MONSTROUS EXISTENCE: A CRITICAL READING OF NIGHT IN THE WOODS THROUGH THE WORKS OF MARK FISHER A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by Patrick Oliver Fiorilli In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology December, 2019 COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY PATRICK OLIVER FIORILLI MONSTROUS EXISTENCE: A CRITICAL READING OF NIGHT IN THE WOODS THROUGH THE WORKS OF MARK FISHER Approved by: Dr. Ian Bogost, Advisor School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Jay Bolter School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Anne Sullivan School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Date Approved: December 02, 2019 I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to the town as a stranger. — J. A. Baker, The Peregrine PREFACE Content Warning: It should be noted by the reader that this essay contains discussions of depression, anxiety, suicide, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, abuse, sexual assault, far-right political violence, religious themes, and the occult. It is acknowledged by the author that the subject of this analysis, Night in the Woods, was developed, in part, by a serial abuser whose offenses have been widely reported. It should also be noted that the primary interests of the analyses herein are the writing and themes portrayed in the game, rather than the gameplay programming and soundtrack for which the individual in question has been credited. For additional context regarding this matter, the reader may refer to writings by Benson, by Carpenter, by Gurley, and by Holowka, as cited below. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author's personal thanks are due, in the first place, to his mother and father, for their boundless love and wisdom; to his dear compatriots—those varmints—from back home in North Carolina, for the contributions each of them has made to the author's understanding of real, everlasting, small-town friendship; and to his primary reader, Carter Shocket, without whom this thesis would be worse. The author’s professional thanks are due to Dr. Rick Warner (Associate Professor and Kenan Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) for his support of what, in retrospect, was the very first iteration of the present work; as well as to the members of his thesis committee, Dr. Jay Bolter, (Professor and Director of Computational Media), Dr. Anne Sullivan (Assistant Professor), and Dr. Ian Bogost (Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing), School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, for their guidance in putting all of this together. Thank you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS vii SUMMARY viii CHAPTER ONE 1 CHAPTER TWO 13 CHAPTER THREE 28 CHAPTER FOUR 43 WORKS CITED 54 vi LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS CR Capitalist Realism WE The Weird and the Eerie vii SUMMARY This thesis presents a critical close reading of the 2017 videogame Night in the Woods, developed by independent studio Infinite Fall. Following literary critic Irving Howe's notion of the "political novel," this thesis demonstrates that Night in the Woods exists as a rare and audacious interrogation of Capital and its deleterious fallout in the rural United States. In order to make its case, this thesis heavily incorporates the critical vocabulary of the theorist Mark Fisher, whose notions of "capitalist realism," "the weird," and "the eerie" serve to identify explicitly and categorically much of what the game in question represents implicitly and aesthetically. Structurally, the thesis first explores the themes and political rhetoric of Night in the Woods via an analysis of the places and communities featured in the game's setting. Next, the thesis explores how such themes are internalized by the game's protagonist and thereby rendered to the player. Finally, contrasting the themes of the game to the definition of "horror" outlined by the philosopher Eugene Thacker, the thesis ends with a discussion of how Night in the Woods argues for genuine and political meaning in the face of a meaningless and incomprehensible universe. viii CHAPTER ONE Games, like other cultural works, don’t exist apolitically. They’re neither exterior to politics, nor are they insular to a world without them. As this becomes increasingly clear, we observe hints of desperation in the rhetoric and marketing of certain corporate game productions arguing for the contrary. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard—the company behind the popcorn warfare Call of Duty franchise—recently attempted to wash his hands of the matter: “We’re not the operator of the world’s town halls. We’re the operator of the communities that allow you to have fun through the lens of a video game” (see Gach). Some game developers are even more explicit. Regarding a recent post- apocalyptic Tom Clancy title set in war-torn Washington D.C., Terry Spier, creative director of Red Storm Entertainment, was quoted saying, “we’re definitely not making any political statements. Right? This is still a work of fiction, right?” (see Hall) This perennial refrain—“it’s just a game”—one imagines always, always, as if followed by a hip and genial, “man!” It remains the responsibility of critics to harsh this particular mellow. The self-seriousness with which these defenses are deployed contradicts their intentions. Why bother to protest that something isn’t actually the case, if not because it clearly appears to be—or worse, clearly is? The volley of discourse that so often results from this back-and-forth between critics and creators most often occurs on the courts of major franchises, such as those mentioned above. Store shelves, real and virtual, cycle through a yearly stock of game releases that plunder, for their thematic or situational inspiration, some unsettling period of history or any given theatre of our present Forever War. 1 Granted, this performance of public relations grows repetitive. If anything, it tends to result in free advertising for the franchise in question. But, on the bright side, perhaps we can acknowledge that discussions of the political and its relation to games—like the tips of the proverbial icebergs—tend in greater numbers to breach the surface of even the most mainstream criticism. A prime example: in 2016, games critic Austin Walker began his tenure as editor-in-chief at what is now Vice Games with an editorial in response to the election of Donald Trump. “Our aim,” Walker wrote of the nascent site’s priorities, “is to cover games with criticality and humanity. It is to give as much attention to the people, passion, and politics of gaming as we have been giving to the products.” Walker wasn’t alone in this mission. In no small part, the development of politically astute games criticism is due to the diversity of critical voices increasingly employed by a number of press outlets. But no less important than the diversification of criticism is the contemporary democratization, so to speak, of the means of game production itself. It’s never been easier for a single creator or a small team to make a game that strives to say something of genuine political import. Games, even video games, can nowadays be made in an afternoon, with little to no coding know-how; Anna Anthropy was writing about this phenomenon all the way back in 2012 with her book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. Moreover, it’s never been easier for those same visionaries to access the funds, the distribution platforms, and the audience necessary to do so. The web-based storefront Itch.io has become the games industry equivalent to independent music platforms like Soundcloud and Bandcamp. I don’t mean to make any of this sound perfect, and least of all settled, but the circumstances are indeed different than they were even ten years ago—and in many ways they’re better. 2 I mean to point out a difference, however, between a game that has politics and a game that is political. And in this regard, I’m building on a distinction outlined by the political theorist Chantal Mouffe. Mouffe defines “the political” as “the antagonistic dimension which is inherent to all human societies” (2). Because, she writes, “political questions are not mere technical issues to be solved by experts,” it’s necessarily the case that “proper political questions always involve decisions that require making a choice between conflicting alternatives” (3). This uncentered, uncertain, and unending conflict of interests defines “the political” as the dominant mode or “dimension” of human activity. On the contrary, the word “politics,” according to Mouffe, “refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seeks to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence in conditions which are always potentially conflicting, since they are affected by the dimension of ‘the political’” (3). In other words, “politics” is something like the ground-level manifestation of higher-order, political antagonism. Folks live together because of politics, in spite of their disagreements over the political. Following this logic, all games, as products of culture and labor, have politics. That is, they’re made in a time, in a place, and by people (or corporations) for other people (or publics) to play (or experience). Simply by virtue of the “practices, discourses and institutions” (Mouffe, 2) that went into their making, the politics of games are inherent, even if they aren’t expressed.