Tuesday, July 31, 2012

On Suda Goichi and Surrealism

Michael Thomsen's recent Kill Screen article on what he calls "the nonsense art" of the games of Suda Goichi makes a few points that I'd been mulling over for a while. Firstly, his assertion that writers and critics see every piece of art they encounter as a fundamentally interpretable and cohesive. This is true enough; non-fiction writers can be seen as interpreters, of sorts, in that they take information either not available to the masses or not easily discernible by them, and distill it into a more digestible format, lest we all comb over patents all day. This may or may not aid us when examining art, since, as Thomsen puts it, "Irreducibility is a defining characteristic of surrealism," so when something doesn't discernibly make sense, game critics might push against it.

I love the absurd, the surreal, when put to good use -- but I can't completely fall in line with Thomsen's way of thinking. At times, I think Thomsen gives Suda a little too much credit, doing what he calls out others for doing: overinterpreting minor details. He calls the simplistic movement in Killer7 an "elegant and obnoxious decision" that is part of Grasshopper games' tendency to be "hostile to interpretive idealization in every aspect" when really, Suda himself, in an article Thomsen linked to, has explained his use of the simplified control scheme:

In many action games you control the character directly. But there are many people who find that too difficult. They don’t know how to hold the controller, or how to use the analogue stick. I decided not to use that complicated control scheme."

If you take that quote at face value, any artistic statement made by Killer7's simplified movement is an unintentional byproduct. Later on, Thomsen interprets the overbearing sexuality of Lollipop Chainsaw "as a bizarre ventilation of guilt, acknowledging how lurid and disfiguring these clichés must always be—men depicting themselves as monsters who need defeating at the hands of their own cultural creation," He then makes the point of dismissing any interpretation of any of Suda's games to make his real point: that Suda's games are surreal art because they're fragments and small correlations of meaning that don't cohere, and don't do so on purpose, and that it's "trap surrealism lays for us," that trap being a pile of non-sequitors rife with potential meaning that maybe, just maybe, connect into a grander statement. Of course, the grand joke here is that by Thomsen's logic, his own interpretation is itself meaningless (though to be fair, he kind of makes that point himself).

His argument isn't that all interpretations of all forms of art are meaningless, just that Suda creates his works in such a way as to defy easy interpretations. This might be true of his earlier titles, but not of his later ones. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw, both of which were more collaborative efforts and whose surrealism is more aesthetic than intrinsic, for example, both seem less surreal than absurd, using ludicrous setups as backdrops while they engage in more traditional gameplay (another point Thomsen makes). They're not as weird as we're used to from Suda (a case I've made before), and to me seem easily interpretable as the exploitation-inspired fare they appear to be at first glance. They're crazy for the sake of being crazy, and while not every piece of art needs layers of meaning to work, the nonsense Thomsen identifies in them as isn't there as statement; it's there because elephant motorcycles and giant cock guns sound cool and edgy, and for the purposes of creating a game that's fun to play, that's good enough. I don't think there's an intentional surrealism -- it's just a byproduct here.

And really, the term "Nonsense art" seems like a dismissive pejorative, especially considering that Thomsen correlates Suda's games with surrealist art, which I'd argue might be a more appropriate title for the article. He's not chastising Suda for making games that don't follow a neat string of logic -- he's reveling in their absurdity. And I do too, going as far as considering Suda one of, if not the, best designers in the patently odd.

Thomsen actually leaves out some of Suda's earlier works in his analysis, which would've actually aided his arguement. Flower, Sun, and Rain, for example, fits nicely within the surrealist label. But FSR's surrealism doesn't just come from its Groundhog Day-esque time-loop premise, or its fever dream of a story. Playing the game itself is often frustrating and weird, which I've argued before is an intentional design decision. And all you need to see of Michigan: Report From Hell to conclude that it's surreal apart from its title is this clip. These titles are surreal to their core, whereas Damned and Lollipop are only superficially so. You may be in punk-rock hell or fighting zombies in an arcade, but you're doing the same shooting and slashing you've done in so many other games. Suda's history seems to heading towards something resembling an avant-garde director losing his patented touch over the course of becoming more mainstream, though he's thankfully not there yet.

I do think that Suda's earlier works, like FSR and Killer7, cohere into a grander statement. FSR stands as one of the few early parodies of game design, and makes the point about the intrinsic absurdity of videogames while laughing right along. Killer7 is the closest thing video games have to a David Lynch film. But they're full of practicalities, like the decision to make movement simplified because anything else was too complex for Suda, who simply wanted players to see his vision without worrying about spatial awareness. They're likely also nonsensical at first not because of some artistic intent, but because of some fumbling in presentation (see this link for a great interpretation of Killer7's plot). So while Thomsen's point of some interpretations often reading too much into nothing does work, it's not for the reason he thinks, and even if it's self-admitted, he makes the same mistake. It's not nonsense, even if that can be a good thing -- it just takes a little more work to interpret. And while interpretations can completely miss the mark, if enough of them overlap, there's probably something there. Of course, the final say is up to Suda.

Now, if Grasshopper can bring The Silver Case over to the States, we may have this conversation again some time.

Addendum (Spoilers): Thomsen makes a factual error when he says that Harman is not a definable character, and that his multiple personalities "eliminates any conception of self that we might have for him." It's actually Garcian Smith/Emir Parkreiner who assimilates the Killer7, including an avatar of Harman Smith. This is important because the game does make an effort of fleshing out the game's real main character (Emir), so he does have a sense of self. Even Harman, as complicated a character as he is, does have a backstory. He is not simply a surrealist trick used to rock the player off-base.