Dilemma

George Orwell once wrote (in The Road to Wigan Pier, I think) that it is impossible for people to focus on creative pursuits if they have to struggle to make ends meet. I'd love to reflect on this further, but I really should be seeking gainful employment instead.

Phantasmagoria: A Strictly Visual Adventure

Last week I did something I should have done a long time ago. I played an adventure game.

It was the brainchild of Roberta Williams (known for such Sierra series as Kings Quest and Laura Bow), a horror adventure called Phantasmagoria. The plot was a straightforward Shining knockoff: young couple moves into old mansion, husband gets possessed by a demon, wife has to stop him. As the wife, you explore the mansion grounds while unraveling the backstory of the crazed magician who owned the place. In traditional adventure game fashion, there are rooms to unlock, characters to talk to, and a handful of items to pick up.

What makes Phantasmagoria stand out from other contemporary adventure games (for better or for worse) is that it was designed around the full-motion video technology that was all the rage back in 1995, technology that often took precedence over a game’s playability. (For some good examples, check out the Angry Nintendo Nerd’s review of the Sega CD.) Players still have control in Phantasmagoria, but the game’s extreme reliance on full-motion video limits their ability to interact with their environment. Each time our character did something as simple as wash her hands or open a door, the game had to show it in full video animation. Because this animation takes up a lot of CD space, the game limits how many things you can look at, pick up, or operate. To help players differentiate these few active objects from the background objects (and limit challenge), a single cursor turns a different color when the mouse is moved over an object with a definite purpose.

The giveaway mouse system prevents the puzzles from becoming very hard, and the structure (divided into chapters) makes the game ridiculously linear. Most of its challenges are less like puzzles and more like arbitrary actions to be performed so that time may pass and players can see more cinematic sequences. Epitomizing this is a bar graph that literally shows how much of the game players have seen. In this sense, Phantasmagoria is more of a playable movie than an open-ended adventure game.

The game’s heavy emphasis on visual effects is also striking to those used to traditional adventures where text reveals much of the game’s world. Again, because so little of Phantasmagoria is accessible to players, the game has little to say about the contents of a given room. Instead of a vivid description of a bureau’s contents, the game shows us a few jewels and a cigarette case. Players still get an impression of the bureau, but it comes through visuals, not words. This visual emphasis works to some extent, but as an experienced adventure gamer and lover of prose, I was disappointed.

The easy interface, lack of challenge, and heavy visual effects make Phantasmagoria easy to cruise through, but players who understand the bigger story will find it infinitely more enjoyable. Apart from the plot of Adrienne discovering that her husband is possessed, there is the backstory of the magician who found a cursed book and murdered a succession of wives in gruesome fashion. Said backstory is revealed by talking to people and watching cut scenes like in traditional adventure games, but a surprising amount of information can only be uncovered after stumbling upon hundred-year old letters and newspaper articles. Players must not only discover these sources on their own, but can do so at any point in the game. This is what makes adventure games special: whereas books and movies reveal information linearly, adventure games give players the opportunity to digest it at their own pace. It’s as active as exploring a story in the real world, and that’s what gives the medium real potential. Maybe it just took Phantasmagoria to remind me.

Push-Button Service

“Are you all set, or do you need a few more minutes?”
“A few more minutes, thanks.”

It’s strange being back in the US because a lot of things aren’t the same anymore. I live in a different, smaller house now, where most of my things are still in boxes. My old car is in Los Angeles with my brother Kyle, who’s set out for new frontiers of his own. I see a lot of smart phones now, when before they were a novelty. Last week, I was riding down the streets of Concord when I saw—

“Are you guys ready to order yet?”
“Not yet. How about five more minutes?”
“Not a problem.”
(She stretches out the not in a way that suggests that it may, in fact, be a problem.)

What was I talking about? Right—changes. Things seem different at first, though when I really sit down and remember, they haven’t changed at all. Checkout girls at the grocery store always mumbled, avoided eye contact, and wore too much eye makeup. Certain people always spoke so fast that the words ran together. There were always guys with sideways baseball caps and those pants that weren’t quite shorts, weren’t quite pants. But there’s one thing I’m not used to because Japanese—

“Are you all set or do you need a few more minutes?”
“Uh, yeah." (picks up menu) "I’ll have the Reuben.”
“Did you want onion rings with that?”
“No, just fries.”
“O-kay. And for you?”
“I’ll have the Smokehouse Burger. Medium-well, please.”
“O-kay, I’ll bring those right out for you in a bit.”

Japanese restaurants always have plastic buttons next to the napkinholder. After taking your time to decide what you want, you can press the button (which sounds a satisfying ding-dong across the kitchen) and a waitress with a touch-screen tablet will dash up to take your order and read it back as fast as possible before—

“All rightee, here you go. One Smokehouse Burger?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“And one Reuben. Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
“Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, we’re fine, thanks.”
“Okay, gentlemen, enjoy.”

Wow this looks good. What was I...? Oh yeah—so it’s like they just want to get away as fast as possible so they can leave you alone. And when another waitress comes over with the food, she dumps it on the table—again as fast as possible—and drops off the check to eliminate another unnecessary interruption. If you want something else, all you have to do is—

“How’re we doing over here? Is everything OK?”
“Yes, everything’s fine.”
“That’s great.”

Fuck, where was I? [You were talking about how the waitresses come by as few times as possible.] That’s right. So they basically fix it so that the waitresses come by as few times as possible. The whole thing’s done really efficiently, and you don’t even have to tip. I guess it is pretty cold though, because the waitresses never want to chat with you or laugh at your jokes or anything like that.

“Okay, gentlemen, all set?”
“No, actually, we were just taking a break to talk.”
“Not a problem; take your time. I’ll just leave this right here for whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”

Dammit. Anyway, some restaurants don’t have a button, so you have to yell out Sumimasen, which means “Excuse me.” Usually the family restaurants—the ones that look like a Friendly’s or a Denny’s or something—have this drink bar where you can pay one price and go up to get any drink you want: soda, water, coffee, tea, and sometimes hot chocolate. We used to go there just to drink and hang out for hours—the waitresses’ll never say anything. And you’d see people there just reading comic books or studying, and once we even saw these people working on an elaborate craft project. And the restaurant is always open late, so unless it’s crowded it’s never a problem. I don’t even think they’d hassle you if the place was crowded, because the Japanese really don’t like confrontations. I feel like in America, though, they’d always come—

“Did you guys need any change?”
“No—we haven’t even paid yet. You said we could take our time.”
“That’s quite all right. Take as long as you need.”

I think they want us to go. Americans can be indirect too.

Inactivity

It's weird to be back. My first day outside of Japan, and even on the plane out of Narita, I felt uneasy and intimidated surrounded by all white people. It's strange not to always be the tallest, or the biggest, or the loudest in the room anymore. All of this takes some getting used to, and in Australia I found myself gravitating almost exclusively towards Japanese tourists to make conversation.

Everything seems to move really fast back in America, and I find myself overwhelmed wanting to look, listen, and respond to a million stimuli, most of which I would have simply ignored before I left (the opposite of what happened when I first went to Japan). It's like when you say the same word over and over until it loses all meaning, and then say it again a few hours later; the sound has a new freshness that your brain couldn't respond to on the sixtieth repetition.

Look for some updates within the upcoming weeks, though I'm not sure what effect my newfound unemployment will have on my posting frequency. I've had a few people asking me about the third and final Tale from the Japanese Workplace, and I assure you that it's on the way.

Last Entry from Japan

Today is my last day at the eikaiwa where I work, whose name I shall not mention.

It has come to my attention that my attitude toward Japan recently, both in general and in this blog, has become an increasingly negative expression of my inner frustrations with this country through two years of exposure to Japanese culture from the perspective of a chain-school eikaiwa teacher. Though understanding the horrific aspects of Japan is important to understanding life here, it's dangerous to focus too entirely on the negative, because there are good things about living here, and there are people who can overcome the pressures of Japanese society enough to make their lives work.

There is still hope for Japan; it is only a question of whether the country can pull itself from the muck of bureaucracy and groupthink and create a better environment for the people who live here, Japanese and gaijin alike.

I'll be back in New Hampshire in mid-March. At that time, I hope to write about Japan with a viewpoint less inhibited by the daily stresses of living and working here. Look for my final tale from the Japanese workplace sometime next month. Look for a novel sometime after that.

Sayonara.

My First Aomori

Japan’s new Bullet Train (Shinkansen) service to the northern city of Aomori opened on December 4th. To alert the public to this momentous event, the walls of every JR Railway station were plastered with advertisements featuring well-groomed railway employees standing stiffly at attention and smiling tourists happily exploring the sights of Aomori prefecture. Their TV commercial (EDIT: now removed from Youtube....) sums it up pretty well.

I find this campaign hilarious for two reasons. The first is the name: My First Aomori. It sounds pretty normal at first, but the more you hear it, the more ridiculous it sounds. My First Aomori. Not “My First Trip to Aomori” or “My First Aomori Experience,” but just “My First Aomori.” It’s like there’s a subject missing. Are we to assume that the consumer is taking control of Aomori prefecture for the first time? Or does Aomori refer to some type of consumer goods that can be purchased and kept as a memento?

The second reason is the truth that, despite JR’s attempts to convince the public of the contrary, there’s not a whole lot to do in Aomori. There’s a little castle there, a handful of museums in the capital city, and some natural scenery in the rural northeast area where the Shinkansen doesn’t go. And in December, when Aomori is blanketed by a foot of snow, there’s even less to do. Despite northern Japan’s tendency towards inclement weather, I didn’t see a trace of snow in any of the posters or TV commercials. I like to think that some foolhardy tourists traveled all the way to Aomori only to be surprised that it wasn’t some sort of magical summer wonderland where the sun always shone and the grass was always green.


The one part that JR got right was the apples. Aomori is known for its apples, which are actually really good. I didn’t, however, think they were good enough to merit an entire trip to Aomori just to eat them, nor were they good enough to feature as prominently as they do in the shop windows, souvenir snack treats, character advertising, and yes, even the mailboxes.


Everything in Aomori was either about apples or the Shinkansen, which shouted its existence to the public on enormous banners hung from buildings and signs posted along the streets on Aomori city. The whole thing reeked of an elaborate attempt to make this otherwise ordinary section of Japan’s northeast region stand out. The Japanese government spent a lot of public works money on the new Shinkansen service, and I sensed a desperate need to get some of that investment back. Though, in Japan, construction is a way of life, as even the most rural roads are constantly paved with fresh concrete, its rivers dammed, its mountainside roads shielded by high retaining walls, and its tiny islands strung together with expensive new bridges. Perhaps the new bullet train is just another way for a nation heavily invested in the construction industry to spend its money. Or maybe Japan has a deep-seated need to prove to the rest of the world that it’s powerful enough to thrust its mighty Shinkansen as deep into the unspoiled countryside as physically possible.


Because, really, what does this remind you of?

Censorship, Maturity, and the N-Word

As you may have heard, an Alabama publisher will soon be a releasing an edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the n-word (which, just so everyone’s on the same page, is “nigger”) with the more reader-friendly “slave.” Amidst cries of censoring what is arguably the most important work of American literature, editor Alan Gribben maintains that he changed the word to appeal both to a more general reader and to schools who wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching the book in the 21st century. I feel his intentions are honorable, certainly, as anyone who tries to make literature more accessible to the public usually gets a thumbs up from me. However, in this case the politically-correct edition is merely a way of avoiding the problem by limiting the scope of Twain’s vision.

I’m no expert on Twain, and I’m slightly ashamed of how few of his works I’ve read (especially when this blog has least one regular and one occasional reader that could comment on Twain’s character far more completely than I could), but I do know about using words in context. When 1930s editions of the Hardy Boys series use outdated stereotypes of Asians, African-Americans, or Jewish people as part of their narrative structure, those stereotypes are like a time capsule showing how the author embraced those stereotypes during that time period. In Goldfinger, when Ian Fleming has Bond go off on a tangent about how the abundance of “pansies” in modern society is the result of increased equality between the sexes, it does a lot to show Fleming’s individual opinions of homosexuality and women’s rights. And, if some blogger refers to an African-American as a “nigger” in a derogatory fashion, it means that blogger is just being racist.

However, racist language can also be used consciously in fiction and nonfiction to help readers understand the attitudes of both society and individuals. Skilled writers can put racial slurs into the mouths of their characters without having those words embody their own ideals, using the language as part of a vivid world in which racism is an inherent part. In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, for example, he is not shy about having his racist white characters use racist language because he wants the reader to see them as racist. Simple, yes? Were he to hold back for fear of offending people, readers would not have a complete sense of how the controlling white minority in South America treated Mandela and the other blacks.

Shelly Fisher Fishkin summarizes this point far more coherently than I in a New York times article about the removal of the n-word from Huck Finn:

To understand how racism works in America, it is necessary to understand how this word has been used to inflict pain on black people, challenge their humanity, and undercut their achievements…to criticize racism effectively you have to make your reader hear how racists sound in all their offensive ugliness.

In literature, you simply can’t portray racist attitudes effectively without using racist language. Of course you could capture racism through another medium like sculpture or interpretive dance, but in writing the words have to carry the feeling. To shy away from that language is to create a weaker picture of racism on the printed page.

To use one of my favorite literary characters as a final example, Jason Compson, the paranoid, self-righteous, misogynistic, racist narrator from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, not only refers to all of the novels black characters as “niggers,” he treats women like trash. The latter opinion is summarized perfectly in his opening line of Part III: “Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say.” Jason goes on to say and do terrible things to women, and as part of his overall character, of course he would use the term “bitch” to refer to the opposite sex. To remove this line because someone was offended by the word “bitch” is to destroy an integral part of Jason Compson, just like cutting out “nigger” tones down the realistic intensity of Twain’s racist characters.

Instead of worrying about offending students or the general public, responsible teachers and parents should show how these words are used in context, and responsible readers should make every attempt to understand the difference between Twain’s language and that of the Hardy Boys. Learning about how to control language is part of becoming a better reader and writer, and understanding which attitudes are worth considering and which aren’t is an important part of growing up.

Fortunately there’s still some hope. In order to preserve the author’s original tone, the Japanese translator of The Sound and the Fury chose outdated, racist Japanese to match the English that Faulkner so carefully chose. At least some editors are still aware of the power of language.