Dear L,
As I am sitting on this stormy Sunday, contemplating downloading the recently released video game Ghost of Yotei on my Playstation; I felt confusion in my own ways of looking at a piece of art. I have read and watched plenty of critique for this new video game, as well as its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, another exceptional title by its own right. The idea that had drawn me to the first game, Ghost of Tsushima, was the moral qualm the protagonist Jin Sakai was struggling with in his story. The character hailed from a noble house in an island from Japan, grew up with the values of the Samurai, of honour and sacrifice; in the face of a massive Mongol invasion, he was being forced to give up those values for dishonourable ways to fight an overwhelming enemy. That moral struggle had drawn me to that game. This new game on the other hand is a story of a woman trying to exact revenge on the murderers who murdered her family; this new story does not itch my pretentious highbrow standards of a good story. Revenge stories have been told a thousand times, whereas nuanced stories of ethics & morality, is something else entirely! Right?
This new game features the protagonist, Atsu, on her path for revenge, and she does not give a flying f**k about honour, or the code of the Samurai1. In this new story, as much as I have come across on the internet, it is a lot about her being shunned for being a woman in a male dominated world of Samurais & Ronins.
I must admit, I felt a mild shame judging this story purely by its general arc of revenge; similar stories that have been told a thousand times through a variety of artistic mediums, that reason alone does not make it a story unworthy of my time. I am partial to thought provoking stories, complex & nuanced, but I am not sure anymore, if I am partial to such because I am trying to pretend to be nuanced. If I ask myself on a sleepless night, whether I want to play a character in a video game who is driven by rage & revenge, the answer is a resounding yes! Who would not want to hear a story of a woman embody fury in blades, becoming death incarnate2, slicing through ranks of mortals who thought less of her; with the sound of Shamisen. And frankly I had overlooked plenty of stories such as this, in order to appease the highbrow martini sipping intellectual within me.
From True Grit, to Angry Indian Godesses, the arc of womanhood, strength, fury and dare I say revenge, it's all there, and wonderfully so. It's cathartic to say the least and I won't begin to critique any of it, the same way I won't analyze Ghost of Yotei based on the "basic" nature of its story. Stories of rage and fury are probably are not as complex as nuanced discussions about morality, but that does not make those stories any less valid.
A dear friend of mine once told me angrily, "no one would listen if we aren't angry". And I think, I agree. Luxury is being able to "talk" about a problem & change cannot afford nonchalance.
Best, A