Capstone Intro
Suppose a federal judge was asked to determine whether books were protected by the First Amendment. Instead of seeking expert testimony, examining the novel’s historical evolution, or surveying the range of the local bookstore, the judge chose four books, all within the same genre, to stand for the entire medium. Teachers and librarians would rise up in outrage. So, where were you when they tried to take the games away?(Jenkins 209)
For too long, video games have stood apart from the literary cannon. There are myriad arguments against its joining (issues of violence, quality of work, etc.), but few hold water. It is not my job in this essay to refute these arguments. Just as a woman does not bellow of her rights when a man holds the door for her, I will simply walk through the door my education has opened for me.
The game I chose, Persona 3:FES (P3) for the PlayStation2 (PS2) is a grim story. Death, errant IDs, and personal discovery rule the team of (mostly) high-school students: S.E.E.S. (Special Extracurricular Execution Squad.) P3 is a story of the mind and its complexity, guided by a silent protagonist whom fans named Minato Arisato. The boy who contains death (an even younger boy named Pharos.) The tale begs for a Jungian critic, and I intend to give it one.
There are many aspects of Carl Jung’s theories. Motifs of the tarot and the power of relationships echo his theory of the universal unconscious. The strong base in myth speaks directly to his archetypal ideas. Personas and Shadows correspond with his perceptions of the mind. Sitting any character down on Frued’s couch will get you get a novel’s worth of notes. In addition, nontraditional uses of things like guns, minds, and time ask for further inquiry. Why shoot yourself to summon your ID? What is so special about midnight? What part of the mind wants death? Why? P3 could only truly be comprehensively explored over a lifetime.
I have no intention of trying to encompass this entire game: it is too complex. I do, however, want to start a discussion. We have the groundwork: Jung’s essays, thousands of years of myth, and a finished video game. My capstone will be no polished mansion, no concluded finality on the subject. It will be a beginning of something ever expanding. It would be the first essay (I have ever found) to open talk of Persona 3. It would be something new about something never explored. In a grander sense, it would be a founding father of applying literary criticism to video games. After all, lit crit already applies to books, movies, poetry, paintings, graphic novels and more. Relatively few authors have written about games, even fewer about a topic other than pop culture or feminism.
Not that there is anything wrong with either pop culture or feminism, but games have never been treated with much weight before. Certainly, fans wrote reviews that eventually became websites (such as IGN); which eventually lead to magazines and websites publishing articles and videos on forthcoming games. Finally, people began to write books. Books mostly focused on proving (or disproving) correlations between video games and violence. This is the state I find us in today: there is some information for people who wish to seek it, but it is minimal and treated inconsequentially. I cannot go on to MLA and search “Marxism” and “Final Fantasy X” to get a scholarly article on the traveling merchants throughout. This disappoints me. Why is it that someone will write entire books on Shakespeare characters and not Shin Megami Tensei characters?
It cannot be popularity. The great poet’s works have been around for centuries, but the test of time is not always the best. Behold other, more recent, trends: long ago, in a galaxy far, far away Star Trek inspired people to wear Vulcan ears in public. Harry Potter had forty-year old women in robes and witch hats outside Barnes and Nobel at one AM fighting over a copy of the latest novel. His Dark Materials had priests mailing Phillip Pullman damnation threats. But, they say, but those are books (and TV series.) TV and books are far more often a part of people’s lives than video games. Not so, as forty-two percent of American households own a game console (ESA). This eliminates facebook apps and other “casual” games, such as Diner Dash and Bejeweled, as console games are primarily used for “real” games (just about anything with a plot, character, and/or action.) The average adult gamer has been gaming for twelve years, down from 2008. This means that more people are picking up more controllers for the first time (ESA). Video games still fall under TV as the world’s greatest pastime, partly because games require a certain amount of time to develop skills, partly because games and systems cost more up front than cable, and partly because gaming is still socially unacceptable.
Alas, the rotten core of the apple. This taboo is what I presume to be why no one has really written much variety, or much at all, on games. This lack of background material will be the largest problem I have in this project. My capstone will not be a cherry on top of Shakespeare’s sundae, no whip cream on Jane Austen’s work; and yet, this is why I chose to pursue P3. It is an undiscovered subspecies of an entirely new beast. If I am a zoologist, do I now owe it to myself to explore such a creature? Would it not be my responsibility to humanity-to my field-to see what I could see? If I were a doctor who discovered a new function of the spleen, should I pass it up just because the spleen is unaccredited? Should I not try? I am no Madame Curie: playing P3 is not going to give me cancer. Nor is it going to provide the x-ray. My research, however, may just make a difference, even if it changes but one mind.
For too long, video games have stood apart from the literary cannon. There are myriad arguments against its joining (issues of violence, quality of work, etc.), but few hold water. It is not my job in this essay to refute these arguments. Just as a woman does not bellow of her rights when a man holds the door for her, I will simply walk through the door my education has opened for me.
The game I chose, Persona 3:FES (P3) for the PlayStation2 (PS2) is a grim story. Death, errant IDs, and personal discovery rule the team of (mostly) high-school students: S.E.E.S. (Special Extracurricular Execution Squad.) P3 is a story of the mind and its complexity, guided by a silent protagonist whom fans named Minato Arisato. The boy who contains death (an even younger boy named Pharos.) The tale begs for a Jungian critic, and I intend to give it one.
There are many aspects of Carl Jung’s theories. Motifs of the tarot and the power of relationships echo his theory of the universal unconscious. The strong base in myth speaks directly to his archetypal ideas. Personas and Shadows correspond with his perceptions of the mind. Sitting any character down on Frued’s couch will get you get a novel’s worth of notes. In addition, nontraditional uses of things like guns, minds, and time ask for further inquiry. Why shoot yourself to summon your ID? What is so special about midnight? What part of the mind wants death? Why? P3 could only truly be comprehensively explored over a lifetime.
I have no intention of trying to encompass this entire game: it is too complex. I do, however, want to start a discussion. We have the groundwork: Jung’s essays, thousands of years of myth, and a finished video game. My capstone will be no polished mansion, no concluded finality on the subject. It will be a beginning of something ever expanding. It would be the first essay (I have ever found) to open talk of Persona 3. It would be something new about something never explored. In a grander sense, it would be a founding father of applying literary criticism to video games. After all, lit crit already applies to books, movies, poetry, paintings, graphic novels and more. Relatively few authors have written about games, even fewer about a topic other than pop culture or feminism.
Not that there is anything wrong with either pop culture or feminism, but games have never been treated with much weight before. Certainly, fans wrote reviews that eventually became websites (such as IGN); which eventually lead to magazines and websites publishing articles and videos on forthcoming games. Finally, people began to write books. Books mostly focused on proving (or disproving) correlations between video games and violence. This is the state I find us in today: there is some information for people who wish to seek it, but it is minimal and treated inconsequentially. I cannot go on to MLA and search “Marxism” and “Final Fantasy X” to get a scholarly article on the traveling merchants throughout. This disappoints me. Why is it that someone will write entire books on Shakespeare characters and not Shin Megami Tensei characters?
It cannot be popularity. The great poet’s works have been around for centuries, but the test of time is not always the best. Behold other, more recent, trends: long ago, in a galaxy far, far away Star Trek inspired people to wear Vulcan ears in public. Harry Potter had forty-year old women in robes and witch hats outside Barnes and Nobel at one AM fighting over a copy of the latest novel. His Dark Materials had priests mailing Phillip Pullman damnation threats. But, they say, but those are books (and TV series.) TV and books are far more often a part of people’s lives than video games. Not so, as forty-two percent of American households own a game console (ESA). This eliminates facebook apps and other “casual” games, such as Diner Dash and Bejeweled, as console games are primarily used for “real” games (just about anything with a plot, character, and/or action.) The average adult gamer has been gaming for twelve years, down from 2008. This means that more people are picking up more controllers for the first time (ESA). Video games still fall under TV as the world’s greatest pastime, partly because games require a certain amount of time to develop skills, partly because games and systems cost more up front than cable, and partly because gaming is still socially unacceptable.
Alas, the rotten core of the apple. This taboo is what I presume to be why no one has really written much variety, or much at all, on games. This lack of background material will be the largest problem I have in this project. My capstone will not be a cherry on top of Shakespeare’s sundae, no whip cream on Jane Austen’s work; and yet, this is why I chose to pursue P3. It is an undiscovered subspecies of an entirely new beast. If I am a zoologist, do I now owe it to myself to explore such a creature? Would it not be my responsibility to humanity-to my field-to see what I could see? If I were a doctor who discovered a new function of the spleen, should I pass it up just because the spleen is unaccredited? Should I not try? I am no Madame Curie: playing P3 is not going to give me cancer. Nor is it going to provide the x-ray. My research, however, may just make a difference, even if it changes but one mind.