Stranger 109

Last week I came across this machinima film posted on YouTube by Skatedawg27 thanks to Paul Marino over at Thinking Machinima. Entitled Virginia Tech Massacre, the piece uses the new Halo 3 engine to dramatically retell the events of last spring’s terrible tragedy. My first impulse was to add it to the Machinima Spotlight section, which I have been trying to better maintain these days after a long hiatus, but I found myself having very mixed feelings about the film. As most of you know, I have been pushing and advocating for more politically and socially minded machinima since I began this site. In fact, most of my recent academic work reflects this desire to see the boundaries of the medium we all hold dear to expand beyond in-game jokes and Red vs Blue knockoffs. So rather than spotlight the film and review it, I thought I would offer a few thoughts about it and invite my readers to share their views on the film. There are already some interesting dialogs taking place in the blogosphere about it, but I thought it important to get a sense of what many of you think.I want to first dismiss any arguments that seek to claim that using a videogame to deal with or address a serious issue such as this as is a trivialization of the event. That is not to say a person can’t use a videogame to trivialize a tragedy, but the mere choice of medium should not immediately relegate the form of expression to topics that are light in nature. In this particular instance, the machinimator had nothing but the fullest intentions of being respectful as indicated by the disclaimer at the end of the film: “This Video was created for Educational Purposes only and is not, by any means, to insult the Virgina Tech Massacre.” So I want to first say that Skatedawg27’s attempts to be respectful should be acknowledged. The film’s form takes the shape of music video montage, using the Halo characters to recreate some of the violent scenes, cutting it together with some inserts that give some of the statistics about the shooting. The most shocking part comes at the end where a lengthy section of the Cho video that he sent to NBC is played as part of the film’s conclusion. I found the clip disturbing the first time I saw it on television and found it equally haunting in this context. And it is perhaps the use of the clip that gave me such mixed feelings about the piece. Juxtaposing it with the dramatic reenactment set in the abstract world of Halo seems to remove the violence from the raw place that news coverage tends to situate these sorts of events. But then to thrust it from that abstract place (which seems to diminish the violence in a number of ways) into that chilling declaration/justification that Cho gives leaves me with a sense ambiguity that does not allow me to easily digest this piece.

Skatedawg27 claims that this is for “educational purposes,” but I wonder how valid that is given the vast exposure of this as a media event. I am curious as to how many people know absolutely nothing about this event that this film would provide them with a frame of reference on what happened. Dismissing the educational purpose of the film, what are we then left with? I recently wrote a book chapter entitled “Saving Worlds with Videogame Activism” for the upcoming Handbook of Research on Effective Gaming in Education where I examined specific uses of videogame technology for either political or social commentaries. One of the case studies I used was the much talked about Super Columbine Massacre RPG created by Danny Ledonne in which the player takes on the role of Harris and Klebold. The other case study I used addressed Alex Chan’s The French Democracy machinima piece on the 2005 race riots that took place in the suburbs of Paris. In both of these examples, the authors of each of these texts took very pointed stances on the issue they were dealing with. In the case of Ledonne, he challenged the typical impulse to vilify Harris and Klebold and the media that “influenced” them to do what they did. For Chan, he felt the news media coverage of the riots simply depicted the rioters as animals with no real reason to be upset, so he told the tale of daily racism that still boils under the surface in these banlieues. The unfortunate aspect of Virginia Tech Massacre is that it does not specifically point me as a viewer into a reflective space on the particular issue. In many ways, its attempts to be respectful leave it without any particular message to take away other than “this was such a horrible thing.” But even as a memoriam piece, it does not specifically acknowledge any personal or individual loss. With Cho as the only person identified, other than than Prof. Lucinda Roy who shared concerns about Cho’s violent tendencies, the film lacks the personal connection to the lost ones that tend to be a necessary element of a memoriam video.

So due to the fact that this film does not definitively take a position or establish itself as trying to accomplish any of the these specific goals, I am afraid that it rings a little hollow for me. I am not saying that people should not check the film out. They should, and I would love to hear what they took away from it. The problem I have is that the film does try to go beyond what typical machinima tends to do; however, I am not sure the execution manifests into something we can point to and say “see, machinima can be serious. It can address important issues.” I could be totally wrong on this one, which is why I want to throw it back on you the readers. Let me know what you think.