LONG BLOG
Deadly Camp Solid
There’s a moment during the first few hours of Deadly Premonition that has always stuck with me.
After a
particularly long day, Special Agent Francis York Morgan rises at the crack of
dawn in the Great Deer Yard Hotel. He’s ready to work, what with the lingering
murder of Anna Graham hanging over the sleepy town of Greenvale. But like any
self-respecting agent of justice, York needs his coffee before properly
starting the day.
The player
guides York through the large but conspicuously empty hotel, past vending
machines and grainy wall textures, and enters the kitchen and dining area.
There he is greeted by the delightfully chipper Polly Oxford, the elderly
proprietor/cook/shopkeep of the entire hotel.
York and
Polly have a short exchange before the scene fades to black. After the cut, Deadly Premonition’s single most
important exchange takes place.
Seated at
a comically large table in a cavernous and empty dining room are York and
Polly. They are at opposite ends of the table, attempting to have a conversation.
It’s during this exchange that York and Polly interact in a way so goofy that
it’s nothing short of endearing.
York’s
simple questions are fall deaf on Polly’s ears, thanks to her aging body and
the massive distance between them. It’s lighthearted and goofy and downright
funny at parts, but it’s always played straight for the sake of a bigger laugh.
The scene hits a high mark the few times that York’s attempts to ask Polly to
come closer (in order to hear him better) are rebuffed as flirtatious.
In the
end, York gets his coffee and has a revelatory moment. The scene lingers, but
has a payoff. The player chuckles at the straight faced dialogue in a wacky
scene, and Deadly Premonition moves
onward.
Except for
the fact that Deadly Premonition doesn’t,
really, at least not in a specific sense.
The reason
that this scene has always stuck with me is that it’s a conceit of sorts.
During this exchange, Deadly Premonition plays
its hand. The dated visuals, stilted animations, and archaic gameplay mechanics
are all informed in one scene.
Deadly Premonition declares to the player that it is
as campy as a video game comes. It revels in it, revealing to the player that
it does not care if they “get it” or not. Deadly
Premonition takes a simple conversation and crosses the dialogue wires,
letting its audience know that the rest of the ride is going to be rough, and
bumpy, sometimes poignant, but always campy.
--
Camp can
be a head scratching type of term. It’s perplexing and elusive, the kind of
thing that most people can cite examples of before they could ever describe it.
It’s the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of everyday things as much as it is the
shirtless warlord shouting expletives as he he rips out an enemy’s spine while
gleefully shooting his rifle in the air.
What makes
camp – in all forms of media – so important is that there’s a decidedly human
element to appreciating it. From David Lynch’s Twin Peaks to the entirety of Big
Trouble in Little China, the campy atmosphere clicks with people. Camp,
more than a strong script or brilliant cinematography, is the special
ingredient of many cult classics.
Video
games have an interesting relationship with camp. Much like the scene from Deadly Premonition I mentioned above,
the games that explore camp as a concept stand out. Some people love it and
other people think it’s the stupidest thing this side of [something everyone
agrees is stupid], but what matters most is that camp almost always stands out.
Deadly Premonition proves this, time and again, and
it’s gone down in infamy for it. The atmosphere is so rich with stilted
theatrics and general absurdity that I can’t help but play it time and time
again.
While Deadly Premonition is the poster child
of video game camp, there are plenty of other games that elevate the “art.”
--
“Metal
Gear?!”
Hideo
Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series is a
perplexing nut to crack on dozens of different levels. There’s the pseudo-intellectual
dialectics that permeate in-game conversations, the fourth-wall breaking
moments, and a dude who almost certainly wants to have sex with his gun. What
do they mean, really, in the context of video games as a medium? How does a
developer – one who has the ability to be as brilliant of a director as any auteur
while still treating the world as one seen through the eyes of a teenage boy –
manage to create lasting works that are post-modern classics?
There have
been plenty of writers who have tackled the themes and motifs of Metal Gear Solid and the other mainline
titles in the franchise. I’m not smart enough to do so, but I do want to make
one claim clear:
Metal Gear Solid is campy as shit. It’s amazing for
it, of course.
The
juxtaposition of high-brow social commentary, non sequitur-laden Codec calls,
and nuclear theory crafting are what make Metal
Gear Solid the stuff that legendary moments are made of. Dress them up with
cloned soldiers, ketchup-as-blood escapes, and any number of stupidly crazy parts
from each game and you have a game that is elevated past a simple video game
and thrown into the theatre of the absurd.
And that’s
why makes Metal Gear Solid so
stellar. Each element of the game works perfectly with the others to create a
video game soap opera that is as addicting as it is campy.
--
Even Deadly Premonition’s ‘Tom and Jerry’
conversation can’t hold up to most of Metal
Gear’s Codec calls. There’s a self-aware, “I’m just saying this for the
sake of saying this” quality to the majority of them.
They’re
special because they exist in a medium that so badly wants to be taken
seriously because of top-notch gameplay and strong storytelling. Kojima, and Metal Gear Solid by extension,
deconstruct this concept through their campy elements, telling gamers that they
will listen to two grown men wax philosophic about bullshit that has little (to
nothing) to do with the mission.
And we
love the games for that.
--
LOOK WHO CAME:
