Media That Got Me Through 2021
Works that entertained, informed, and inspired a demoralized game developer during the second year of the pandemic.
If you’re reading this, you, like me (as of this writing), are one of the lucky ones. You’ve suffered through two pandemic years and you’re still alive, and you’ll no doubt get to suffer some more. It’s hard to say which of these two years has been worse but what helped me during 2021 when my capacity for joy and hope for the future were running a deficit was an abundance of excellent media.
So without further adieu, I present a lot of thoughts on the media that got me through 2021:
The Boys (Seasons 1 & 2)
I watched The Boys early in the year and it provided me with a long-missing creative spark that sustained me through the rest of it. Sure, the show’s well-made, with top-notch writing, direction, and acting, and the story is compelling and thoroughly amusing, if not horrific at times, but what really got me excited was its unabashed antagonism toward superheroes, American imperialism, and the Walt Disney Company (they make dreams come true, you know).
The Boys makes a bold claim in today’s MCU-saturated media landscape, that superheroes (and capitalism) are — conceptually, historically, ideologically, hypothetically — fascist. The show is spectacularly unambiguous in making this point. And in case the message somehow escaped viewers’ notice in season one, the show adds a literal Nazi, Stormfront, to its cast of main characters in season two, spending much of that same season unearthing the Nazi origins of the show’s true antagonist, “supe”-manufacturing, multi-billion dollar corporation Vought International.
Sub-text in The Boys is reserved for matters of nature vs. nurture, alienation, and generational trauma. The show’s critique of Disney/Marvel, on the other hand, is about as subtle as a laser sight dancing on Mickey Mouse’s forehead (okay, maybe it’s still technically subtextual). Superheroes are not only controlled and exploited by Vought, but made. Rather than being born that way, supes are practically manufactured, not unlike nuclear warheads or Funko Pops. This clever bit of world-building not only reinforces the theme of superheroes-as-commodity, but side-steps troublesome comparisons of violent, narcissistic superheroes to marginalized people who are discriminated against in the real world for their inherent qualities (I’m glaring at you, Zootopia and Overwatch).
The show’s message is somewhat undermined by its oddly positive portrayal of the CIA, even as it criticizes the military-industrial complex and the surveillance state, and…what else? Oh yeah, the fact that it’s produced by real-life Vought: Amazon. As such, I must implore you, as a woman of modest integrity, to watch this show, if you so choose, without giving Amazon your hard-earned money. Whether that means signing up for a free trial of Amazon Prime like I did or obtaining it by means of donning a patch over one eye and a parrot on your shoulder is up to you.
The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence
After The Boys, I found myself on a mission to nurture my burgeoning disdain for The Walt Disney Company. A few friends and I started a “media literacy club” (like a book club, but more pretentious and not limited to books) and our first piece of media was a book called The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock.
To say this was a mind-opening read would be an understatement. The authors effectively outline Disney’s sinister agenda, which, beyond raking in billions of dollars annually, includes commodifying childhood “innocence”, lobbying the government to enable Disney’s monopolistic business practices, promoting a culture of privatized consumerism over public citizenry, and establishing a media empire that spans the globe and imposes its conservative, pro-corporate cultural hegemony as it sees fit.
Last updated in 2010, The Mouse that Roared was depressingly prescient at the time of writing. Consider the following passage:
“Disney’s strategy to tap into the male youth market is even more evident in its $4 billion purchase of Marvel Entertainment Inc. — which holds the license for superhero characters such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk — in 2009. If Disney has its way, kids’ culture will become not merely a new market for the accumulation of capital but a petri dish for producing new commodified subjects.”
Over the past decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the box office and popular culture at large. But if Disney had embarked on a “corporate quest to capitalize” on the tens of billions of dollars spent by girls “ages six to fourteen” in 2009 instead of boys, we might find ourselves obliged to discuss the latest developments of the Barbie Cinematic Universe. Only by the grace of sexism could that somehow be considered inherently more cynical or asinine than what we’re subjected to today. And so Disney’s monumental influence is apparent.
All in all, Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock do an excellent job of critically examining The Walt Disney Company and making the case for the importance of cultural analysis. If you’re looking to improve your media literacy chops, this is a great place to start.
Hades
Hades is the only game to make this list, despite me being a game developer and having played and studied other games during the year. That’s because while I enjoyed others, this game was the one true standout, not only because it succeeds in ways which games are uniquely suited to, but because of its thematic resonance with our current pandemic reality. I’m not the first person to make this observation, no doubt.
In game design, “mechanics as metaphor” is a term used to describe the way a game’s true meaning is the one the player derives from its gameplay mechanics as opposed to the story or any other facet of the experience. Historically, this has created some interesting challenges for game designers and has resulted in no shortage of ludonarrative dissonance across the medium (I don’t care if it’s been used to death, it’s a useful term). Hades does not suffer from this problem. Quite the opposite, in fact; Supergiant Games found the metaphor in the roguelike genre and cracked it wide open for all of its thematic nutmeat.
Hades is a game about trying and failing to escape the Underworld to which the player character, Prince Zagreus, is bound. As is standard for a roguelike, death is permanent (as permanent as death can be for a God, and the prince of the Underworld, at that), sending the player back all the way to the beginning of the game rather than a save point, over and over again. This very permanence makes death a less severe fail state than is typical in most games. It is expected — required, even.
Zagreus wants desperately to escape to the surface. He fights his way through Furies and Hydras along the way, growing stronger with each attempt. But ultimately, he learns that he cannot escape. Not really…though it’s still worth it to try. The moral of the story is reinforced through the core mechanics (die, die again), and this Sisyphean tale achieves genuine ludonarrative harmony. Its gameplay and narrative align beautifully.
I found this story about refusing to give up on ill-fated endeavors more uplifting than I would have guessed. Beyond that, as a game developer, I admired Hades for both its production cleverness and its overall artistry. Made with what is presumed to be a modest budget, Hades makes smart use of 2D and 3D assets, and its airtight design means a whole lot of gameplay can be enjoyed over just a handful of repeated levels and boss fights. Animations are few and far between, with cutscenes limited to static images, text, and voice-over but nonetheless effectively delivered. Players and developers alike have much to take away from this small, stylish (those solid black shapes! that electric guitar!), expertly-crafted game.
The Expanse (Seasons 1–5)
I’m not much of a genre connoisseur, but sometimes Googling “best sci-fi TV shows” really works out well. As a devoted fan of both Battlestar Galactica (2003) and the Mass Effect trilogy, I was looking for something to fill the space opera-sized hole in my life. What I had been missing for years, The Expanse provided in spades.
The show’s distinct aesthetic style alone is enough to get an artist’s heart racing, with its gorgeous lighting and experimental cinematography, but what hooked me was the genre-blending story. My favorite word to describe The Expanse is “freaky”, though the show never quite takes the zero-g plunge into true horror territory. Instead, the story incorporates mystery, drama, adventure, and politics in stride…just enough to make you occasionally forget that a certain terrifying, blue, physics-defying glob of alien technology is somewhere out there in the galaxy, doing “the work”.
There are lots of other things to love about The Expanse, like the show’s painstakingly realistic portrayal of astrophysics and the unexpected drama that brings (and of course, action scenes look sick as hell in zero gravity). Its subtle critiques of capitalism and militarism are much appreciated, and the Belter Creole spoken by the galaxy’s underdogs, inhabitants of the asteroid belt — or “Belters” (oye, beltalowda!) — captivates. Not to mention, it’s a fresh IP with a remarkably diverse cast; no shortage of compelling non-white women here, and no ham-fisted historical revisionism needed to achieve such a feat. Smarty-pants heroine Naomi Nagata reminds one of an upgraded Hermione Granger, largely because the story’s authors don’t treat her with misogyny and contempt, and instead, provide her with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her exceptional courage and earn the genuine respect of her fellow main characters. Suffice it to say, I’m eagerly awaiting the resolution of the sixth and final season.
These works were a few of the highlights of a rather shitty year for me. Perhaps some of them might help you through the coming one.
