Play’s Republic

To begin, above are two 16th century paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The first painting is entitled Netherlandish Proverbs and the second The Triumph of Death.

Essentially, I think that Grand Theft Auto is similar to these works. To begin, I disagree with some of the conclusions that Bogost draws concerning GTA. Bogost defends GTA in that it “offers a convincing and meaningful world in a technically bereft environment.” Bogost explains that as the player makes choices, he or she can alter how the game is played. Instead of condemning the game for its narrative, Bogost looks past its brutality at the game’s structure. However, to Bogost, the game presents a core problem: “how to understand and refine each unit operation of our possible actions so we can interrogate and improve the system of human experience.” I do not agree that the game’s narrative can be overlooked nor should it. I think the narrative is as essential to the game’s success as the technical components.  GTA does not present a core problem.

To be perfectly honest, when I first played the game I could not stop laughing. Somehow shooting random pedestrians, running from the cops, clumsily jumping off of things and stealing cars was totally hilarious. There is no way that I would have same reaction if, say, I was shooting some kind of creature and jumping off of rocks while running from the wizards. Playing GTA, I was acting out human folly at its best. The game takes society’s worst offenses—murder, theft, lawlessness—and packages them into a single game where the player runs about repeatedly offending.

And now to connect to the paintings. Briefly, both works satirize 16th century society and are commonly read by critics as worlds turned upside-down. The paintings are both detailed and realistic while depicting fictitious scenes. The first, can be read as depicting human flaws or, more accurately, human folly. According to the Merrian-Webster online dictionary folly is defined as:

1 : lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight
2 : a criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct
3 : a foolish act or idea
4 : an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking

The definitions of folly imply a certain amount of humor. I am not going to go into what makes something funny, but foolishness, excessiveness, a lack of sense can all make something funny. Anyway, the painting is serious in that it aptly criticizes social ills but it is also funny. I think that the same holds true concerning GTA. GTA is a modern display of human folly. And as for the second painting, the world is turned upside down and is in chaos and havoc. GTA is the same.

I realize that the interaction between a player and a video game is different than the one between a viewer and a painting and I am not sure exactly how far I’d take the comparison. However, parallels can be drawn between the two and the paintings can help GTA to be read differently.