchant city, a city of trade, and laws were fairly loose. The Schedelsche Weltchronik’s record of Venice in the late 15th century tells us that as long as you offended no one privately, you would not be judged, and could do as you pleased. Venice was also a land of contingencies, where nothing was absolute: land was not quite land, moral values were relative and ever-changing, worth was constantly re-evaluated. Venice did not even answer to the Pope in this period. To London, it was a possible place to spread Protestantism, or at least a potential twin city. London was similar to Venice in its international character and maritime endeavours, but it mistrusted Venice’s avarice. For Shakespeare, Venice was the perfect twin city to explore London’s own international, mercantile, and decidedly anti-Semitic character – similar but different, far away but not too far away.

As far as cities and texts go, this shows us how the cultural meanings conferred on a city can contribute to the narrative in endlessly subtle and significant ways. Shakespeare could have used any fictional mercantile port city if he wanted to, but no such city would have been quite so full of the cultural shortcuts and meanings as a real one. It shows us that the meanings of a city are passed into a text when this city is used as a setting. Given enough of a reputation and a character, the right city can act as the perfect home, obstacle, foil, or mirror for a cast of characters. It almost becomes a character in its own right. Cultural perceptions of cities can do as much worldbuilding for an audience as the text itself.

Culture layers meaning. Commodity has always been a big deal in Venice – and since it has historically been an international microcosm, we can also see it as a point of perception from which to view other cities, other worlds (or at least the rest of this world). Shakespeare would have been aware of this. Calvino certainly was. (p. 41 →) Many of his Trading Cities in “Invisible Cities” are sites where travellers trade goods as well as stories, desires, even memories. It is quite possible that stories themselves are a commodity in “Invisible Cities”. Consider this interaction between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan:

“…So then, yours is truly a journey through memory!” The Great Khan, his ears always sharp, sat up in his hammock every time he caught the hint of a sigh in Marco’s speech. “It was to slough off a burden of nostalgia that you went so far away!” he exclaimed, or else: “You return from your voyages with a cargo of regrets!” And he added, sarcastically: “Meager purchases, to tell the truth, for a merchant of the Serenissima!”

This was the target of all Kublai’s questions about the past and the future. For an hour he had been toying with it, like a cat with a mouse, and finally he had Marco with his back to the wall, attacking him, putting a knee on his chest, seizing him by the beard: “This is what I wanted to hear from you: confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies!” (p. 88)

Venice has historically been a symbol of trade – and Marco Polo, the Venetian who mysteriously only told us enough of Venice to cast its identity over every other city in the book, acts as a metonym for this city.

Whether writers use it as a framework for understanding and analysing real cities (London, for Shakespeare) or fictional ones (the “invisible” cities, for Calvino), Venice acts as a site of trade and a point of perception. It acts as an anchor to reality in unique ways in both texts. It is the shaping force of the whole narrative, unobtrusive but significant.

The city has many archetypal forms – the cultural centre, the Heavenly City, the cosmopolis, the urban jungle, the megalopolis – while being an archetypal form itself. Drawing on the shortcuts that all archetypes are rife with can be an effective and sophisticated way of adding nuance to a text. As we have seen, cities have a complex set of meanings conferred upon them. Writers use these nexus of meanings as a subtle way of framing their narratives. In the wrong hands, as is the risk with all archetypes, this can simply read as a perfunctory template for a story. But handled well, the right city can turn a delightful narrative into a masterpiece.

And what about you? What do your cities represent? Are they, too, sites of trade, melting pots? Are they full of cold glass towers and steel girders, effort caked in cement? Are they old and ill-preserved, as long as the horizon is wide, history in stasis? Are they a sign of a people breaking, where the writing is on all the walls? Are they sites of business, commerce, impersonal and lofty? Are they grandeur and luxury, all show and no substance? What do your cities represent? And what can they do for your stories?

Main texts

Invisible Cities ~ Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver (1997 [1972])

The Merchant of Venice ~ William Shakespeare (1967 [1600])

Secondary texts

Italo Calvino on “Invisible Cities” ~ Italo Calvino (1983)