Post on 22-Feb-2023
Michał Kłosiński
Silesia University, Katowice, Poland
Visions of an indebted man and neoliberal ideology in
Bioshock Infinite
This project was funded by the National Science Centre
allocated on the basis of the decision number
UMO-2012/05/D/HS2/03589.
Projekt został sfinansowany ze środków Narodowego Centrum
Nauki przyznanych na podstawie decyzji numer
UMO-2012/05/D/HS2/03589.
Summary/Introduction:
The main focus of this paper is to analyze and present
various economical motives inscribed in the story of a
multiplatform (PC, PS3, XBOX) game Bioshock Infinite and its rich
world. In the beginning I would like to focus on the economic
background and circumstances of the main protagonist and
antagonist at the same time: Booker DeWitt / Zachary Hale
Comstock. I propose to read this character as a virtual example
of an indebted man. This perspective opens up a new reading of
Bioshock Infinite focusing on the economic aspect of both the
existential status of the main protagonist and his involvement
in the creation and destruction of the game’s vision of Utopia
and power relations.
Part I
A story of an indebted man
“Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”
With this sentence the whole story of Bioshock Infinite is set
into motion, with this sentence the motive is given to the
protagonist and the player who controls his actions. Who is
Booker DeWitt at the beginning of the adventure, in a small
boat going to a lighthouse to enter the flying city of
Columbia? He is an indebted man, a man with a gun prepared to
do anything to come clean. As the story of Bioshock Infinite
unveils the player learns more and more information about
Booker’s past and how he came to be a man with a debt. This
information can also be found in the Bioshock Infinite Wikia, which
states that:
In January of 1892, Booker became an employee of the Pinkerton's
National Detective Agency. While working as a Pinkerton, Booker garnered a
reputation by ending labor strikes with extreme violence. Around this time,
he met a woman who shortly after became pregnant. She died while giving
birth to a daughter, Anna. This, coupled with his dismissal from the Agency
for excessively violent behavior, sent him into a depression. He turned to
alcohol and gambling, which drove him far into debt.1
I am not quoting or addressing the matter of Bookers
involvement in the pacification of native Americans, I will
only mention that the war crimes he committed at Wounded Knee
led him to get baptized into Comstock, which is the key part of
his backstory2. My goal however is to focus on the question of
debt and socio-economical background of the main protagonist.
Booker violently pacifies the labor strikes, he is a man
absolutely immune to social solidarity, and we are talking
about an 18 year old boy here (Booker was born in 1874), a boy
who became a soldier at the age of 16. He was never a worker,
in fact he always worked as a mercenary, a paid thug. All this
adds up to him becoming a father at a very young age plus
losing his wife as soon as his daughter was born. Instead of
taking care of his child – Anna, he gambles and drinks,
eventually selling her to pay off his debts. This short sketch
of Bookers background shows that he is a model representative
of the precariat3: 1. He has no stable job; 2. He has 1 Bioshock Infinite Wikia: http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Booker_DeWitt [on-line], access: 15.09.2014. 2 Helen Lewis in her review of Bioshock Infinite writes that: “BioShock Infiniteis determined to make its largely American audience engage with aspects of its history that it would probably rather forget.” http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/03/moment-you-cant-ignore-bioshock-infinite [on-line], access: 15.09.2014. Her main thesis is that Bioshock Infinite could be a step to “make video games more human”. I would liketo challenge that belief by focusing on some of the worrying features of the game which point to the fact that it might, at the same time, be an example of neoliberal ideology at work. 3 Conf. Guy Standing: The Precariat The new dangerous class, Bloomsbury Academic: London 2011, pp. 7-20.
absolutely no social security; 3. Out of fear and lack of
perspectives he is driven to a state of absolute poverty; 4.
His future – represented by his daughter Anna – has been taken
away from him by his status of an indebted man.
The game of Bioshock Infinite fractalizes the story of Booker
DeWitt making it into a puzzle which every player has to put
together to realize what are the circumstances of the
protagonist. What or who Booker is at the beginning of his
journey is a tabula rasa, a tabula rasa with a debt, and it is
quite ingenious that the journey into the utopia/dystopia of
Columbia turns into a journey of a precarious man with a debt
to learn his own history and to retrieve his future (Anna). In
other words, Bioshock Infinite is a history of an indebted man with
all iterations of his relationship to debt as a part of his
very existence.
Two iterations of an indebted man: Booker DeWitt and
Zachary Hale Comstock
It is imperative to read Bioshock Infinite not only as a story
about a XIX century indebted man, an individual named Booker
DeWitt, but also a story about our contemporary social
condition, of our precariousness and specific power structure
governing it. In his work on the Indebted man Maurizio Lazzarato
relates to Foucault and Nietzsche in order to describe the
process of creating indebted man and its consequences. He
writes:
Debt creation, that is, the creation and development of the power
relation between creditors and debtors, has been conceived and programmed
as the strategic heart of neoliberal politics. If debt is indeed central to
understanding, and thus combating, neoliberalism, it is because
neoliberalism has, since its emergence, been founded on a logic of debt.4
One might ask what Booker DeWitt, a character placed in an
alternative vision of XIX century USA has to do with
neoliberalism? Is the world of Bioshock Infinite a neoliberal one?
There is definitely a hint about violence towards the workers
movement and Boxer Rebellion (China – against Christians and
imperialism), both in Booker’s biography, as well as in his
involvement in Columbia’s coup. What is interesting is that the
only worker movement onboard Columbia, the Vox populi is
effectively presented as a grim revolutionary alternative to
Comstock’s religious and racist extremism. The revolutionaries
who are rebelling against class and race oppression are
presented as savage, barbarous and bloodthirsty lot willing to
go to every length to obtain power. One must also point to the
fact that some reviewers5 have linked the Vox populi with the
Occupy movement which is an outrageous idea (and a neoliberal I
would like to say). But is it enough to call the world of
4 Maurizio Lazzarato: The making of an indebted man An essay on the neoliberal condition, trans. by Joshua David Jordan, Semiotext(e): Amsterdam 2012, p. 25.5 Conf. Conor Dougherty: A Videogame With a Political Philosophy, “Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition”, 2013, Vol. 261, Issue 67.
Bioshock Infinite a neoliberal one? No, but it is a world
representing the growing power of capitalism of the beginning
of the 20th century. This world is not yet neoliberal in a
sense that it has not yet capitalized on the financial break
with the gold standard, nor has it turned to corporations,
semiocapitalism etc. The feature which allows us to link the
perspective of Bioshock Infinite and neoliberalism is the debt and
precarization of the main protagonist as well as the working
class present in Columbia. We must underline that the logic of
human exploitation based on racism is pretty much the logic of
submitting man to debt in neoliberalism. Franco “Bifo” Berardi
quotes Deleuze and Guattari to show that neoliberalism is no
different than fascism:
So I would say that neoliberalism is the most perfect form of
fascism, in terms of Deleuze and Guattari’s definition. Competition is the
concealment of a war machine in every niche of daily life: the kingdom of
competition is fascism perfected. 6
Competition breeds violence, and violence is at the very
heart of Columbia, from its festivals where citizens can throw
stones at Afro-Americans, through the factories which produce
Vigors by exploiting lowest class workers, to the Comstock Bank
which reaps 50% tax on every transaction made in the flying
city. The competition lies at the basis of Columbia, a
6 Franco „Bifo” Berardi: The Uprising On Poetry and Finance, Semiotext(e): Los Angeles 2012, p. 95.
competition to survive – the most Darwinian element of the
capitalist ideology.
The flying city of Columbia represents Zachary Hale
Comstock’s twisted quasi-Christian morality coupled with a
racist economical exploitation of lower classes7. And Zachary
Hale Comstock is a religious iteration of Booker DeWitt, a man
re-born through baptism after the massacre of native Americans
at Wounded Knee. Who Comstock is, economically speaking, is
quite interesting in comparison to ever indebted Booker.
Comstock is an example of an entrepreneur, he creates Columbia
just like a corporation or a company – gathering funds,
technology and people (the founders) to establish a flourishing
business. Columbia flies around the world gathering cheap
workforce from countries such as China and becomes independent
from the US government by gaining immense military power. At
the same time, it gains economic independence by issuing its
own money (in this sense it is a capitalistic utopia, as the
philosophical utopia rejects money8). But Comstock is
infertile, and here is the main problem he faces – he does not
have a future. That is why he hast to buy his own debt, buy
his future from his other self. What Comstock does is to take
Anna from his past self, he legitimately steals his own future
and imprisons it in a tower guarded by a Songbird.
7 Tom Watson, in his review titled Moral Maze writes: “I don’t think I have ever played a video game that has confronted racism in such anupfront manner as BioShock. There are segregated toilets, exploited black workers and prejudice.” http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/04/reviewed-bioshock-infinite [on-line], access: 15.09.2014.8 Conf. Fredric Jameson: Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Verso: London 2005, p. 12.
Comstock is the creditor Booker gives Anna to “wipe away
his debt”. But how did Booker “wipe away” his debt, how did he
“cleanse” himself? One of the most intriguing facts is the
dialogue which seals the deal Booker does with Comstock:
Booker DeWitt: (giving Anna to Robert) “What choice do I have?”
Robert Lettuce: “The debt is paid. Mister Comstock washes you of all
your sins.”
This paradoxical situation calls for our attention, as the
sinner is being forgiven by himself. The act of forgiveness
comes from Comstock to Booker, but as they are one and the same
person it becomes clear that Comstock is performing the very
same speech act which was used to baptize him. Booker who
neglected the baptism saying it was a “dunk in the water” is
here cleansed by none other than his creditor and not with
water, but with his words. The capitalist takes his daughter
away as a payment not only for his debt, but also for his sins.
Lazzarato writes:
When it comes to talking about debt, the media, politicians, and
economists have only one message to communicate: "You are at fault," "You
are guilty."9
9 Maurizio Lazzarato: The making of an indebted man… op. cit., p. 31.
Booker’s iteration – Comstock arrives at the scene of
history when the act of baptism cleanses him of his “original
sin” or of all his sins and guilt (maybe that is why he can
forgive Booker). But at the same time as Comstock leaves his
past behind, the act of baptism makes him an indebted man
again, this time – by becoming a Christion – he becomes
indebted for eternity to God. Moreover, Comstock becomes a
religious entrepreneur, a man who “works on himself”. Lazzarato
refers to this capitalistic phenomenon described at the end of
XIX century by Nietzsche as one of the main tools of
neoliberalism:
Debt as economic relation, for it to take effect, has thus the
peculiarity of demanding ethico-political labor constitutive of the
subject. Modern-day capitalism seems to have discovered on its own the
technique described by Nietzsche of constructing a person capable of
promising: labor goes hand in hand with work on the self, with self-
torture, with self-directed action. Debt involves a process of
subjectivation that marks at once "body" and "spirit."10
Zachary Hale Comstock is a perfect example of such process
of subjectivation. On countless images and in short propaganda
stories the player comes by in Bioshock Infinite, Comstock is
presented both as a martyr and as a self-made man. He is both a
capitalist and an indebted man. But to fully understand who
DeWitt and Comstock is, one has to understand that Comstock is
not stealing his own daughter from his past self. In fact
10 Ibidem, p. 42.
Comstock – the capitalist and eternally indebted Christian is
impossible of having a future – thus infertility. The only way
for him to gain a future is to buy it from Booker – the
indebted man whose future is taken from him. Booker as Comstock
is entering an endless circle of creditor-debtor with himself,
and that establishes an economic power relation. Furthermore,
as we have seen in the dialogue that seals the deal between
Booker and Comstock, this power relationship goes beyond
economy into religious and metaphysical one. Lazzarato writes:
Credit or debt and their creditor-debtor relationship constitute
specific relations of power that entail specific forms of production and
control of subjectivity – a particular form of homo economicus, the "indebted
man." The creditor-debtor relationship encompasses capital/labor, Welfare-
State services/users, and business/consumer relations, just as it cuts
through them, instituting users, workers, and consumers as "debtors.”11
Comstock tries to do the impossible here and that sets the
whole story of Bioshock Infinite into motion. He is trying to buy
his own debt, but at the same time he is trying to perform an
act of forgiveness upon himself. He is trying to retrieve the
future at all costs with use of his capital. But the story of
Bioshock – coupled with neoliberal philosophy – shows us that a
man cannot retrospectively buy his past debt nor can he absolve
himself of his past sins, he cannot buy his future back: Anna
becomes Comstock’s prisoner and an investment – she is not his
child, she is a tool, a biological capital which he could not
11 Ibidem, p. 30.
produce as an infertile man. Her purpose is equal with
prolonging the existence of Columbia – Comstock’s business.
On the other hand, we have Booker DeWitt who follows the
same pattern but in reverse: he has paid his debt by selling
Anna, but he wants her back, and the only possible way to do so
is to go into the future and combat himself, the debt
collector. But by going into the future he must once again
become an indebted man and a sinner, that is why the only thing
he remembers at the beginning of the game, when we meet him, is
the same sentence which marked the deal with Comstock: “Bring
us the girl and wipe away the debt”. Booker cannot escape being
indebted for as soon as he kills Comstock there will be no one
to pay for his debt nor forgive him his sins.
The creditor – debtor relationship of power is in fact a
circle (maybe the same one that the theme song of Bioshock tells
us about). It is impossible to break this circle because in
this particular situation the creditor is at the same time the
debtor. One cannot pay his own debt, loose his future and then
come back to retrieve it – that is what Bioshock Infinite tells us
– that the only way to break the vicious circle of neoliberal
relationship is to die. That is also why Booker must die during
his baptism into Comstock, he must die a sinner, he cannot be
absolved, because it is the act of forgiving the sins which
creates the capitalist, the creditor.
Part II
TINA - There is no alternative
Bioshock Infinite is a story about an indebted man. But this
sentence does not solve the most important questions which must
be posed after playing the game and experiencing its world.
First problem posed here is the possibility of recovering one’s
debt of future. And this question must be posed not from the
perspective of Booker DeWitt, but from the perspective of the
player, and in this particular situation by an European player.
In his stunning analysis of the European economic and social
situation after the recent Greek crisis, Berardi asks about the
status of relationship between money and time that is stored in
banks and represents the futures or pasts of the debtors. He
comes into a very interesting conclusion:
The crucial mystery, the crucial enigma, the crucial secret in the
financial age of capitalism is precisely this: is the money that is stored
in the bank my past time, (the time that I have spent in the past), or is
it the money that ensures the possibility of my buying the future?12
I think we are speaking of an enigma, because nobody knows about the
future, nobody knows what is hidden in the future time of debtors. So the
only way to solve this enigma is with violence. Either you pay, or you are
out. Either you give your present time as payment for the future time that
you have stored in German banks, or you’ll become poor. So in order to
avoid being expelled from the European Union, the Greeks and the Portuguese12 Franco „Bifo” Berardi: op. cit., p. 84.
and others are obliged to become poor. Recession, impoverishment, misery:
this is the way we are paying for our (imaginary) future: debt.13
And what if we want our futures back? What answer does
Bioshock Infinite give us? The hero of this story is as precarious
as one can be, a precarious sinner, indebted man. But probably
the most intriguing reading of the story of Bioshock Infinite would
be focused on the idea of wiping one’s debt by himself. What
can we do, we the precarious, we the indebted, we who played
the story of Booker DeWitt? First of all, we can go into the
capitalistic city in the clouds and try to take back our time
with violence. We are already branded as thugs, outlaws,
sinners – what do we care? And this is not a coincidence that
the hero of Bioshock Infinite, our hero, the hero of our times is
branded an outlaw as soon as he enters the capitalistic
paradise to take back what should have never been taken from
him. But Bioshock Infinite works against any true and intentional
fight with the neoliberalism: it shows that there can be no
community, no alliance, no friend except one’s particular
interest, one’s individual future. We as Booker never join the
Vox populi – it is even shown that that particular possibility in
the vast space time of alternatives leads nowhere14. This
brings us to the realization that Bioshock Infinite is on the side
of the neoliberal, that it’s story doesn’t give the indebted 13 Ibidem, p. 85.14 Matthew Murray in his review writes that: “The conflict with the working-class »Vox Populi« boils down to an overly simplistic »don’t become those you hate« message.” http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417083,00.asp [on-line], access: 15.09.2014. This overly simplistic message that the reviewer notes shows how the theme of workers movement turns into an exceptionally well made anti-worker political admonition.
man any real choice, does not show him any possibility of
forming a movement, of combating neoliberalism. What it does
instead is to shift the guilt from the capitalist to the debtor
making them one and the same person. This science-fiction and
paradoxical outcome must be deconstructed to show how
neoliberalism constructs a prison, an unavoidable circle of
debtor-creditor relationship with only death as an alternative
to escape it. By constructing a time-space alternative history,
the player is led to believe that Booker DeWitt and Zachary
Hale Comstock are one and the same person, and that only by
killing oneself before one chooses the wrong path in life, is
the only way out of bad future outcome. But according to the
game story killing Comstock “in the crib”, during his baptism,
does not wipe away the debt, does not prevent our precarious
protagonist to be little less precarious than he was or will
ever be. Furthermore, by annulling the act of baptism and
turning it into murder of Comstock – the religious alternative
of protagonist, a part of a community – the game story leaves
Booker on a road to be an indebted sinner. The question of debt
remains the same, the only thing that changes is the creditor
who will sooner or later come for Booker’s belongings. This is
a paradox, as the player is made to believe that what he does
is for the greater good, but at the same time he agrees for his
protagonist to remain an indebted man – the only real
alternative to religious extremism.
Here we arrive at the second question: why is every
community movement in the game a cradle for extremism,
fanatics, racism and bloodshed? Why is the Christian baptism
presented as the easiest route to Columbia – a theocratic
totalitarianism? Even more – the necessary route to even enter
the city (every newcomer has to go through baptism to be let
into the city). Why is the Vox populi, the only worker’s movement
in the game fighting for social rights and equality no
different from its oppressors? Why is it reduced to hints
pointing us to totalitarianism and communist propaganda or
populists15? The answer is simple: because Bioshock Infinite is
unable to present any alternative to neoliberalism, it is not
meant to side with or promote neither revolutionaries, nor
religious community. Moreover, this anti-communitarian
atmosphere promotes the absolute individualism of the
protagonist, another future hinting at him being a product of
neoliberal ideology. Paul Callagham is one of the few
critically oriented readers of Bioshock Infinite who focuses on the
change of trends that made the game more mainstream oriented
than its previous series. He writes:
15 Adam Serwer in his article and interview with Kane Levine, one of the makers of Bioshock Infinite clearly states that the Vox Populi are “populist extremists”: “Here, the ruling Founders—white nativist worshippers of America's Founding Fathers who seek to preserve the city as a neo-Confederate paradise—clash with populist extremists called the Vox Populi, who claim to represent the downtrodden.” http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/irrational-games-bioshock-infinite-creator-ken-levine-interview [on-line], access: 15.09.2014. One could ask, why is the worker’s movement organization depicted as a populistmovement? Why is fighting for equality and social privileges considered “populist”? This is an outward example of neoliberal propaganda newspeak which works against any symptoms of community movement. The dismissal of Vox Populi serves a political objective which neither Serwer nor Levine even take into consideration. In a quest to present America’s shady history to Americans neoliberalism hides its ideological poison.
It feels less a response to a dominant ideology than an affirmation
of one. As a result, the game itself, and the values of its creators, has
become a focus for the ways in which the wider games industry treats
underrepresented groups, violence and nuanced issues of race. In its early
stages, BioShock: Infinite explicitly makes a statement about its themes.
The player is given the choice to either punish or save an interracial
couple in front of a baying crowd at a fair. The surrounding imagery,
dialogue and sound are racially charged, and it is clearly intended to be a
shocking moment. Shocking it is, but it is then followed by the player
brutally killing guards and police when his true identity is discovered,
robbing the moment of any real opportunity for thought or nuance, and
reducing it to the very thing it wanted to critique - a sideshow at a
fair.16
Callagham’s reading challenges the immaturity and paradox
of shallow critique the game proposes by utilizing violence and
thus nullifying any argument it could have made. It is quite
sensational how this paradox has eluded most of the reviewers
who tend to blindly agree to this strategy of “fighting fire
with fire” calling Bioshock Infinite a reflection on or critique of
violence.
Another paradox of the world presented in Bioshock Infinite is
absolute lack of alternative, it is literally a world with
infinite alternatives with no alternative for Booker you are
playing. And I do not mean various possibilities given to
complete the main story (like choosing to kill a person or
not). My point is that the story of Bioshock Infinite is a story of
alternatives which you have no way of choosing. In fact, what
16 Paul Callaghan: (Bio)shock to the Mainstream, “Metro Magazine”, Winter 2013, Issue 177, p. 98.
Booker does with help of his daughter is to reduce the
alternatives because they seem to form a loop of misery for
both of them. Why speak about alternatives now? It might be
refreshing to look at the Bioshock Infinite, a game built on the
utopian vision of flying city of Columbia from the perspective
of Fredric Jameson’s reflection about the political
implications of utopian representation. Jameson writes:
Yet it is not only the invincible universality of capitalism which is
at issue: tirelessly undoing all the social gains made since the inception
of the socialist and communist movements, repealing all the welfare
measures, the safety net, the right to unionization, industrial and
ecological regulatory laws, offering to privatize pensions and indeed to
dismantle whatever stands in the way of the free market all over the world.
What is crippling is not the presence of an enemy but rather the universal
belief, not only that this tendency is irreversible, but that the historic
alternatives to capitalism have been proven unviable and impossible, and
that no other socioeconomic system is conceivable, let alone practically
available. The Utopians not only offer to conceive of such alternate
systems; Utopian form is itself a representational meditation on radical
difference, radical otherness, and on the systemic nature of the social
totality, to the point where one cannot imagine any fundamental change in
our social existence which has not first thrown off Utopian visions like so
many sparks from a comet.17
This long quote from Jameson’s introduction to his book on
utopia is extremely important in the analysis of Bioshock Infinite.
There are two main perspectives I see of reading the utopian
17 Fredric Jameson: Archeologies of the Future The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Verso: London 2005, p. XII.
impulse and utopian program present in the game: 1. As an
utopian depiction of systemic totalities; 2. As completely
anti-utopian project – in neoliberal sense. The first reading
focuses on the things I have already mentioned in this paper,
such as the critique of religious totalitarianism and a
thought-provoking vision of indebted man. The second reading
focuses on Bioshock Infinite as a simulacrum18 of alternative worlds
and choices, a simulacrum of choice given to Booker. The
simulacrum of alternative is best seen in the scene in which
Booker gives his Daughter to Robert Letuce. He absolutely has
no choice, he has to give her away as the laws of the universe
forbid him from moving on if he doesn’t replay this moment from
his past. He might be able to go to alternative storyline, but
he is unable to alternate it, meaning that the alternative will
always have the same outcome, ergo – it is not an alternative
at all. And Jameson would probably say that if there is no
alternative, then the utopia has to create one. And what does
the utopia about lack of alternatives give us? The ultimate
alternative: self-sacrifice of Booker DeWitt, his death. In
this sense I believe that Bioshock Infinite represents an anti-
utopian utopia or dystopia. It is a simulacrum of utopia, it
gives infinite alternatives which all lead to one neoliberal
outcome – the realization that the indebted man is as guilty as
the religious entrepreneur. Before Booker is drowned he is
being held by his daughters from alternative worlds, the
dialogue goes as follows:
18 I am using the notion of simulacrum after Jean Baudrillard, Conf. Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation, trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser, The Univeristy of Michigan Press 1995, pp. 1-25.
Elizabeth: You chose to walk away.
Elizabeth: But in other oceans, you didn’t.
Elizabeth: You took the baptism.
Elizabeth: And you were born again as a different man.
Booker: (whispers) Comstock.
Elizabeth: It all has to end.
Elizabeth: To have never started.
Elizabeth: Not just in this world.
Elizabeth: But in all of ours.
Booker: Smother him in the crib.
Elizabeth ensemble: Smother… smother… smother…
Elizabeth: Before the choice is made.
Elizabeth: Before you are reborn.
Preacher Witting: And what name shall you take my son?
Elizabeth (on the right side): He’s Zachary Comstock.
Elizabeth (on the left side): He’s Booker DeWitt.
Booker: No… I’m both.
(He is drown by different Elizabeths)
The final dialogue is not only grim but it marks a very
important anti-utopian moment in Bioshock Infinite: the
nullification of all alternatives. Booker is drown so that no
choice will be made, so that no future will be chosen, so that
no alternative will be born. This also marks a dramatic shift
in our reading of Bioshock Infinite. The simulacrum of infinite
choices and alternatives crumbles as the moment of making the
alternative – baptism – turns into a murder, “smothering in the
crib”. The choice of words is not without meaning in this
scene, as “smothering in the crib” points to the fact that we
are dealing with a newborn here (not only in a sense of
baptism). The crib is nothing other than the very possibility
of being reborn – one of the motives present in many utopias.
We must also remember that with this act the flying city of
Columbia will never be constructed, and thus there will be no
Utopia, no possibility of any utopia. To sum it all up, Bioshock
creates a vision of utopia following a theocratic program, but
at the same time it delivers a stunning solution to the utopian
impulse which was the foundation of its story – it turns in an
anti-utopia in the sense of eliminating possible alternatives.
This paradox makes it not only a very valuable experience for a
utopia reader, but also a very interesting material for a
general socio-economic critique of neoliberal ideology present
in various virtual world representations.
Bibliography:
Baudrillard Jean: Simulacra and Simulation, trans. by Sheila
Faria Glaser, The Univeristy of Michigan Press 1995.
Berardi Franco „Bifo”: The Uprising On Poetry and Finance,
Semiotext(e): Los Angeles 2012.
Bioshock Infinite Wikia:
http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Booker_DeWitt [on-line], access:
15.09.2014.
Callaghan Paul: (Bio)shock to the Mainstream, “Metro Magazine”,
Winter 2013, Issue 177.
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