Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Bioshock： Infinite - A Literary Review

00:00:00.000 Every so often, you get a work of cultural significance that's either so influential

00:00:11.700 or so well done that I can justify talking about it on a channel that's mainly about

00:00:17.000 history, politics, philosophy and theology.

00:00:21.200 Bioshock Infinite, the game that was released just last March, is both of those.

00:00:29.320 I'm going to be doing a literary review of it for you guys.

00:00:32.640 I'm not qualified or competent to talk about gameplay mechanics.

00:00:37.420 So I'll be reviewing it the same way I'd review a book or a movie.

00:00:43.320 But before we go into that, a couple of caveats.

00:00:46.800 First of all, spoilers lie ahead.

00:00:50.740 If you really want to play the game without spoilers, you should turn off the review now,

00:00:54.920 go download it, and come watch this after you're done finishing the game.

00:00:59.320 With that said, spoilers shouldn't matter with most forms of art.

00:01:06.260 Murder mysteries can be ruined with spoilers.

00:01:11.280 Something like The Sixth Sense, which is an hour and a half long gotcha, can be ruined

00:01:16.440 by a spoiler.

00:01:19.380 Something like this though, although there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns,

00:01:25.480 I think that knowing the plot allows you to appreciate it more going into it.

00:01:31.560 So up to you.

00:01:33.740 I recommend the game.

00:01:35.500 Go play it if you don't want spoilers.

00:01:37.320 Otherwise, keep listening to the review for now.

00:01:42.320 First of all, cultural Marxism and the hidden messages in most of our entertainment.

00:01:49.260 This is something that really bugs me, and I've commented upon this before, that the reality

00:01:55.200 that we're taught is very, very manufactured.

00:01:59.200 Most of the history that people learn is, at the very minimum, it's a twisted version of

00:02:08.200 events, if not outright fraudulent.

00:02:11.200 There are so many myths and exaggerations that the mainstream media constantly pumps out

00:02:16.200 to us, certain standards that you're not allowed to know about, so that people have

00:02:20.560 a distorted view of reality.

00:02:22.880 This drives me up the wall, and I do comment on it frequently.

00:02:27.200 And in fact, I was expecting to hate this game for precisely those reasons.

00:02:34.200 But I don't.

00:02:35.200 I love this game.

00:02:36.200 I love this story.

00:02:37.200 And we'll be coming back around to that in a little bit, to explain why this is not

00:02:44.520 a case of cultural Marxism.

00:02:46.520 Not, not at all.

00:02:49.740 So with that said, let's start with the plot synopsis.

00:02:54.320 And there's a lot to this, so I really need to go through it.

00:02:58.760 The world of Bioshock Infinite starts with the Latouche twins. 1.00

00:03:03.700 Actually, it starts with one of them.

00:03:09.560 She discovers the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics very early on, in the

00:03:15.520 1880s, essentially.

00:03:18.520 And winds up developing a relationship or falling in love with, it's never completely

00:03:23.060 clear, with her twin, a male twin in a different universe where he is also an expert at quantum

00:03:31.060 physics.

00:03:32.060 And they wind up forming some sort of very close relationship.

00:03:38.920 So, following off this many-worlds interpretation, we have Booker Dewitt.

00:03:44.780 He is the main character, and the big reveal at the end of the game, he's also the main antagonist.

00:03:52.920 Booker Dewitt committed some atrocities at the Battle of Wounded Knee that stuck with him

00:04:01.460 and haunted him.

00:04:04.020 And finally, one day, he was faced with a decision.

00:04:08.080 Does he become baptized and born again? 1.00

00:04:11.640 Or does he walk away from the Christian ritual and say it's all bullshit? 1.00

00:04:17.980 In one world, he gets baptized. 0.99

00:04:20.960 In that world, he changes his name from Booker Dewitt to Zachary Comstock.

00:04:27.860 He goes on to become a very powerful politician in the late 19th century America.

00:04:35.020 And this is where he runs into the female Latouche. 1.00

00:04:40.040 He finds out about her technology, which allows her to see into not just parallel dimensions,

00:04:46.360 but also see into the future, as well as to develop the technology necessary to have the

00:04:51.020 giant flying city that all of this is set in.

00:04:55.180 And so he becomes a huge proponent of her.

00:04:59.300 And the two of them manage to, in the 1893 Chicago World Fair, establish Columbia.

00:05:08.580 Columbia is supposed to be the end goal of America, the perfect version of America.

00:05:16.580 And it's this flying city set in the clouds, which is all rah-rah-pump.

00:05:24.940 America's number one jingoism and manifest destiny cranked up to 11.

00:05:31.620 At the same time, ever since his baptism, he's considered himself a prophet.

00:05:37.700 And he views this, combined with the technology, as the perfect crystallization of American values.

00:05:47.940 But then things start to go wrong.

00:05:55.620 In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, Columbia, the flying city, which is also a heavily armed military establishment, attacks China to free the Americans.

00:06:08.820 The U.S. protests this, and so they secede from the Union.

00:06:14.500 So you get this society that's supposed to be a crystallization of the best parts of American society, but it winds up becoming this extreme version of white bread America. 0.93

00:06:27.500 Extremely nationalistic, jingoistic, they end up deciding to declare war on the rest of the earth.

00:06:38.420 Instead of freedom of religion, they have absolute theocratic tyranny in Columbia.

00:06:45.500 Following this, Comstock starts losing his way.

00:06:56.980 He, with his perfect theocracy, with his perfect snow globe society, he starts bending his own morals to do whatever is necessary to maintain this idyllic appearance.

00:07:12.260 So they attack and kidnap a whole bunch of Irish and blacks to be lower class slaves in the society. 0.78

00:07:22.500 There's a conversation where everybody in Columbia expects to have the perfect world, they expect to have this easy, technological, beautiful, perfect world, and that we need servants to supply this world.

00:07:37.940 Meanwhile, at the same time, he starts selling out to business interests.

00:07:42.940 There's a major moneyed interest, Fink Industries, that gets most of their technological whirly-majigs from the technology to see into the future.

00:07:55.940 And he winds up selling out the society to Fink for these purposes, because as long as Fink can produce all the beautiful, wonderful goods that keep people happy,

00:08:06.940 and, you know, nobody notices the black and Irish slaves that are underneath all of this, then we still have this appearance of the perfect society. 0.87

00:08:16.940 I'm still the prophet, leading people to this glorious future, and I can justify a war upon the rest of the sodomites on the earth below. 0.99

00:08:27.940 So, the Luteches, the twins, the sister and brother, the lovers, whatever they are, are both living in Columbia, and they're beginning to have their doubts.

00:08:41.640 The one thing that Zachary Comstock notices, he looks in the future and realizes, or is convinced by his ministers, is that he needs an heir, that, unlike George Washington, who, after battling George III, refused to be George I,

00:09:02.640 is that Zachary Comstock does want to start a theological monarchy in Columbia.

00:09:11.640 But the problem is, because he's been using this time travel technology so much, he's been rendered infertile.

00:09:20.640 So, this is where the player character comes into play.

00:09:24.640 See, the player character is the one that turned down the baptism.

00:09:28.640 And he wound up becoming a private eye, whose wife died during childbirth, and racked up huge amounts of gambling debts, resorting to alcoholism to deal with his regret over what happened at Wounded Knee,

00:09:42.640 as opposed to Comstock, who believes that he was washed free of all of his sins by the baptism.

00:09:49.640 So, the Luteches are coerced into going to this alternative reality, and buying his daughter from him. 0.99

00:10:02.640 And this is a man so deep into the booze, so deep into the gambling debts, that he eventually gives in.

00:10:10.640 But when Comstock brings this daughter, that is technically his biological daughter, but from an alternate reality,

00:10:17.640 his wife doesn't believe it at first.

00:10:21.640 She accuses the Luteche female of being the mother. 0.91

00:10:27.640 And the Luteche female finally opens up and tells her the truth of where this girl came from. 0.81

00:10:33.640 Comstock claimed it was a miracle from God that the two of them had a child without her being pregnant.

00:10:38.640 She didn't quite believe it.

00:10:41.640 And so then Comstock resorts to murdering his wife, murdering the two Luteches, as well as blaming the murder of his wife on their servant, Daisy Fitzroy, 0.81

00:10:57.640 a black woman who winds up leading the rebellion against them.

00:11:01.640 Except the thing is that he didn't actually kill the Luteche twins. 0.98

00:11:07.640 The way that they killed them, using their magic bullshit machine, they wind up becoming part of the multiverse, not really existing in time. 0.95

00:11:16.640 And knowing what Comstock is doing, like where his society is going to lead. 0.98

00:11:22.640 Eventually in 1984, it leads to your daughter being the grand general behind the bombing of New York City,

00:11:29.640 as she rules over a completely destroyed and broken civilization. 0.99

00:11:35.640 They try and stop it by enlisting you.

00:11:38.640 So you, Booker DeWitt, show up in this 1912 flying city, full of the most idyllic, perfect Americana,

00:11:51.640 to go and rescue a girl who you don't know is your daughter because time or reality traveling messes with your memory.

00:12:03.640 And in the process, you have to completely tear apart 1912 America and free the Irish and free the black slaves. 1.00

00:12:14.640 So, that's the plot to the game. It's a little bit complex.

00:12:19.640 And you can, going over that quickly like that, you can understand why, over on Stormfront, they said, quote,

00:12:31.640 No word on whether that member of Stormfront was an undercover member of Mossad or not.

00:12:49.640 If that's all you can see in the game, then you can't see very deep.

00:12:52.640 Because this game is absolutely phenomenal.

00:12:56.640 Let's start with the basics.

00:13:01.640 You're enemies in the game. This society, Comstock, etc.

00:13:08.640 These are not my people.

00:13:11.640 This is not real America. 0.60

00:13:15.640 One of the early events in the game is you win a lottery.

00:13:19.640 This is actually the ending of the tutorial stage.

00:13:22.640 You win a lottery and they bring an interracial couple up on stage and you get to be the first one to throw a baseball at them. 1.00

00:13:29.640 Comstock has more to do with Islam than he does with Christianity.

00:13:35.640 This people might resemble America. 0.80

00:13:42.640 They might have some of the same traits as America did in 1912.

00:13:47.640 But these are not Americans. 0.70

00:13:49.640 Manifest destiny, although you can certainly make some arguments against it,

00:13:54.640 was not this overweening urge to dominate and brainwash the entire world.

00:14:01.640 And quite frankly, just because you criticize our modern interpretation of history, 1.00

00:14:08.640 the thing is that reversed stupidity is not intelligence. 1.00

00:14:14.640 The current view of history is idiotic and inaccurate and ahistorical. 1.00

00:14:21.640 But turning it on its head and pretending that there were no abuses, that there were no mistakes, is equally idiotic. 1.00

00:14:31.640 The society that you find, up on top of Columbia, flying around in the sky, completely blind and zealotous. 0.99

00:14:40.640 It sort of looks like 1912, but there's an eerie quality to it.

00:14:45.640 There's something that doesn't quite fit. It's unnerving.

00:14:49.640 And it's not the way that the real 1912 would be unnerving.

00:14:54.640 Certainly there was more casual racism at the time.

00:14:57.640 There was more segregation into classes at the time.

00:15:01.640 And that's the stuff that stands out to us.

00:15:04.640 But it was still a functional society of healthy people that believed in freedom and individualism.

00:15:09.640 It was a very proud experiment back then.

00:15:12.640 What you find in Columbia is creepy and frightening.

00:15:18.640 This is not Christianity. 0.99

00:15:21.640 This is a cult of personality.

00:15:24.640 And I don't care if these are people of white ethnicity that you're fighting during the first half of the game. 0.97

00:15:30.640 They're still monsters and enemies of civilization.

00:15:40.640 Really, what you get in Bioshock Infinite is that there is a struggle going on in this society.

00:15:48.640 On the one hand, you've got the ultranationalists, the theocrats with their manifest destiny.

00:15:57.640 And on the other side, the rebellion, the Vox Populi led by Daisy Fitzroy, you've got anarcho-communism.

00:16:11.640 Neither of these are groups warring in present-day society.

00:16:16.640 These are anachronistic, forgotten-in-the-dust-of-history ideologies.

00:16:24.640 So don't mistake Bioshock Infinite for a metaphor about modern politics, because it's a completely different animal.

00:16:35.640 And so you start off, you're warring against the nationalists.

00:16:40.640 See, Comstock has foreseen that his twin from the alternate reality is going to come and steal his daughter from him.

00:16:47.640 So you've been pre-labeled as the false prophet, the one who will lead the lamb into sin.

00:16:55.640 And the whole society turns against you.

00:16:58.640 You're forced into war with these people.

00:17:00.640 But then, then the game starts progressing.

00:17:04.640 You're kind of forced into an alliance with the Vox Populi.

00:17:09.640 And from the get-go, your character doesn't trust them.

00:17:13.640 With good cause.

00:17:15.640 After hopping reality a few times, you wind up in a reality where you did ally with the Vox Populi.

00:17:25.640 And it turns out that Daisy Fitzroy, this poor working class girl with noble aspirations trying to free the poor underclass of Columbia, 0.98

00:17:36.640 is as much of a monster as the people currently in power.

00:17:40.640 So first you're allied with these people. 0.67

00:17:46.640 And you're running around, you're fighting off the official government soldiers, part of a ragtag army.

00:17:53.640 And then eventually, you run into Daisy Fitzroy.

00:17:57.640 And she says, you died in this society.

00:17:59.640 And quite frankly, I was just using you as a pawn anyway. 0.99

00:18:03.640 And the founders of Columbia, they are like weeds.

00:18:13.640 If you don't completely rip them up by the root, they will keep coming back. 1.00

00:18:18.640 They are subhumans that must be exterminated. 0.99

00:18:21.640 And at one point in the game, you catch her. 0.93

00:18:26.640 She finds that industrialist who is this extreme version of the robber baron mythos.

00:18:38.640 He's the incarnation of a myth that was partly founded in reality.

00:18:42.640 He is it to the extreme.

00:18:45.640 And she murders him in cold blood.

00:18:47.640 And then she's about to murder his eight-year-old son right before you stop her. 1.00

00:18:52.640 So, yes, the white people in this game are quite evil. 1.00

00:18:58.640 But then, so are the black people. 1.00

00:19:00.640 They wind up going on this killing rampage against the upper manipulative elites. 1.00

00:19:06.640 Destroying everything.

00:19:09.640 Everything. 0.67

00:19:10.640 Men, women, children burning down buildings.

00:19:13.640 And Fitzroy, who seems like this freedom fighter at the beginning of the game, is just another monster.

00:19:24.640 If this game's about anything, it's about a society tearing itself apart.

00:19:29.640 It's about a man who is so arrogant as to build a society upon his dream.

00:19:36.640 That everything must align with his belief.

00:19:39.640 That he's going to use rule of the sword to coerce people to obey him and be a part of the society that he dictates.

00:19:48.640 And such an artificial structure is not going to last.

00:19:52.640 It's anti-human.

00:19:55.640 It's completely anti-what the United States was founded upon.

00:19:59.640 You wind up with these patriot robots.

00:20:04.640 And on the side of Comstock, they have the faces of the Founding Fathers.

00:20:10.640 On the side of Vox Populi, they have Abraham Lincoln's face with devil horns.

00:20:16.640 The Founding Fathers were very clear about not being worshipped as deities.

00:20:23.640 And yet, that's exactly what this society does.

00:20:26.640 And so this man's hubris winds up creating such a backlash that it completely tears the civilization apart.

00:20:34.640 By the end, it's just terrible.

00:20:37.640 One minute you're fighting Vox Populi, the next minute you're fighting Comstock's men.

00:20:42.640 And the whole time, you know, men and women are dead in the streets.

00:20:46.640 Poor and rich alike.

00:20:48.640 Buildings are burning.

00:20:50.640 And there's going to be no coming back from this.

00:20:54.640 This civilization has just been rent asunder.

00:20:57.640 First, by Comstock's arrogance, and then by Daisy Fitzroy, the monster that he created. 0.99

00:21:06.640 There are no good guys at all. 0.99

00:21:09.640 Not the Irish, not the blacks, not the white pseudo-Christians. 0.98

00:21:14.640 There are no good guys in this story to be found. 0.95

00:21:18.640 The next point I'd like to discuss in this game is the ultra-violence.

00:21:28.640 There have been a lot of commentators, and I'm not talking about school marms or censors.

00:21:34.640 I'm talking about, you know, guys that like video games commenting that this game is extremely violent.

00:21:40.640 It's disturbingly violent.

00:21:43.640 And the whole time, you're dragging around your 17-year-old daughter, and she's witnessing all of this violence.

00:21:51.640 Penny Arcade put it that you're basically chopping a guy's head in half.

00:21:58.640 You're taking this dull, spinning hook and ripping off half his skull or tearing his chest in two.

00:22:04.640 And then you look over, and there's a Disney princess there.

00:22:07.640 And it's quite unsettling.

00:22:11.640 And it's supposed to be.

00:22:14.640 See, one thing about Comstock society is because he has the perfect truth.

00:22:22.640 It's a millennial form of Christianity.

00:22:25.640 That they have built heaven on earth.

00:22:28.640 They've got all the solutions.

00:22:30.640 So any amount of violence that they engage in is acceptable.

00:22:35.640 Two of the bad guys that you fight.

00:22:39.640 One is the handyman.

00:22:40.640 It's a guy that got injured in an industrial accident.

00:22:44.640 You know, an industrial accident because they don't care about the workers, which they don't.

00:22:49.640 And got rebuilt into this terrible techno man body.

00:22:54.640 He's a cyborg, but he suffers every single moment.

00:22:58.640 Massive headaches, inability to sleep, but just keeps functioning and never dies.

00:23:05.640 That's one of your opponents.

00:23:07.640 Another one is called the fireman.

00:23:10.640 These are soldiers that committed some great crime, some great sin.

00:23:15.640 And so the fire vigor, one of the magic spells essentially, absolutely consumes him.

00:23:23.640 He's locked up in a diving suit, constantly burning on the inside with the ability to do major fire artillery.

00:23:29.640 These people, because they have the perfect truth, care nothing about suffering.

00:23:37.640 It is total war.

00:23:39.640 No rules of warfare. 0.99

00:23:41.640 And so you are killing people with this dull saw blade in your left hand. 1.00

00:23:46.640 You're throwing napalm at people and burning them to death. 1.00

00:23:49.640 You're summoning a crowd or a murder of ravens to come peck them to death. 0.98

00:23:57.640 It is absolutely over-the-top violent and extremely exhausting emotionally.

00:24:04.640 Just playing through the game, it's fun and it's engaging, but at the same time,

00:24:09.640 you can't help ignore how much violence you do to other people and even how much violence you suffer.

00:24:15.640 At one point of the game, you get a knife shoved through your hand,

00:24:19.640 but manage to keep fighting for the next two-thirds of the game anyway.

00:24:22.640 This is the point.

00:24:28.640 I mentioned the Disney princess, that you're doing all of this with a 17-year-old girl

00:24:33.640 wandering around next to you.

00:24:38.640 The very first time she sees you get into a firefight, she runs away from you for being a monster

00:24:43.640 and you have to go chasing after her. 0.88

00:24:46.640 Because you do have to be a monster to engage in this much violence. 0.68

00:24:50.640 And then, and this is the really painful part,

00:24:55.640 I mentioned Daisy Fitzroy.

00:24:57.640 Right as she's about to kill the eight-year-old boy, you can't do anything about it.

00:25:01.640 You have to boost your 17-year-old daughter through an air vent 0.99

00:25:05.640 so that she can stab her through the back with a pair of scissors before she kills the boy. 1.00

00:25:12.640 And the look on her face after she does such an act of violence is just terrible. 0.97

00:25:17.640 Yes, this is an extremely violent game to point out how dehumanizing this level of violence actually is.

00:25:24.640 Next point, let's go back to Christianity and the final baptism in the game.

00:25:34.640 The game resolves itself when the only way to stop Comstock, to stop the bombing of New York in 1984,

00:25:43.640 to eliminate all the innocents that died in this process,

00:25:48.640 like all the suffering, all the needless violence, the society rent asunder.

00:25:54.640 The only way, ultimately, is to go back to when you, Booker DeWitt, first became Comstock

00:26:03.640 and every multiverse version of your daughter shows up to, instead of baptize you, drown you.

00:26:16.640 Now, rather than being anti-Christian, this is actually a very Christian ending, if you think about it.

00:26:23.640 Sorry, Christianity is not down with you get baptized so you're now a prophet that gets to dictate your theocracy. 0.95

00:26:30.640 That's not Christianity, that's Islam. 1.00

00:26:35.640 But at the end of the game, you don't commit suicide.

00:26:41.640 You don't engage in a mortal sin. 1.00

00:26:44.640 Rather, it's your daughters doing what is necessary, kill you. 1.00

00:26:51.640 And thereby, it creates, basically, they completely eliminate all the universes where Comstock's empire existed. 0.97

00:27:04.640 And it's by doing so that you actually do wash away your sins.

00:27:09.640 You wash away the sins of Comstock and his monstrous society.

00:27:13.640 But Booker DeWitt, the man that sold his daughter because of gambling debts, you also wash away his sins.

00:27:22.640 And at the very ending cinematic, it goes back to the night that you would have sold your daughter.

00:27:28.640 And she's still there.

00:27:31.640 And so, you've washed away your sins.

00:27:34.640 You're still not a perfect man.

00:27:37.640 You're still a man with a drug addiction, with alcohol addiction, with gambling debts.

00:27:43.640 But you're also a man that loves his daughter.

00:27:46.640 And you're not going to sell her into slavery.

00:27:48.640 You have a second chance to do things right.

00:27:52.640 It's not a perfect ending.

00:27:56.640 It's not a happy ending.

00:27:58.640 But it's an opportunity for a good story to finally happen.

00:28:02.640 One without this suffering and misery and death in it.

00:28:07.640 And finally, if nothing else, Booker DeWitt is a man's man.

00:28:14.640 He is a badass.

00:28:16.640 Yes, he's brooding and he has a dark history, but he knows he can deal with tough situations when they come along.

00:28:23.640 But on top of that, he also dresses well.

00:28:26.640 And he's extremely courteous.

00:28:29.640 One of my favorite bits in the video game was when Annabelle, she kind of throws you ammo or health items during combat. 0.99

00:28:40.640 She'll shout at you,

00:28:41.640 Hey! Hey! I've got this for you!

00:28:43.640 And hit the button to reach over and she'd toss it to you. 0.94

00:28:45.640 You'll go,

00:28:46.640 Much obliged.

00:28:50.640 That's what a man needs to be like.

00:28:53.640 Not a simpering beta.

00:28:56.640 Not apologizing for things he shouldn't apologize for.

00:29:00.640 But also owning his guilt and the things he is guilty for.

00:29:06.640 So those are my thoughts on Bioshock Infinite.

00:29:09.640 Absolutely amazing game.

00:29:10.640 I'm probably going to be playing it again.

00:29:12.640 Ireni out, folks.

00:29:13.640 Ireni out, folks.

00:29:14.640 Ireni out, folks.

00:29:15.640 What's the effect?

00:29:16.640 Ireni out, folks.

00:29:17.640 Ireni out.

00:29:18.640 Ireni out.

00:29:19.640 Believe it or not, guys.

00:29:20.640 My brother is a young man.

00:29:21.640 Ireni out.

00:29:23.640 Ireni out.

00:29:24.640 Ireni out.

00:29:25.640 Ireni out.

00:29:26.640 Ireni out.

00:29:27.640 Ireni out.

00:29:29.640 Ireni out.

00:29:30.640 Ireni out.

00:29:31.640 Ireni out.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - April 24, 2013

Bioshock： Infinite - A Literary Review

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