Art for Tolstoy and Aristotle / Art in Video Games

Thought Activity: 

Attempting to choose video games that best represent Tolstoy and Aristotle's views / interpretations of Art.

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Briefly tackling and paraphrasing Tolstoy's interpretation, art is what holds us together as a society; it holds us in this moment and connects us across time.  Art is a means of union in an increasingly disconnected society.  For Aristotle, art is about the cathartic experience and purging those emotions that we all have inside. Choosing a particular game that adheres to the somewhat diverging interpretations of art, provided by Aristotle and Tolstoy, is no easy task.  Most games have the ability to provide a cathartic experience for the player because it immerses them in a setting, fictional or real, and allows them to experience events in, what amounts to, an out-of-body experience.  This catharsis, in turn, is somewhat symbiotic: it has the ability to establish Tolstoy's sense of unity, a something which holds us from moment to moment, connecting different people across contrasting walks of life.  The validity of this statement has grown in direct proportion with video-game technology.  With each console, starting almost prehistorically with the Atari 2600, most developers have been striving towards incorporating more elements of what is considered art by critics through the inclusion of realistic characters and environments, compelling accompanying soundtracks, and moving plots that unfold in a very novel-like manner.

For Aristotle, it can be said that most video games allow us to purge an emotion.  This emotional purge comes regardless of whether it’s a survival-horror game, a Role-Playing Game (RPG), or practically any other type of game across the broad spectrum of genres; the emotional experience that is inherent in the genre (happiness, sadness, excitement) will, in most cases, be felt by the player as that is the intention of the developer.  Choosing a single, best example for this would, for me, be Final Fantasy 7.  As a player, you experience a full range of emotions as you experience the lengthy narrative — from the excitement of riding your first chocobo (a happy, yellow bird used for fast-travel; riding is accompanied by a cheerful, country-themed tune) to the sadness that every player felt at a scene so memorable that doesn’t even need to be mentioned.  Final Fantasy 7 runs a full spectrum of emotions, experienced by the player, and subsequently proves the player with a means of cathartic expression as each experience must be seen through the protagonist's (read: the player's) eyes.

For Tolstoy, the sense of union that he describes is best experienced in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game (MMORPG or MMO) because of the inherent, harmonious energy that players experience through working together to achieve similar goals.  In MMOs such as World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and Everquest, the message is always clear: the player is always working towards something because it will do x for you and the people on your side.  There are professions to better yourself with, reputations to be more favorable in the eyes of your peers, and money that is rewarded to you for completing a good deed.  Through MMOs, you are essentially working towards becoming better.  Maybe not so much a better person, but you’re always becoming better at something and this sense of community, this sense of union, establishes a harmony that falls in line with Tolstoy's view of art.  

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Rewriting the Rhetorical Narrative

Jim Corder, in his relatively well-known article entitled “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” begins by quoting A.G. Mojtabai, who writes that “we are all authors.”  Corder uses this idea as the structure for his article but extends the metaphor to a greater extent, asserting that, instead of simply being the authors, “each of us is a narrative.”  In this somewhat philosophical approach to human understanding (read: empathy), Corder is attempting to redefine the ways that we identify ourselves, as well as approach arguments and conflict, by simply searching for a greater awareness of each other’s “narrative”. This narrative, as Corder explains, is the story of you—it’s an account of how you got to where you stand and how experiences (and arguments) along the way have impacted your (un)belief.  Marc Santos, in his article "How the Internet Saved My Daughter and How Social Media Saved My Family," addresses Corder's narrative, summarizing that "[the] rhetorical narratives provide a frame of reference for understanding and navigating the world."  Similar to  Kenneth Burke before him, it can be inferred the message that Corder is advocating suggests that rhetoric can be about discovering an identity; how to become the people we think we are, through the people we know, and the experiences we share.  However, with today’s web-centric technology, the narratives that we write through shared experiences are decreasing exponentially.  This begs the question: in a generation of often anonymous interconnectivity, how can you write your own narrative if the pathetic experiences that are supposed to shape it are not experiences at all, but second-hand, revised versions of someone else’s life? Technology has enabled us to be connected in ways we never have before.  A computer, or phone, becomes extensions of your hand, allowing you to reach out and connect with someone hundreds of miles away.  For the younger generation, one that has grown up knowing only vast social networks, the ability to establish far-reaching networks becomes the standard and the experiences are amplified by the sheer amount of time they spend being connected.  According to a 2010 study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation entitled “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to 18-Year-Olds”, young people, age 8-18 years old, “devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week)”.  Resulting from this increased familiarity/obsession with entertainment mediums such as Facebook, the Corder's narrative (which used to be created through first-hand experiences) has become something that is simulated; it has (d)evolved a pseudo-narrative that is rapidly moving away from real-life encounters and pushing further into the virtual realm.  If a rhetorical narrative is the story of how you got to where you are (both physically and philosophically) and the influences of others along the way, how is that narrative impacted by technologies that alter the story before it gets to you?  Instead of experiencing people’s stories first- hand, as they're told, we read them on a Facebook or Twitter feed. What we read has usually (at least in my case) been edited, revised, and completely rewritten before it is published for the world to see.

For my generation, many of the arguments and past experiences that help to shape the rhetorical narrative have already occurred, so it is hard to conceive of a reality other than the one we currently occupy. If, as Corder states, “the narratives . . . create and define the worlds in which we hold our beliefs”, then I invite you to imagine a world in which false narratives are created unwittingly because they are being shaped by the presence of technology. What happens then when an entire generation lives online (“53 hours a week,”) and their narrative is being written from dynamic and subjective standpoints under constant revision?  It seems that the concept of rhetorical narrative needs to be the subject of a post-modern revision, one that takes into account the presence of technology and addresses the impact that being constantly connected can have.