[quiet electronic music] There is a condition
in contemporary capitalism that's manifesting
itself in our video games. specifically how
in our contemporary society there is this
drive to constantly enjoy that's imposed on
us. and most importantly how this particular
condition masks significant underlying problems.
We Happy Few is a procedurally generated survival
game set in 1964 retro-futurist Britain. Specifically
a fiction town called Wellington Wells. Its
story centers on the alteration of events
that occurred during World War II, in the
usual fashion of historical fiction in games
shifting the narrative in an even darker and
more dystopian direction. In this version
of events, Germany has occupied the UK subjecting
them to something of an ultimatum that results
in what the survivors of this conflict call
The Very Bad Thing. And not to spoil too much,
you'll probably just need to trust me here
if you haven't played the game, this is a
series of events that involves the lives of
children that leaves a very understandable
scar across the face of this community. And
the more you hear about this story, the more
very tragic elements are introduced. This
is really a game about shame and trauma. The
people of Wellington Wells have been collectively
traumatized. Post-war society in this game
has inhabited an even darker and more twisted
sensibility, so much so that people within
the game, in the community of Wellington Wells
have invented this drug called Joy. Joy is
a drug that seems to be a pharmaceutically
engineered super version of LSD or MDMA. A
psychedelic and euphoric drug that has extremely
powerful effects on its user. It has the effect
of creating bountiful euphoria while suppressing
the memory of the person who takes it. Joy
is a powerful force in We Happy Few. Robot:
"You can't find your house when you overdose
on Joy, but we wanted you to see the broader
truth. Which is, who cares?" It seems to dictate
social relationships almost in totality people
who don't take their Joy are called Downers.
Masked Woman: "Oh my lord, he's a Downer.
Call security! We've got a Downer!" The social
pressure to inform on Downers means that you
are in this world, in many ways, strongly
compelled to take your Joy. Those who don't
are, at best, wandering on the periphery.
They are agitated at existence. Because they
remember what happened to them. And those
who don't take their Joy can also be seized
and forcefully medicated. This world is violent
and dark and strange, but so long as you take
your Joy, everything is fine, everything is
okay. Officer: "Such-like behaviors is what
we associate with Downers. Avoid 'em, and
we shan't have disagreements." Not even just
fine or okay, everything is beautiful, wonderful,
it has this beautiful shine and sheen, these
psychedelic colors very appropriate for this
1960s setting. It's a world filled with artificial
color projected onto the subjectivity of each
individual person through a tiny pill. Remarkable.
In fact the very first sequence of the game
is based off of a choice to either take your
Joy or to throw it away. And when you take
your joy, I won't spoil what happens. But
if you don't take your Joy, you are essentially
after this tasked with moving through the
protagonist through the world as an outsider.
I have a strong appreciation for retro-futurist
games for a lot of reasons. They can often
very effectively point out big flaws in supposedly
"correct", fundamental functions of government,
often liberal governments. Instead they offer
something that's reflective of a very terrifying
but more poignant reality. It's a repackaging
of our contemporary moment in such a way that
wrestles us from the comfort of the liberal
order and reveals to us something much uglier
but something perhaps a little closer to truth.
Because of this, in my view, We Happy Few
is begging for a reading in light of one of
contemporary capitalism's most odious and
tricky mechanisms. The ways in which this
world has been reconstructed from the inside
out around the fundamental and necessary full
enjoyment of its inhabitants. How this have
evolved in many ways to inhabit some of our
most base instincts. Being forced to do so
from the top-down, say, in our workplaces.
All, Chanting: "We are, we are, Walmart."
All, Chanting "Yo-ho yo-ho a Coldstone life
for me." Or having these values, ideals, and
ideas reinforced from within. Slovenian philosopher
and Marxist theorist Slavoj Žižek discusses
how ideology in capitalism creates and fosters
a powerful compulsion for us to constantly
enjoy ourselves in new, excessive levels.
The tasks of our previous historical moment,
those of modernity and pre-modernity, saw
the repression of our desires as the primacy
of our social function. Don't act out your
inappropriate sexual desires, do not disobey
or piss off the dominant religious structure,
do not outstep one's social role in class,
race, or gender, and so on and so forth. But
now, in neoliberal society, as greater permissiveness
has become the sort of law of our cultural
land, compulsion is no longer about the need
to repress these impulses but instead to express
them.
[joyful music]
[voiceover]
"Be happy buying your next car at Autoline
Pre-Owned. Most parents would never think
of taking their 4 year-old car shopping, especially
when you promised to take them fishing on
your day off."
"You promised to him them fishing on your
day off"
"Be Happy"
"You promised to take him fishing on your
day off"
[repeating]
"You promised to take him fishing on your
day off"
"Parents would never think of taking their
4 year-old fishing on their day off"
[repeating] "Be happy, be happy, be happy."
To constantly drive toward excessive levels
of enjoyment by consuming the correct products.
By very tactfully and carefully curating our
venture capital funded social media platforms.
To satisfy our pain, alienation, and struggle
with the prescription of dominant liberal
ideological order.
Things like self-help culture and positive
psychology, the products of the cruel optimism
of capitalism.
Consumptive patterns that attempt to cover
the intensifying degradation of capital.
This need to enjoy is imposed on us like a
strange duty.
It's a stress position that we all seem to
be required to hold.
These various ways that limit us to this weird
capitalistic interpretation of our base libidinal
desires, this passive ideology of enjoyment,
this political jouissance, these elements
of culture are the product of the imperial
core of capitalist hegemony.
This constant need to enjoy ourselves is pure
ideology in its most potent form.
[loud banging, implying an intruder]
If we were thinking in the liberal sense,
we would understand this pure ideology as
an intruder in the private domicile.
Some kind of instance of breaking and entering.
A clear violation of the social and cultural
contracts that state that this is a private
domicile of one particular individual person.
It is their point of bourgeois self expression,
especially for people who own that particular
domicile.
Our small margin of freedom and agency, our
intimate space, the place where we sleep and
we shit, has been infiltrated. And since we
are working within the contemporary liberal
tradition in this example, the solution to
this problem is stylized in the horror cliche.
We hide from the ideology in such a way that
maybe conceals us but we don't actually do
anything to change our circumstances. Especially
when you're not on the ground floor of your
apartment building.
While I actually think this liberal example
is very useful, when we peer outside of the
liberal domicile, we can see that the true
form of this ideology is actually much harder
to describe.
Cause it's not really a kind of intruder.
[knocking stops]
It's instead something much more ever-present.
[quiet, solemn electronic music]
It's a much more solemn condition that just
kind of hangs in the air around us.
In this particular context, it's really hard
to resist ideology.
We can instead only mask it with various hues
that do much to cast a bright light, but very
little to actually change fundamental conditions.
Slavoj Žižek describes this excessive pleasure
as bound to the ways in which people perform
ideology.
How in spite of the knowledge that we are
surrounded by absolute neoliberal bullshit,
we end up embodying these gestures and taking
our joy. We recast ourselves in the shape
of its image and we in a lot of ways end up
encouraging others to do the same.
In The Parallax View, Žižek uses one of
the all-time great short stories, Herman Melville's
Bartleby the Scrivener, to describe an example
of someone moving outside the dominant constructions
of ideology.
The story, in short, is about a conflict between
an employer and his employee, Bartleby.
Who after being a generally productive and
well-behaved and "good" upstanding employee,
all of a sudden starts behaving very differently.
One day he starts to respond to all of the
tasks requested of him with a very distinct
and memorable phrase:
"I would prefer not to."
Bartleby has opted out of participation in
some very key ways.
And, like the socially outcasted downers of
We Happy Few, we have something to learn from
him.
When we refuse to comply with the dominant
ideology, when we announce our preference
not to, we enact what Žižek describes as
a politics of negation. Bartleby is representing
the reconstruction of the subject under capitalism.
He is the person we should become. Because
if we did so, we wouldn't just be playing
along to try and inform some particular structural
change from within, crossing our fingers while
we do so, but what we do, is that we illustrate
that we prefer something else entirely. That
we prefer, perhaps, a new configuration of
society. In the Hegelian sense, they are giving
body to this negativity. We have to begin
imagining Bartleby and the downers of We Happy
Few in positions of power if we are even going
to start to dig ourselves out of the economic
mess that we've been put in.
Meaning, the solutions to our problems in
capitalism may fall outside of the accepted
idea of good behavior.
They may make people in our lives uncomfortable,
nervous, upset, perturbed. It's a very beautiful,
powerful thing.
They show us that we can reject the remedies
of liberalism, these pacifying and placating
so-called "cures" to the ails of our contemporary
society.
And if not, well at the very least it shows
us that the culture around us can help demonstrate
both the potential struggles, as well as the
potential rewards in front of us, should we
choose to recognize them.
If you want to talk about this more you can
come to Twitch.
You can give me money on Patreon to help fund
this.
Or you can just check back here soon.
[quiet electronic music]
I look like Slowpoke from Pokemon
[faint laughter]
[fast mumbling]
...especially when you're not on.
[laughter]
Okay, that should be good.
[deep exhale]
[exasperated laughter]
