Video Evidence

To me the JFK assassination is most remarkable because of the sheer amount of visual documentation that exists on Lee throughout his life. I first noticed this watching the Frontline Documentary on Lee, and was continually struck by just how often they were able to find photo documentation of  where he was and what he was doing at various points in his life. This of course culminates in the famous Zapruder film which catches the moments before, during, and after Kennedy's assassination. Such evidence before that time would have been considered quite rare, and a valuable piece of evidence in any investigation. And while the Zapruder film certainly has been the backbone for much of the investigation into the assassination, and has helped with ballistics reports, it has also become one of the most (if not the most) controversial pieces of film in the twentieth century.

I think in our current day and age we take it for a given that for most any major event that may happen on any given day there's a pretty good chance someone filmed it. This is due to the widespread use of recording devices, but in addition to that many of these devices are connected to the internet and often make their content available for my viewing pleasure, as well as millions of people around the world. In my opinion the Zapruder Film could be viewed as the harbinger of the visually documented era. And while this may to large degree mean that people can be better informed with first hand documentation, but it also leads to even greater levels of skepticism of the extent to which seeing something happen really means you understand what's going on. It's remarkable really that I can hop on the internet and from the safety of my room watch video footage of war zone action in Libya. It's also remarkable the extent to which imagery can be manipulated, and in many different ways too, not just the photoshop method. In other words while it may be the case that my generation has come to expect an almost omnipotent range of vision throughout the world, I think we've also come to accept the fact that in many cases a simple video falls woefully short of a full explanation.

The distance from History

In a book that focuses on bringing out the human nature of the larger than life historical figure of Lee Harvey Oswald I've continually found myself drawn to him and how I can relate to him and the way he feels throughout the novel. Probably more than any other character in the book I recognize the desire he has to be part of something bigger, to enter history and be recognized. Not to say that I condone the way he's went about doing it, but he really did succeed in catapulting himself into the international spotlight, and he's stayed under a similar level of scrutiny and attention for many decades. His frustration with his lack of a voice and general depression with the state of politics lends a very sympathetic air. To put it bluntly, I can understand why he might have felt so strongly a desire to be a known figure in history when the world has otherwise snubbed him most of his life.

As a result I can't help but compare myself in various ways to Lee. One of the most interesting reflections I have is on the extent to which I, as an individual similar to Lee's level of notoriety for much of his life, might be able to enter in to the limelight as he was able to. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about him I find is the extent to which he is able make himself known without actually having anything particularly noteworthy about him. He's not especially good at anything--while he makes an earnest effort to stay educated and inspired he's by no means a genius, and he has no wealth to speak of that could be leveraged. In fact as I was first reading Libra I was almost annoyed by the extent to which Lee believed he would become a figure of historical controversy. And yet here we are.

While there is a certain extent to which Libra plays with the idea of Lee being driven by "the universe", but I think an even more interesting angle is to consider the idea that there really is nothing special about Lee apart from the fact that he has a desire to make himself known. To what extent would it be possible for me to become the next Lee Harvey Oswald? And I don't mean to suggest that I have plans to assassinate anyone, but the question of how far removed from "history" any of us really are is a legitimate question. I would say that in our contemporary context, with the advent of the internet, being famous is easier than it ever has been. Yet, I think most of us live our lives without any expectation of ever being a part of mainstream history. What Delillo--and even Adam Gopnik when he remarks on the connection between the seedy basement plotter and the president himself--makes us ponder is what really is the distance between the common place person and the historical records. Perhaps that separation is merely one that we live our lives never deciding to try and break out of?

Lee Harvey Oswald bringing us into the Postmodern era

As I sat watching the PBS Frontline episode on who Lee Harvey Oswald was one question kept popping into my mind: How the hell did they get so much of footage and information on the guy? Seriously it's like from every episode in his life historians have been able to find photographs and stories about him, even video footage of him during some points. And it's not even government surveillance that we see, mostly it's either photographs that he himself took, or it's photos and videos that were taken by the people around him. Really this is only surprising to me because of the historical era that it comes from. In our contemporary setting it goes almost without saying that if someone wanted to find a huge amount of voluntarily recorded material on just about anyone it would be available. Social Media plays no small role in this, but mostly it's simply an effect of how widespread cameras and recording devices have become in our society. In Oswald and Kennedy's time however, the amount of digital records of a persons life were way down.

Or at least up until that point in history it certainly was not the case that so much information could be drummed up on an individual. I've heard the Kennedy assassination described as the event that changed the way Television was viewed and I like that idea because it shows how shockingly connected and people had become compared to previously in history. Gopnik in his New Yorker piece describes how "The accepted division of American life into two orders--an official one of rectitude, a seedy lower order of crime--collapses under scrutiny, like the alibi in a classic film noir". The mention of the film noir seems like an especially interesting comparison, given the ties that the mystery genre has to Modernism and how differently the Kennedy case has gone compared to the generic detective story. Where there is a set method and end result for the detective to find in the story, in the Kennedy case there is almost an infinite amount of questioning and intrigue. And as stated above this isn't because of a shortage of facts, quite the opposite. If we knew less than we really do about the case I think it would be entirely more likely that people would accept a single explanation. In reality, the abundance of factual evidence available is what allows conspiracy theorists to raise the questions they do.

I think also this sense of "seeing is not necessarily believing" is another aspect of the Kennedy assassination that seems so linked to the postmodern mindset. Again I would say that in our contemporary setting it wouldn't be at all unreasonable to have suspicions about the extent to which the Media and the U.S. Government are keeping details hidden, or even fabricate them. In addition to this we've also become accustomed to the sense that there can be multiple sides to any given story and all seem true. In this way I find it a fairly compelling argument to think of the assassination of JFK as the major catalyst for the beginning of the postmodern era.

Kevin's white privilege

Inspired by Mr. Mitchell's post at the beginning of reading of Kindred that involved a segment from Louis C.K. on the freedom that white people would have when time traveling to the past I began thinking about what that added to trying to describe the sometimes elusive idea of white privilege. I don't think I have to explain to anyone what it means, but the idea of white privilege is an idea that goes against the official idea that racism and race inequality was done away with during the Civil Rights movement. Apart from obvious socioeconomic examples of race disparities there are more subtle examples of the ways in which white people can remain comfortably out of touch, a capacity granted to them solely by the color of their skin. White males are the obvious pinnacle of this phenomenon, suffering from neither racial nor sexual discrimination. In Kindred we get the taste of both worlds from Dana as our narrator, but also get a taste of what their absence is like through Kevin.

On the whole Kevin is an extremely sympathetic character, if every white guy in the U.S. was like Kevin I think everyone would be quite a bit happier. Regardless of this we still get a crucial cringe-worthy scene where we see the crucial difference between Dana's experience in the slave holding South and Kevin's. He says on page 100, "Weylin doesn't seem to pay attention to what his people do, but the work gets done" to which Dana responds, "You think he doesn't [ay attention. Nobody calls you out to see the whippings". He later claims, Wait a minute, I'm not minimizing the wrong that's being done here" And Dana says, "Yes you are. You don't mean to be, but you are [...] You can go through this whole experience as an observer". This sense that Kevin doesn't quite get the situation the same way that Dana does, that somehow it's dulled down for him, is a pretty good representation of how his physical appearance protects him from these issues. If we view acting as an ability to maintain a comfortable ignorance from the realities of slavery it proves an acting job Dana is unable to maintain indefinitely. Kevin on the other hand has much more luxury to stay removed. Not to say that he comes away unscathed, but where he comes back with a scar on his forehead Dana endures hundreds of scars and loses an arm. In general I think that Kevin provides a good metaphor for what white privilege means: an ability to stay comfortably far removed from racial conflict if so desired, and even an inability to appreciate it in its fullness. 

Race relations linked through time

One of the main criticisms I've heard of Kindred is Butler's use of obvious plot developments to convey her ideas. Personally I think the most ingenious part of her writing is the way she manages to set up compelling scenes. Perhaps it's not hard to tell what she's trying to accomplish with things like time traveling, or explicitly going back to the slavery era, but I find that they still convey very powerful and moving messages. One of the most compelling aspects of the novel to me is the way that Butler manages to bring so much of the focus of the novel onto a reflection of the way that slavery and race issues still reflects itself in our current times.

The most striking example of such to me is the way in which Butler creates a critique on the status of modern day race issues through the constant flickering of Dana's perception of Kevin versus Rufus. Now I don't mean to suggest that at any point does Dana equate Kevin with Rufus, but her state of being often reminded of the physical similarities between the two is no accident on Butler's part. We're given the impression that no matter how far Kevin can try to distance himself from people like Rufus there are literal physical limitations to this in the form of Kevin's skin color. In addition to this we still get a few strangely blundering scenes on Kevin's part that suggest he's not quite as open-minded as he'd like to think. Both he and Rufus find it an appealing idea to have Dana do their letter writing for them, a scene that conjured conflicting images of a supposed ownership from Kevin. In addition to this there's always his somewhat less than adequate attempts to reconcile his admiring statements of how much less brutal slavery seemed.

Despite this I think that on the whole Butler delivers quite a positive message about where we are right now (perhaps even unrealistically so). While somewhat subtle comparisons between Rufus and Kevin reveal a situation more complex than history books may reveal, the overall comparison between the slave era white man and the contemporary white man and there respective relationships to Dana is stark. Where Rufus takes Alice in whatever way he wants at his will, Kevin wins over Dana's love. Where Rufus is slowly crafted by the slavery system into a man capable of horrible things, Kevin resists for over six years remaining true to his ideals. In simple the progress made can be summed up in Rufus' claim that Dana and Kevin can have each other in their time, whereas it's impossible in his. To say that Butler presents a gruesomely accurate and moving portrayal of all the horrors that happened in the slavery era and how they continue to be a big part of our contemporary setting, she simultaneously manages to remind us of the staggering advances that have happened.

Philosophy for Billy Pilgrim

Today in class in light of the two panel presentations I've been thinking about the place that Billy seems to occupy philosophically, either as a nihilist or an existentialist. Now of course Billy doesn't necessarily fit either of these classifications, but I think that for someone who has the "insight" into free will that Billy has those two philosophies seem like they would be pretty close. And related to this I actually don't think that he fits neatly into either one of those roles, but more closely a combination of the two. Throughout most of the novel Billy has a total disregard for the things in his life that we generally consider to be important: his marriage, his business, and most importantly his life. On several occasions Billy has near-death experiences, and seems to be entirely apathetic to them. He sees no value in the continuation of his own life, what most people would characterize as nihilism. On the other hand, he doesn't exhibit the symptoms of despair that are often associated with the nihilistic realization of a lack of free-will or meaning. Instead he seems quite content and happy with the knowledge that he can't change anything. "Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future"(77) and Billy's quite content with that knowledge.

So when I think about Billy's life philosophy earlier in his life I see him as having a mainly nihilistic viewpoint (certainly fatalistic), but exhibiting the happiness that you would generally associate with existentialism if you see them as competing viewpoints. That is, up until after his plane accident. For the first time in what we would conventionally think of Billy's life he feels that he has a true goal in his life: to inform people of the wonderful insights into the nature of time that the Trafalmadorians have helped him understand. "The cockles of Billy's heart, at any rate, were glowing coals. What made them so hot was Billy's belief that he was going to comfort so many people with the truth about time" (35). We see a definite switch from Billy as someone who has a lot of trouble finding enjoyment and purpose in his life to someone who has a definite mission: to spread the truth.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a religious experience for Billy, but I would go so far as to say that his discovery of the Tralfalmadorians has been a spiritual experience of Billy. There are a lot of similarities to someone who claims to have recently undergone a spiritual transformation. Instead of finding Jesus Billy finds the Tralfalmadorians. He goes onto late night talk shows and starts to write his knowledge down in the form of open letters. And it all brings him a great deal of happiness. While I think it's impossible to say whether or not we should interpret Billy's interactions with the Tralfalmadorians as real events, they do give us interesting and useful insights into Bill as a character. 

Would the real Billy Pilgrim please stand up?

One of the biggest problems I have when discussing Slaughterhouse Five is that I'm never certain who exactly we're referring to when we use the name Billy Pilgrim. What I mean by this is that there seem to be many different planes that Billy exists on, at least as far as he exists in our novel. For instance there's the constant linear story of his actual wartime experience in Germany, and then there are the "jumps" where we exit WW2 and enter some different period of Billy's life. For instance as we've been fairly steadily working our way through Billy being captured by the Germans, "Bill traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade mechanical owl [...] Billy had fallen asleep while examining a female patient who was in a chair on the other side of the owl" (71). So the question now is do we read this as Billy experiencing his life linearly or not? I'm not sure I can provide an answer, because I think it's supposed to be unclear. Later it says, "Billy was starting to get worried about it, about his mind in general. He tried to remember how old he was, couldn't. He tried to remember what year it was. He couldn't remember that, either." (71). So it seems to me like there are two explanations for how we read Billy as a character. Either we read his experiences as a single individual who is losing touch with reality in the form of his mental state deteriorating, or we read him as literally traveling through time periodically to different sections of his life.

Now I know there's a certain amount of debate over whether or not it's a valid reading of the book to try and decide if Billy is mentally unstable or not. As far as I'm concerned we don't even need to touch the topic, because what really matters here is Billy's perception of how he functions in time. And I think we can all agree that's messed up. Regardless of the "reality" of the situation it can be universally agreed upon I think that Billy Pilgrim has an extremely disjointed sense of his own self. For instance, "He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next" (29). Now I'm not sure I could adequately support the idea that his wartime experiences are specifically responsible for his disjointing from time, but he does say, "that he first came unstuck in time in 1944, long before his trip to Tralfamadore" (38). I do think that it would be an entirely reasonable reading of the book to see this as in part a commentary by Vonnegut regarding what constant interaction with death can do to a soldier's perception of his life. It causes both us and Billy to wonder if the real Billy Pilgrim would please stand up.

Vonnegut's Science Fiction

One of the things that's been bothering me most about Slaughterhouse Five is that I don't really care for Vonnegut's science fiction writing for the most part. In addition to that I think I agree with the sentiment that science fiction as an art form isn't as taken as seriously as many other literary art forms. When you combine these two things it doesn't make it easy for me to understand the value of science fiction as it functions in the novel. To explain my feelings towards Vonnegut's particular skill as a science fiction writer here, I feel like he tries to tackle a subject which no human can possibly do correctly and fully: time and the 4th dimension. Specifically I don't think he does a particularly convincing job writing what the Trafalmadorian's would be like as creatures. In my opinion he makes them way too humanesque. Consider for instance the way they react to Billy, " Now the first question came---from the speaker on the television set: 'Are you happy here?'About as happy as I was on Earth,' said Billy Pilgrim"(147), which was true. For a species who don't believe in free will, it escapes me why they would believe that happiness or sadness mattered in any way. Perhaps, I just don't grasp the concept on an intellectual, but regardless of that I just don't think the quality of the science fiction in the novel is that good.

Wait, let me rephrase my previous statement. I don't think that Vonnegut's science fiction in Slaughterhouse Five is particularly "realistic". While I agree with all of the critiques stated above I think I might be missing the point of the science fiction in the novel if I tried to read it for how convincingly it portrays an alternate reality. As we've stated in class, simply because something isn't correct doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. So as I try to reconsider my stance on the science fiction aspect of the novel I have to ask myself, What if it's supposed to unrealistic? And I think I like that approach much more than my previous feelings. In addition to it being a bit shoddy on how it portrays time traveling, it's also just blatantly ridiculous fiction. Billy is abducted by little green aliens who look like toilet plungers. It doesn't get much farther from our perceptions of reality than that. And some people wonder to what extent this jeopardizes the seriousness of the novel novel. I'd say that in some ways it jeopardizes the seriousness completely. I don't think it's moral standpoint is one of those areas. In fact I would argue that the sheer ridiculousness of the fictional aspect of the novel actually adds to it's moral seriousness.

As we've agreed throughout our discussion of Slaughterhouse Five is that in our traditional context we generally hear about war as a glorified and hyper-masculine event. In reality, at least according to Kurt Vonnegut, wars are just babies killing babies. When reading a character such as Billy Pilgrim from a narrator like Vonnegut I'm totally struck by what we've been calling de-familiarization. I think that the science fiction scenes are absolutely supposed to seem unbelievable because Vonnegut doesn't want us to see any of the novel as reasonable. He wants to emphasize for us exactly how unreasonable and ridiculous war is, and that the type of person who isn't bothered by the killing of thousands of people, or being made a prisoner of war, is the same kind of person who's going to believe he was abducted by little green aliens shaped like toilet plungers.

Historical Science

In my spare day off yesterday I watched a much anticipated debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye over the feasibility of the so called “Creation” explanation for the origins of our universe. I have no desire to try and argue my side of the argument one way or another, and as poor a debater as I think Ken Ham is, he did bring up a point that I found at least mildly entertaining to ponder. The main backbone of his argument, and the idea that he claims keeps the creationist view point a valid one, is that there are two different kinds of science that we practice: observational science and historical science. Observational science consists of conducting current experiments and developing technologies that rely on the laws of science as we know them today. Historical Science on the other hand makes the assumption that the laws of the science have always been what they have today, and as a result we can run experiments and analyze data to interpret what the history of origins is. Mr. Ham claims that due to our lack of personal experience from those times we can’t actually prove anything. That logic isn’t really philosophically sound, and there are many reasons why it’s reasonable to assume there are underlying laws to our natural world, but if anything this did get me thinking about to what extent our understanding of science is belief based.

Now I’d like to just point out that I in fact have a deep love for the sciences, and it’s pursuit, and hope one day to pursue a deep career in them, but honestly I’d be kidding myself if I believed the scientific method was a perfect approach to answering all our questions and solving all our problems. I mean, I suppose were it done perfectly maybe it would be, but the point I’d like to make here is that there’s a lot more subjectivity and wiggle room in science than I believe the scientific society wants to admit. I don’t mean per se that scientific facts can be interpreted differently by different people (Although when you get into things like quantum physics an astute philosopher might be able to make a case), I mean that there is a certain amount of subjectivity inherent to our interpretations and assumptions of the raw scientific data. Everyone knows of all the various assumptions about the nature of our universe: The Earth is flat, the universe rotates around us, our thoughts come from our heart and heads are full of pus, etc.. The list goes on and on. Now many of those ideas were simply the result of a naive belief that we had enough information to make a judgement when we in fact did not. In our modern context we like to look back at those prior judgements an scoff, and I think it would be genuinely fair to say that we’ve much honed the practice and gotten better at accurately interpreting scientific data. That being said, I think that maybe we kid ourselves about the extent to which we can really say emphatically what we know for sure and don’t.

I don’t write this piece with the intention of trying to revolutionize the way we think about science, it would be trite to assume I could argue such a thing, but even if you think about the very way in which science classes are held. In a traditional science course we progress through a number of different chapters learning various different ideas and mechanisms. All of it is presented to us as pure fact. I absolutely don’t doubt that most everything we learn in introductory courses is probably the way it really works. By this long I think it’s safe to think that much of the basis for science would have been disproven if we interpreted it incorrectly. But the idea that maybe we don’t have the full picture yet, I would argue is the case across the board. Consider the case of evolution. Most any High School Freshman who’s taken a biology course could tell you that it’s the way life changes on our planet, and what the basic ideas behind Natural Selection are. Darwin and the whole nine yards. Now to most people (creationist excluded I suppose) this would suffice as an adequate explanation. But what if I told you that in all honesty evolutionary biologists still don’t have a complete picture of what natural selection is? To prove my point I’ll cite the example of Edward Wilson and his Multilevel Selection Theory. To summarize there had been a long held belief that selection of animals who practice social tendencies happened at the gene level. I.e. there were genes coding for certain social behaviors, and the best genes would win out. This was known as Kin Selection. Multilevel Selection theory argues that instead of at the gene level the selection happens at a combination of groups competing and the individuals within the group. It’s a subtle idea, I know, and I’m sure it seems like I just wanted to show you how awesomely knowledgeable I am, but there’s a better point here, hidden in the history behind this discover. In 2010 Wilson (One of the most famous biologists ever) presented a paper to Nature Magazine that he claimed presented a compelling argument for Multilevel based off of mathematical models he and other Harvard researchers had composed. In other words Wilson and associates claimed they could refute an old theory based on pure math. In science that’s a pretty gutsy claim, math is pretty highly regarded as far as proving stuff goes. But after it’s publication there was a tremendous uproar in the evolutionary biology field. Many hundreds of biologists from across the country responded by co-authoring a new article articulating all the various ways in which Wilson and his team made mistakes. Really it’s quite an impressive thing to see. Yet there are still many who support Wilson and his evidence. In other words based on how different people interpret the same scientific data and glean opposite results from it. In reality this is how all science works, and our “facts” are those things we’ve mostly agreed upon more than disagreed upon. In my eyes the biggest difference here between what we call science and what we call history is that most scientific pursuit exists as a possibility apart from time, whereas history by nature is stringent upon how well we can record certain instances in time. The interpretation of data is mostly the same, and the subjective aspect is still there even in science.

A Postmodernist History?

As I'm sure everyone knows the prompt we attempted to answer last night was along the lines of "If there were a postmodern history, what it look like?" I've heard some really good thoughts on different postmodernist characteristics and how they would apply to writing a history, and thought I would offer my own thoughts. Specifically the aspect of Postmodernism that I find most interesting and compelling in the way that I interpret my own life is the way in which it attempts to accept truth and validity from all areas regardless of art form. I figure though, that in order to accept a number of takes on "reality" as all being true you have to also expect to find "false" representation spread wisely, as the word would have been used in the modernist sense to refer to something not pertaining to our one true reality. Arguably this is seen nowhere more clearly than in the ways in which a rigid view of history doesn't work when you try to interpret it from all possible points of view. In that way you could make a case that almost any aspect of a historical narrative could be viewed as false when interpreted by the right person. So with these concepts touched upon in class I think it's fair to say that we can all agree that any history that tries to accord itself as a narrative is going to have "flaws" meaning different people might agree or disagree on the extent to which the events in a book really happened.

With that in mind I think it's still entirely possible for history to maintain a valuable area of study, even if we have to admit that there's no such thing as a perfectly accurate history. In fact as Doctorow himself says about historical fiction if you accept the idea that someone of the material isn't real it even lends strength to it as a valuable contribution to society. He supports the idea that while no one novel or piece of fiction could entirely compass all aspects of an idea, the more people write about and present their own take the closer and closer we get to a full picture and general understanding of that idea. He says “If there are enough of us, somehow a common wisdom will come through the community and pick and choose what it needs in order to survive and go on.” It's an abstract idea and one that has risks, as he admits, but I'm inclined to agree with him that as we create works they will be either disregarded or praised and thus we gain wisdom through their study. I think the same thought could very easily be applied to history. While no piece of historic writing is entirely truth, there are almost always elements within that many people can agree are legitimate. In addition to this no piece of history functions on its own, they all make reference to one another to compose our view of history. My opinion then is that the important part of historical writing is not necessarily to what degree all of the facts contained within are true, but more to what extent can that piece of work contribute to advancing overarching themes throughout our lives.

Since both classes discussed specifically the idea of writing a history of Uni I think this might be an interesting example of what I'm trying to convey. My hour specifically fixated in part on the history of the dismissal of two directors of student life in about as many years. Especially controversial was the dismissal of April Warren-Grice. I think this is a particularly good example because there's no one person who could create a complete picture of exactly what happened and why, but by talking to more and more people you can develop a better sense of what the main themes in the conflict were. Even more interestingly I think that perhaps even those events that were rumor might be more important to the issue than more factually based information would be. I personally heard a number of different explanations ranging from the official reason, which was that she needed time to work on her doctorate, to explanations concerning her friction with much of the student body. Those latter explanations are what I think might give the better picture because they reflect what problems people perceived to be present. Many of of the rumors to me suggested themes of both race and sex conflict. While I don’t wish to start an argument over whether or not such claims are true or not, I think that they represent the much broader theme of the persistence of racial and sexually based friction in America. In this way I think that were you to write a history of what caused this abrupt changing of staff it would be potentially much more interesting and useful to record these unsubstantiated rumors as opposed to the official reasons cited. While some of those tales might be undeniably inaccurate they still provide us with the much better account of what we perceived to be the problems present.

Postmodernist Video Gaming

As we identified earlier in the semester one of the themes throughout postmodern literature is that the major questions it tries to answer are ontological. As I interpret that it concerns the exploration of our perceptions of reality and what we perceive to be real and what we perceive to be fake, and what the important distinctions here are. History as Fiction of course would be a great example of that blurring and the relationship between the two. As we’ve already seen extensively throughout Ragtime there are extensive gaps and inconsistencies in history, and even in the nature behind a historical pursuit. As a result there’s a lot of room to blur the lines between history and fiction we thought we saw, and Doctorow does it nicely. As he argues himself, his mixing of historically accepted events with events that he conceived of himself presents a still very realistic picture of what our history could have been like. He believes that it’s not strictly important whether or not part of his “history” is widely agreed upon or not, because he believes that by freely creating his own story it frees him to mold the work into one that is as useful as he can make it. By not being constrained to create a specific narrative he has valuable room to move around and make his own valuable lessons. It’s this aspect of Postmodernism that I find the most philosophically interesting; that it accepts all realities as potentially equally valuable, and even potentially as viable and and useful to consider as what we perceive to be our own reality. And as many people are starting to find more and more disturbing our “virtual” realities are bleeding into our “real lives”, Video Games being an excellent point of departure I think.

If you think of video games as following historical periods like literature I would argue that they started their journey during the Modernist Period. What I mean by this is that early in their history video games were the epitome of a structured narrative. There was absolutely a set point and set way you were supposed to achieve that end goal. Think Mario. You can only ever move forward or sit still (often not even that) and there were set places you jumped to in order to clear each level. Admittedly there was a little bit of variation here in exactly where you chose to jump, but for the most part there was a set beginning, end, and way to advance through the middle. If you wanted to a person could memorize the required keystrokes and timing and would be able to beat the game with their eyes closed. Think here of the similarity to the Mystery Novel, as Mr. Mitchell cited as the quintessentially modernist form of literature. The main character advances through a set of clues, supposedly interpreting them objectively, and in the end it leads them to a seemingly inevitable conclusion. Both forms follow a rigidly structured line of events.

Just as literature’s evolution from modern to postmodern was gradual and even subtle, so too was it the case for gaming. As games grew in popularity their complexity was also forced to grow in order to meet a hungry demand. While many aspects of the visual appearance of games, and even the mathematical models used to create these games have advanced dramatically these are only a vehicle for which to improve the gameplay itself. And the biggest focus on changing gameplay, in my opinion, is trying to create as much characterization in the game as possible. Things started off pretty low key; maybe you’ve got a choice of a few different weapons with which to face bad guys or maybe there were a number of different paths which you could take. But things started to get complex pretty fast (I’d just like to add in a note here that I am by no means trying to account for the whole history of gaming, I’m not even closed to qualified to do so, I’m just drawing on recollection of games which I’ve had interactions with). The first pokemon games for instance we now see as little more than childish, but the underlying mathematics and potential for specialization in their heyday was probably tremendous. Especially in the 21st Century though I think that game development has started to skyrocket as a viable industry. The result being that the complexity of game design has has taken off at a comparable rate. For those of you who are semi game savvy I remember thinking back in the early 2000’s how awesomely complex and interactive the Diablo games were. And in their defense I still think they’re fun, but in light of recent games they fall somewhat short of what our standards for complex would be. Take for example the most recent Grand Theft Auto game. Not only does it have some of the widest variety of personalization of any game I’ve ever played it also has an important defining difference from Diablo: after beating what they offer as the main set of missions there is absolutely no shortage of freeplay activity afterwards. In other words they’ve made it entirely possible to live within this constructed reality just like our own. And anyone who’s ever fallen into obsessive gaming sessions can attest, you can really inhabit these things. I don’t jest when I say I can spend upwards of 12 hours straight playing a game like GTA. Many people find this kind of activity deeply disturbing, I certainly don’t like having done it after the fact, but it becomes all to easy to blur your distinctions between your reality and the game. For many people the idea of spending your life inside of a virtual reality, as has sometimes been cited as a dystopian plot, is really not even a far off fear. It’s now entirely possible to make an entire career out of playing games. There are youtubers who do it for upwards of a million dollars a year. Most people (often of older generations) find a great deal of fault in the idea that you would spend your life in some alternate story besides what we call reality.

As much as I think there are valid concerns for people spending too much of their time inhabiting video games I also think that a lot of the value of a game is missed. This is the same value behind narrative that Doctorow so strongly advocates as to why fiction is just as valuable as history. While no video game portrays life perfectly a lot of them do a pretty good job, Grand Theft Auto being a reasonably good example. And just like any good novel it’s chalk full of moral ambiguity, questions of friendship and love, and it’s slightly hypocritical scathing social commentary. So before we’re too quick to jump to accusing of video games as not being a valid reality let’s all reflect on those same misgivings that were put forward towards Historical Fiction.