"Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" - Andrew Ryan - Bioshock

I resently played through the game Bioshock after being told about it by my friend Isaac. (trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymg2HzHF9-4 ) Having played the game, I found it a brilliantly intellegent, political and creepy game and I found myself inspired to do something similar.

The game is set in the underwater distopia of rapture, you play as a plane crash suvivor who unwittingly stumbles upon the city and in doing so is caught in the middle of a civil-war that engulfed the city.

*Spoilers*

Most of the games plot is a comment upon the writings of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Industiralist Andrew Ryan, who could be easily argued to represent Ayn Rand in the game, built Rapture as an Objectivist and Laissez-faire utopia, where "The Great", artist, scientists etc are free from the opression of governments and religion and aren't held back by "The Parasite". However, his plan works little too well when a con-artist arrives in rapture with nothing and builds a crime/bussiness empire. The con-artist eventually starts a coup, attempting to take control of rapture from Ryan, it rapidly escalates into a civil-war that proves to be Rapture's downfall.

What I like about the game's story is how well it represents the ideas of Objectivism and takes an ideaology to it's extremes. It's multi-layered plot is wonderfully intellegent. Some of my favourite characters in the game could well be discribed as monsterous because in rapture no-one is bound by mortality or ethics, for example Dr. Steinman, a plastic surgeon who believes he is the picasso of plastic surgery and as he pursues beauty he often kills his patients.

( Dr. Steinman in bioshock:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wxb8HjiDLQ )

This has inspired me to explore how characters and monsters can represent ideaologies gone wrong. I would really like to start exploring various political ideaologies, their pros and cons etc and work on representing them in a character in a film.

(First part of a 10 part series of videos analyising Bioshock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkGZy1aoqM )

Sex, Drugs and a death curse on "Camp Blood"

When it comes to the monsterous feminine and amoral mother figures in film, I think a great example is Pamela Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series.

*Spoiler Alert!*

In the series Pamela Voorhees is the mother of Jason Voorhees the main anatagonist of the series, however in the first film it is infact Pamela herself who is the killer. In the first film, a group of camp counselers attempt to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, which was closed years before, after a boy drowned. As they try to do so they are each killed off by an unknown attacker. Eventually it is revealed that Pamela Voorhees, the mother of the boy who drowned, Jason, is the killer. After she reveals herself as the killer, she dumps a load of exposition on the audience, as all villians do, in which she explains her motives, about how the camp should never have been reopened and that it's the counselers fault he died for not watching him ect ect.

Pamela Voorhees, on first appearance seems warm, sweet and motherly, but it soon turns out that there is more to her than a sweet, loving mother. In her eyes it is the counselers that are the murders, they killed her son and by killing them she is protecting her son.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8QOvJBTcPs

I also have been considering the notion that in all the victims, as in most slasher films, engage in sex, alcohol, drugs ect, all things the stereotypical mother would tell their teens not to do and the killer is a twisted version of the stereotypical mother or the ultimate mother's boy. This continues throughout the series, a bunch of teens go to Camp Crystal Lake, have sex, do drugs, get drunk ect, all of which are as good as a death sentence in a friday the 13th film, and Jason kills them off and the only one to survive is the innocent virgin and possibly her romanitic interest. Almost like a modern, gory grimms fairy tale, warning teens about the dangerous of sex, drugs and alcohol.

http://hopkinscinemaddicts.typepad.com/hopkinscinemaddicts/2010/02/fairytales-of-a-darker-nature-slasher-films-as-morality-tales.html

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art28322.asp  

Psychological Analysis of Batman

Since last week we were discussing psychological analysis and appling it to films ect , as well as the fact that we disscussed The Joker being the ID and Batman the Superego etc, I thought It would be interesting to apply it to Batman, because there are alot of psychological themes. Here are a few examples of Psychological analysis being applied to the ficitous characters of Batman... I love being a geek.


Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of Batman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGJXF3uJuXI


The Arkham Mentality; A Psychological of Batman Villians using Real Serial Killers:
http://www.footstepsofghosts.com/t2717-the-arkham-mentality-a-psychological-analysis-of-batman-villains-using-real-serial-killers

A Mirror for the Bat: part 1 of 5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWIwiP_Zj0I&feature=related

American McGee's Alice

Since in the last session we were talking about fairy tales and different versions of them I thought I’d mention American McGee’s Alice. Alice McGee’s Alice is a game, where the player takes the role of Alice as she fights her way through a twisted depiction of wonderland.

The game is set roughly ten years after the events of the original novels. Alice has grown up and has been institutionalized in Rutledge Asylum for the last ten years after the loss of her family when they’re house burnt down. Alice is suddenly sucked back into wonderland, here a creation of her own broken mind representing her current mental state,  and she is tasked with saving wonderland and in doing so, saving herself.

One of the great things about the game isn’t just that it is a wonderfully macabre and horrific take on a childhood favourite but that both Wonderland and many of the characters that inhabit it, represent either an aspect of Alice’s Psyche or Someone that has gotten through to the now catatonic Alice, For Example the Jabberwocky here is symbolic of Alice’s saviour’s guilt where as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee are symbolic of two orderlies from the asylum who routinely torture Alice.

Below are links to a few relevant YouTube videos.

American Mcgee’s Alice intro and gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dypmnh0PndY

American Mcgee’s Alice Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG_-3T1Tljw

Alice Maddness Returns Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFrs5UGB-ns