Papers, Please: The Violence of Complicity

Papers, Please does a better job than a lot of movies (perhaps by virtue of you, the player, having some control over the direction of the story) at portraying the banality and dare I say violence of a totalitarian system. Set in a dystopian Communist country, Arstotzka, the player wins the ‘labour lottery’ and must now take a position at a border checkpoint in the recently partitioned border town of Grestin. After a six year long war with its neighbour Kolechia, and in a Berlin Wall situation, the checkpoint must be manned as waves of immigrants, visitors and others attempt to enter the country.

The game is elegantly balanced. Starting shifts early in the morning, the game constantly keeps you timed, rewarding you for processing as many passports as possible. However, hidden amongst these throngs of people are criminals: human traffickers, smugglers, terrorists. There are also those will far more menial concerns – that their passport or authorisation permit has expired, and all other manners of bureaucratic problems. You must be as fast as possible whilst making as few mistakes as possible, and each day you are paid. This money can be used to buy upgrades for your booth (so that you can inspect more passports quickly etc) or used to pay for food and heating. Make too many mistakes, and your son, mother in law or wife could easily die. The stakes are high.

The game places pressures on you to call the shots – you decide who goes in. And often, many who arrive at the checkpoint have heart breaking stories. Some beg to be let in to be reunited with their family. Some have been caught up in the arbitrariness of bureaucracy: one day the ID permit is perfectly acceptable, but today new documentation has been added, and so on. You can break the rules, and help out those in need. You can work with patrol guards who themselves get a bonus for the number of detainees they process, or with the terrorists and counter-revolutionaries who want to bring down the communist regime. Some immigrants who beg to be led in will sometimes refuse to leave the passport booth. Gruff guards enter, greet them with a rifle butt to the face and drag them away down an alley and in some horrible way, as the guard shares his detainee bonus with you, you have profited from whatever happened to that person.

However, doing good isn’t simple either – there is always a cost for doing the ‘right’ thing. You receive fines for every wrongful entry, which can lead to being short on food or heating for the week, at worst spiral into your family falling ill or dying. If you don’t strike your own balance of working with the terrorists, then you will be caught up Stasi-esque authorities and punished. You can even go so far as to attempt to flee the country, but in doing so you must procure passports to make forgeries from – passports that can be (and usually are) obtained from completely innocent people.

This is the central conflict within Papers, Please. By placing you in the player in these shoes, we see demonstrated to us some of the finer points of Hannah Arendt’s points on the banality of evil, and Stanley Milgram’s study on obedience to authority. The game does not encourage you to think about the repercussions of your actions, in fact you are encouraged to view people only through their passport and ID papers, not as though they are people. The benefits of working within the system, to be a low level functionary in an immoral regime are quite clear, but at the cost of your own integrity and morals. In some sense, you get placed in a situation where you are just following orders. Papers, Please gives you ample choice. You can unquestioningly follow the regime without question, detaining and turning away immigrants, those seeking asylum and others for the most mundane and small bureaucratic errors. You have the power to decide who deserves to be in the country and who does not.

Despite the profoundly mundane nature of the game, it carries with it prescient messages, many of which are far from mundane. As border security becomes a larger concern in Britain, perhaps the game reminds us that a black and white view of ‘accept entry’ or ‘deny entry’ might not be deliberately monstrous, and even those who accept and deny are not evil or sadistic, but it can easily lead to all kinds of awful endings. In Papers Please, you don’t have to shoot anyone, or harm any physically to damage them: a simple red stamp might be a violent enough act to destroy someone’s life, as the game subtly reminds us. Though it is a game, perhaps we ought to take heed of this lesson in the real world…

References:

Click to access arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf

http://www.psicosocial.net/grupo-accion-comunitaria/centro-de-documentacion-gac/psicologia-y-tecnicas-de-control-social/operaciones-psicologicas/627-obedience-to-authority-an-experimental-view/file

Conan The Barbarian (1972): The Riddle of Steel

I remember quite fondly watching Conan the Barbarian as a young boy with my brother and Dad. There is something in the mix of spirited acting, epic musical scores, cinematography and action scenes that makes the film so fantastic. It is unquestionably a product of the 80s – like a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s back catalogue of movies ( most of which are well worth a watch) – it is completely mired in violence, gore and blood – although I hear reliably not so much as the original Howard Lee stories.

Lots of critics have panned Conan the Barbarian for its violence. Richard Schickel, for example, called it ‘a sort of psychopathic Star Wars, stupid and stupefying’. Robin Wood goes so far as to call it fascist. So I suppose, looking back, I wonder whether they are right. I certainly didn’t think so when I was younger, so should I now? The criticisms of the violence seem rather prudish looking back, when we consider how violent some shows are now. So how is the violence in Conan the Barbarian presented? Is it really psychopathic?

I suppose my shortest answer is no, I don’t think so. With its fantasy sword and sorcery style, the film doesn’t take itself as seriously as some critics suggest (I’m looking at you Robin Wood). The film begins with Conan’s village being destroyed by a band of raiders led by the vicious Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones). Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is taken into slavery, forced to walk around ‘the wheel of pain’ before being released. On one level, the story is about the action hero who faces adversity, reaches his lowest point and then is ‘reborn’ in almost mythical terms. It is standard archetypal story telling. When compared to other contemporary films from the period, the difference in how beautifully Conan is shot, how well scored the whole thing is, and the memorable cast achieve a spirited (if not flawed) acting performance, then the difference is staggering. There are certainly films in Conan’s genre which are without taste. The violence and sex in some contemporary films is gratuitous and questionable at best, but Conan seems to elevate itself above that successfully, through its tone.

The movie itself is not political commentary – in fact it at times appears far from it. Its swashbuckling adventure style doesn’t exactly scream nuanced storytelling. The script is not written with the deft or skill that some critics seem to simultaneously attribute to it (in subtly portraying fascism), and take away in pointing out how ‘stupid and stupefying’ it is. I think the point here is that the film doesn’t really need to be or deserve to be read in such uncharitable terms. Maybe I’m biased, speaking with rose tinted glasses, but without introducing these political diatribes into the work, it comes across more as a fun action film that you can switch off and relax watching to, rather than Triumph of the Will or some kind of Aryan propaganda. In some profound way, it discredits the film on a level that is unfair.

I’m still not sure, I haven’t made up my mind fully, but it’s given me something to think about. The violence in the film isn’t tasteless by my estimation, but perhaps you might think differently? Give the film a watch.

References

Wood, Robin (2003/1986) “Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era”. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond (Revised and expanded ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 144–167.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110827124544/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,7601820524-953529,00.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20070430030056/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19820101%2FREVIEWS%2F201010313%2F1023

Fargo (2014): Dog Eat Dog

Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) is a terrifying yet strangely charismatic conman and hired killer in season one of the hit TV show Fargo. There is something dangerously attractive about the character as he kills, connives and causes general havoc. Perhaps that attraction is nested in the fact, as Gandhi and Nietzsche both assert, ‘cowards cannot be moral’. This is to say, in reverse, that many people would commit crimes, but are too afraid to commit them. Someone who is cowardly cannot have the strength in their convictions to actually be good people. Perhaps this is why we find TV shows with criminals and monstrous people like Tony Soprano or Lorne Malvo so fascinating. We are horrified by them, perhaps repulsed by their behaviour, but we watch them – by doing so are we are revealing that there is a part of that in us?

Lorne Malvo seems to think so. He is vicious and violent, manipulative and sociopathic. In his view, we are predators or prey. He cryptically asks one police officer ‘Did you know the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour?’  We get our answer at the end of the episode: ‘because of predators’. Indeed, as we evolved, development of the eyes was necessary to avoid snakes and other predators, to find ripe leaves and fruit and for hunting. In Malvo’s view, we are so tied to this system we can only be the hunter or hunted – and Malvo is a damned good hunter. Malvo is able to change his own person (like a Chameleon almost) with his sociopathic manipulation because a good hunter avoids being spotted, as a response to the fact that other people will try to suss him out or ‘see more shades of green’. Perhaps we find his cold killing so terrifying and rewarding to watch, because we want to be like him, so we don’t end up like his victims. As a true outsider to society, we can learn something from him.

Malvo’s predatory instinct is revealed again in another episode; he says ‘Some roads you shouldn’t walk down. Old maps used to say ‘here be dragons’, now they don’t… but that don’t mean there aren’t no dragons there.’ Malvo is the dragon that lurks inside all of us, its just that he’s ‘walked into the darkness, rather than into the light’. Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) symbolically and literally, in a great cinematographic moment, walks from the light to the dark, and in doing so unlocks a terrible potential for evil.

Malvo articulates his world view in almost Hobbesian terms. He says ‘we used to be gorillas. All we had was what we could take and defend. It’s a red tide Lester, […] If you don’t let ‘em know you’re still an Ape – deep down were it counts – you’re just gonna get washed away.’ Malvo sees us in a state of nature, and as a sociopath is outside of the remit of usual society, which has strangely liberated him. Hobbes suggested that we state in awe, or fear, or under the power of a Leviathan, that stopped us reverting to nature. Nietzsche sought for us to overcome fear-based morality, but Malvo is truly radical because he reveals to us a third way – to embrace the state of nature.

For this reason alone, Fargo is worth a watch. Lorne Malvo is one of the most fascinating, chilling and strangely charismatic characters I’ve seen in long time. If you haven’t already seen it, I suggest you do.

References:

 

 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201112/cowards-can-never-be-moral

Come and See (1985) Dir. Elem Klimov

If ever there was a film which encapsulated the very essence of unromantic, bleak, naked violent horror, then it is Come and See. Set in the year of 1943, the film follows the journey of a young boy drafted into a partisan force fighting against the Nazis in occupied Byelorussia. The innocent young boy Florya (Aleksey Kravchenko) is soon faced with the stark realities of the Eastern Front, the bloodiest and largest front-line in history.

It is hard to describe the landscape of Come and See. It’s almost dreamlike in its unrelenting, nightmarish horror. In between the villages, thick pine forests and farmland of Byelorussia, there is a hint throughout the film that the place could once have been beautiful: now replaced by a world of browns, greys and a blood red. The soundtrack is striking. The subjectivity captured in the film is singular amongst films I have seen, with the sounds, and much of the sights coming directly from Florya’s perspective. His tinnitus and hearing damage after a bombing strike signals the change in his character, the moment where he is broken. And it only gets worse. There are few sound collages like the ones presented in the movie, carefully layering sounds to the point of an excruciating din. The sounds of aeroplanes howling overhead, screams and cries and more, all mixed together into what becomes Florya’s own broken perceptions.

There are points in this film where I felt sick, and this is no understatement. The gravity of the situation is pressed home with such a vigorous honesty that few films capture. Some of the horror is in the psychological element, as we see Florya’s innocence stripped from him and most terrifying of all, when he is faced with the SS. Based on the real 36th Waffen Grenadier Division, led by Oskar Dirlewanger – a man so cruel and sadistic that even the SS Court was called upon to investigate his unit’s behaviour – we are made to bear witness to the barest glimpse of the atrocities committed by the SS during the war. The ending scenes are some of the most horrifying, with much of it being left to the imagination – I can’t say any more than that – you have to see it yourself. Scenes are drawn out in such a way as to fill one with a sinking dread, which only makes matters worse.

The acting is superb all round, but special commendations must go to Aleksey Kravchenko. The struggle and terrors he endures are brought to life vividly, and believably by the young actor. The subject matter is incredibly heavy – it is even said he was so overwhelmed by the filming that his hair turned grey. Supposedly, live ammunition was used during the filming also. Alongside the score, the technical aspects of the film are handled very well. Klimov makes excellent use of Steadycam to help create the subjectivity and long shots. The ‘action’ in the film, including the special effects is handled very well. Some of the visuals, like a thick rolling fog silhouetting German bikes and trucks, or the haunting imagery of a young girl, Glasha (Olga Mironova), are just incredible.

A Byelorussian man, after seeing the film said only: ‘In reality, it was much, much worse.’ I’m convinced I will never be able to imagine that horror. Come and See is as close as we are ever likely to come to these horrors. Writer J.G. Ballard called it ‘one of the greatest war films ever made’. It is uncompromising, nightmarish and brutal. If you find Schindler’s List or The Pianist difficult to watch, this film will be nigh-impossible. If you do watch the film, avoid any dubbing, and stick to a subtitled film in the original language. Don’t watch it late at night, and certainly don’t watch it for a date, but it’s well worth a watch, for words can’t really do it justice. It is a crime the film is not better known, for it really does deserve a reputation for being one of the best anti-war films of all time.