Theory

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/no_more_parodies/

During an interview with NPR, Roger Ebert was asked about the upcoming B-movie cult summer film, Snakes on a Plane. What followed, according to snakesonablog, was this rant about the age of irony:

"I’m tired of the age of irony. The age of irony is just an attitude that excuses you for consuming junk as if it were worth consuming."

"And irony is also just an excuse to avoid doing the heavy lifting of important art, you know? If you don’t go to see great movies, or read great books, or go to great theater, or look at great television, then you don’t have to think about it and you can just master trivia. And then when you’re 35 you can sit around drinking beer with your high school buddies and, you know, chat your life away. People who embrace irony are living in a little bubble brained universe of lost time."

When asked about the genius of the movie's title, Ebert blasted back: "It is a good title. How about this for another title: “Hands Down the Garbage Disposal.”

http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20060514225514611

[Bradford]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/jun/28/weekend7.weekend2

A more lighthearted take that touches on the same subject. Fairly entertaining, if slightly long.

But other strands of media use irony to assert their right to have no position whatsoever. So, you take a cover of FHM, with tits on the front - and it's ironic because it appears to be saying "women are objects", yet of course it isn't saying that, because we're in a postfeminist age. But nor is it saying "women aren't objects", because that would be dated, over-sincere, mawkish even. So, it's effectively saying "women are neither objects, nor non-objects - and here are some tits!" Scary Movie 2, Dumb And Dumberer, posh women who go to pole-dancing classes, people who set the video for Big Brother Live, people who have Eurovision Song Contest evenings, Char lie's Angels (the film, not the TV series) and about a million other things besides, are all using this ludic trope - "I'm not saying what you think I'm saying, but I'm not saying its opposite, either. In fact, I'm not saying anything at all. But I get to keep the tits." As Paul de Man pointed out, some time before FHM, "This does not, however, make it into an authentic language, for to know inauthenticity is not the same as being authentic."(4). So, we're not the first age to use irony (as some insist), but we are the first to use it in this vacuous, agenda-free and often highly amusing way.

[icycalm]

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=19925

Guys I'm pretty sure that whole presentation was a joke

I mean at least I figured the ladder was a direct reference to MGS3 and the ladder scene that some people complained about

Can we please move past the LOL Kojima games are just long cutescenes LOLOL crap?

And move on to where, retard?

I think in order to love Kojima's works you must also hate Kojima's works.
Thats what it means to be "in on the joke"

Also nemo what the fuck you idiot it's not "serious" I mean are you on crack it's hard to fucking name any game that's more in on it's own joke

Sorry if you're trying to salvage this sprawling soap opera by taking the comic relief characters or wacky gameplay mechanics as a sign that Metal Gear Solid has been a very expensive, decade-long prank. Kojima is dead serious with this shit.

and no the argument isn't that it's all a big joke, just that metal gear solid doesn't really take itself so seriously. the entire series is filled ironic self-reference, a constant winking nod to how ridiculous this all is.

And MGS2 is a game about ridiculous games, to a large degree.

No, retard, it's a game about 3D action.

The camp is like an attempted apology for how straight he's playing this stuff.

I dunno, for whatever other arguments might be made, I still can't be convinced that MGS takes itself seriously... it really doesn't, or at least, it never seemed that way to me.

I would say the games are pretty serious in a few pseudo-literary ways, though very tongue in cheek at the same time. Self-aware. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but it's an agreeable way to pass the hours for me.

nemo

if they wern't playing it straight it wouldn't be funny.

believe me.

For I alone can see the true vision of the creator.

I think disparaging 3's story as tripe does it a disservice. It's as patently ridicuous as 1 and 2's but I'd argue that it's not similarly self-aware; it's also exploring a theme that can bear a certain amount of ridiculousness with poise. It's like saying that Predator is not a "serious" movie, which is obviously true in a certain sense, but also an insult to how great the movie is (earnestly, unironically great) in another sense.

lol

I'm telling you, this is part of the reason 3 made me think Kojima loves Pynchon. It's the same sort of odd tone/method.

The artfags can go on like this for ever, basically. NEVER MIND THAT ALL THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VIDEOGAMES. NEVER MIND THAT ALL THEY ARE DOING IS TALKING ABOUT CUTSCENES. If you are an artfag, it's all about cutscenes and messages -- because that's all there's left to talk about if you hate games.

[JoshF]

And here I thought Kojima was just ripping off Ghost in the Shell and stupid American action movies. I wonder if these guys would be making excuses for Half Past Dead too if it gave them a little pomo fluff to unwrap like a Christmas present. And while every reasonable person would still be judging the film at face value as a big dumb shit film, the artfags would know better, because they have THE KEY. You know, the one that allows them to unlock fantastic meaning upon wondrous insight that the rest of us are just too blind to see (for instance, this sentence is actually a metaphor for an allegory of botulism awareness.) Because we don't have THE KEY.

[Molloy]

I'm looking forward to gleefully consuming the retardation should Sega ever give Pole's Big Adventure a Western release. It looks hilarious in a very stupid sort of way.

[Bradford]

You know, the one that allows them to unlock fantastic meaning upon wondrous insight that the rest of us are just too blind to see.

Obviously, feeling superior to others is a fundamental human desire. What we come back to over and over again is that people who want something badly enough will make it out of nothing if they are unable to find it anywhere else (apparently they aren't willing to look very hard for it prior to inventing it, though). We're also dealing with kids with limited analytical faculties as well as limited capacites for introspection.

I'm sure pretty much everyone here knows that already, but what else is there to say?

[icycalm]

You can see clearly the decadence in gaming that now prevails. In the '80s and '90s there was not a single person talking about "parodies", "irony", "messages", "art", or similarly retarded shit like that -- everyone was too busy playing all the games they could get their hands on, and loving every minute of them. Who would have given a fuck about "messages" when the Mega Drive port of Strider had just come out, or Civilization II or Colonization, or when Samurai Spirits or WarCraft II were sitting on store shelves?

But today? When we have turned our backs on complexity increase, and when 80% of games are dumbed down versions of older ones, 19% are exactly the same as older games but with different graphics, and only 1% are actually new and interesting and exciting -- AND MOREOVER NO ONE EVER FINDS OUT ABOUT THIS 1% -- or when they do they always misjudge it because of countless stupid misconceptions?

This is what happens when you turn your back on complexity increase -- decadence -- which is immediately followed by all that feeds off of it: "parody", "irony", "art", "hidden messages", and endless pages of empty, hollow verbiage attempting to pass off all this shit as something worthwhile.

And, almost a decade later, we still don't have a decent Deus Ex sequel, because, among other things (including a dumbing down of FPSes in general) everyone has been brainwashed to think that Final Fantasy is an RPG.