Magical Realism in Limbo

(In the interest of full disclosure, I've played this game before, though this is of course my first time throwing literary terminology at it.)

One thing that jumped out at me when I played this game recently was that it seemed to have many of the traits associated with magical realism, in one form or another. Authorial resistance is one of the more obvious ones; at no point does the game offer any concrete information about the nature of the setting, the protagonist, or even the controls. As is typical for magical realist works, this serves to make the whole thing much more bizarre and mysterious than it would be if we knew what was going on. I'd say there's also a strong sense of metafiction, though this is somewhat inevitable in many video games; when controlling a character directly, there's much less distinction between the character and the viewer/player/reader than there is in a medium with predetermined outcomes.

I just wish we had been assigned the entire game (it's short) so that I could see what people thought of the ending.

Limbo

I downloaded this game and made my roommate play with me because I was scared stuff was going to pop out and it would be like the exorcist maze game. Luckily it was not; although it was somewhat garish, overall it was not too bad.

When I first started the game I wasn't quite sure what to think so I started over analyzing EVERYTHING. I thought the idea was to experience limbo or it was some sort of sick trick. Then as I went along and actually made achievements, I began to realize there was actually goal. I thought it was fun and challenging and I liked having to use my surroundings to get to the next step.

 The concept of the game directly relates to this class because it uses horror in a suspenseful way. The entire game is shrouded in a gray mist, complete with creepy forest, traps and monsters. I love the idea of surviving, using your mind, and horror were all combined into this enjoyable, creative game.

Tme Travel

In the movie Primer two friends unknowingly create a machine for time travel.  Upon discovery they use the machine to make money and save a friend’s life.  Time travel is a concept that fascinates humans; the idea to go back and undo mistakes in the past to better your own life  The idea to be able and go back and change events that have occurred in the process undoes who we think we are and makes us capable of taking actions we would never have taken.  The fact that if we make a mistake we can go back and fix it and just keep repeating this cycle till our life is how we want causes us to be capable of actions that we would see as immoral and overall wrong without this ability to undo it as seen by the two friends who bring harm upon themselves and others. Mankind’s biggest wish is to be able to change what is in the past to change the course of their life. However, what makes time travel   such an intriguing concept is what changes in other people’s lives will they be the same or will that one change cause the butterfly effect.  The butterfly effect is the theory that a minor change say stepping on a bug could completely overturn the future.  This concept is extremely popular in science fiction and is common issue in time travel movies.  The ultimate question that is the central conflict within time travel scenarios is can one small difference change the future in drastic ways. 

Time out of Control

Primer uses time travel as a warning to the future about the advancement of technology, including but not limited to the concept of time travel. While Carruth's Primer revolves around time travel, the message is the same regardless of the type of human advancement: we cannot allow technology to escape our control. This is similar to the idea of artificial intelligence, in that even if we come to have the resources and knowledge to create something, if we cannot control its actions or its outcome, then mankind is better off without. We are at a point in our society where innovation is more about the improving conveniences in life, not purely for survival. Technology such as time travel is far too risky, because while it could benefit the human race, the consequences that could come from it are too great. Another way to look at time travel is sort of like nuclear weapons, because both are completely unnecessary, as well as catastrophic if everyone had the power to use them. Primer uses the butterfly effect in the same way that Ray Bradbury does in "The Sound of Thunder" where humans can go T-Rex hunting, and one man steps off the designated path and ultimately alters the course of history with his small mistep.

Primer

        At the risk of sounding like a simpleton, it didn’t hit me until watching “Primer” for a second time on Netflix after class that the bewildering “boomerang” sequence of events in the film was likely intended to mimic the experiences of Abe and Aaron as they adjust to reliving the same 24-hour time loop. The problematic creation of character “doubles,” which we have encountered in previous works such as Fuentes’ Aura and “The Father-Thing” also engage the audience with the characters’ growing disorientation. With so many circuits of the same events being made and a new set of “Abes and Aarons” emerging from each subsequent circuit, we, and the authentic Abe and Aaron (whoever they are) begin to question which “set” is at the heart of the narrative.

                On a bit of a different note, I could see this film as a whole being used as a criticism of the exaltation of laboratory research. While Abe and Aaron have somehow stumbled upon a way to successfully manipulate time under very specific conditions and within a closely monitored environment (“the Box”), their attempts to alter even minute details of their current lives (investing in stocks, etc) are complicated by unexpected consequences (Aaron telling his wife about the invention and Mr. Granger discovering and using the Box). Ethical and/or philosophical grievances aside, the failure of the protagonists to account for factors like Granger’s intrusion could be compared to the potential dangers of certain real-world scientific experiments that, while successful in contained environments and thus theoretically viable processes/solutions/etc., cannot or should not be “toyed with” in a world outside the lab, where conditions are never ideal and in which innumerable external variables exist that “theory” has no ability to regulate.

The Cabin in the Woods

There is just so many things to talk and write about this fantastic movie. First, we have the parodying of horror tropes in the film itself, then just the uncanny idea of someone controlling our every move. I personally think that everything in the film was nicely done. One aspect that I want to talk about in particular is the combination of genres into one big movie. The Gothic aspect of the film was present through the ritual and setting itself. It was scary, secluded and in a controlled environment. Not once did the characters have a chance of surviving the outcome if not for the super-always-high Marty. The ritual is very Gothic in that it is done to appease the "Old Gods" because there is a belief that these higher, stronger beings exist and need to be placated through the suffering of mortals and through the spilling of blood. It is also Romantic as well because there is this notion that the five individual have to play a certain role in order to accomplish their goal. It is goes back to the idea of society needing these positions filled because without a paragon of virtue being a example of goodness then how would people know that being a whore is a bad thing?

Radio as a Science Fiction Tool

The best stories are ones that make you feel like they are real, and the best way to do that is to present them in a believable way, through logical character development and plot. Even in "absurd" situations, like science fiction and fantasy, the audience can feel like it could happen, if not now, or on this planet, then certainly someday or in a far away place. In the past, the only ways to create this feeling was through books and plays. Radio provided a new means for realism in fiction, and Orson Welles and his broadcast team took advantage of it to great effect.

Radio at this time had helped to bring the nation together, and it was a main form of communication as well as entertainment. It was interesting how this dual nature of radio broadcast helped shape the fear of the listener, suspending the listener in a state of uncertainty. Even for those that knew the broadcast was merely a story, it was told in such a way to draw the audience in, to make them think about the possibility of such a world and such an event actually taking place.

Fear of The Unexplained

In Primer, Limbo, and the War of the Worlds podcast, we find a common theme in fear of that which is not understood. In Primer, thought the film is classified as science fiction, we are struck with fear of the time travel we do not completely understand. This fear is propagated when we come to know that the time travel has caused some unknown damage, presumably in the minds of the main characters. Limbo represents more a fear of the unknown as the game is set in limbo, the state between life and death. With hardly any proof to the existence of this state, both the state of existence and the game may be classified as fiction/horror. This classification, however, does not detract from the fact that Limbo preys on humanity's fear of death and what waits beyond. Since we have no facts to offer concrete proof of what waits beyond death's veil, death and what lies beyond is constantly used to frighten audiences of all forms of entertainment. The War of the Worlds podcast also preyed on the human fear of the unexplained. With no concrete proof of intelligent alien life, people like H. G. Wells may only speculate what would occur should foreign entities attempt to invade. These fears of unexplained concepts, (time travel, alien invasion, what happens after death) are common to science fiction and provide audiences with not only a thrill, but possible explanations for that which cannot be explained. It is for that reason that science fiction has become so popular in recent years; everyone is looking for answers to unsolved questions in science fiction media.

The Little Boy

Limbo was a really fun game to play! Though simple and somewhat abstract in its design, it is sophisticated in its game execution. At first I was on the main screen for awhile before I noticed that there was a little boy (I thought it was still loading). Then I pushed the arrow keys and saw him rise from the bushes. I found out how to use the rest of the controls in the settings when you hit "esc." The setting is rather dark and dim, simulating soft and harsh textures of the environment from obstacle to obstacle that the little boy faces on his journey. This creates depth and represents a kind of realism. Through that type of realism and the character of the silhouette boy, it creates an uncanny world that the player feels connected to through the interaction that the boy makes. He struggles through obstacles as we can see through his humanistic movements, from pulling, pushing, climbing and jumping, and dying. This semblance to human movement makes the player attribute emotions of sympathy and empathy to the character, even though it is merely a silhouette of a small boy with bright eyes. Because of this, I felt super accomplished and gratified whenever I went through the multiple obstacles because I felt like I helped the boy on whatever destination he is trying to get to. The sound is pretty quiet, you only hear the rustling of his feet and natural sounds of water splashing, snapping booby traps, rolling boulders, etc. This adds to the sense of mystery and overall atmosphere of the game. The fact that the game is so mysterious and dark with no dialogue (so far) and no real instruction as to how to control the boy at first, enables the player to feel more engaged in it.I felt determined to go through the game to find out what it all leads to and if anything would reveal the story behind the little boy.

Primer: Science fiction without any explanation

Most science fiction that we read/ watch always explains how the science fiction actually works. In Paycheck, the SF by Philip K. Dick explains time travel by Einsteins theory. Much like the film directed by Robert Zemeckis, the time machine in Back to the Future also does not have further explanation of how the machine actually works. This attribute is interesting in that the direction the story can explore is literally endless. We do not know how the machine works, and it is unpredictable to us of what it's capabilities are just as much as it is to the characters in the novel. Many SF also decimate information by having one character not understanding the mechanisms of a system. In Primer, Abe explained to Aaron the concepts of what is happening. He brought Aaron to each one of the professors so that we as watchers understand how the time travel mechanism works.

Limbo

Limbo was very interesting in using its dark environment to create anxiety. Limbo was unique from many other video games, in that was made with only shades of black, white, and grey visuals. These visuals, along with the unsettling nature of the environment, were used to create anxiety for players. The video game gives no pretext as to what Limbo was about: you play as a boy that suddenly wakes up in the middle of the woods who gradually advances through this environment. What really caught me off guard was the amount of gore and detail that went into the boy's potential deaths, in that one would not expect such a level of violence in Limbo despite its already established dark nature. All these things come together to make a truly unsettling trial and error video game.

Primer: Consequences of Time Travel

The central theme to Shane Carruth’s Primer is one about how the advancement in technology can potentially lead to unpredictable events caused by the technology. As Abe and Aaron discover the time-travel capabilities of their invention they begin exploiting it to make money in the stock market. However after they begin time travelling they soon observe odd things happening. They discover the father of Abe’s girlfriend (Rachel) in a vegetative state caused by time travel. Abe and Aaron never revealed to Rachel’s father their machine, implying that his discovery of their machine could have been made through their doubles. It is also revealed later in the film that Aaron’s double actually drugged the original Aaron. Here the audience see’s the negative consequences of the duos invention. They created a machine that they did not entirely understand or could predict and thus became victim to unforeseeable “side-effects” of time-travel. In the end the two part ways as they cannot agree on what to do with the time travel device reinforcing the idea that it is impossible to predict all possible consequences of a technology and the great potential new technology has to disrupt and even harm our own lives. 

Primer

The film Primer presents a version on the stereotypical "time travel adventure." Abe and Aaron create a time machine device, and as they discover that it actually functions properly, they build bigger protocols until it can readily transport people. In the beginning, the excitement about this new discovery is clear. The two travel through time and there are seemingly no negative retributions. However, as they continue to use this time machine, the consequences of time travel begin to emerge. This film poses a warning that time travel is dangerous, and that the continuum of time and space is not something that should be altered or played with by humans, or any other species. Because the whole concept of time and travel is vastly unknown, it should not be explored. Time travel will ultimately lead to dire consequences. Thomas Granger's comatose state is a prime example which suggests the dangers of messing with time. Because there are so many things unknown about time and how it works, playing with this abstract idea will lead to dangerous, if not fatal, incidences. This reminds me of a part in the third Harry Potter book that deals with the issue of time travel. Hermione and Harry use a time turner to go back in time to help Sirius escape. However, they had to be very meticulous as to not change anything else. This is the butterfly effect. Changing one little thing will alter the rest of history.

War of the Worlds Broadcast

In War of the Worlds, the narrator tells of the invasion of Earth within an hour-long commentary on the instances of it happening. The realism of the commentary is astounding considering that the whole thing was simply a prank, but the uses of the scientists switching out to talk about strange events talking about explosions on Mars, and the “proof” made this broadcast much more realistic. The broadcast played on people’s fear of the unknown, despite the advancements in technology, there is still so much unknown. This unknown fear can be seen through the “alien technology” and “heat ray” that was fired at many on comers. The threat and realization that humans may not be the only powers on the planet, frightened people to the extreme, thus their crazed reactions and responses.  Furthermore, the use of radio as the only source of communication made the response much more violent – it had always been considered a reliable source, so why shouldn’t it now? These issues all led to the widespread panic of the War of the Worlds broadcast.

Limbo (9)

The moment the game Limbo starts there isn't a single rule or description of what the player should do, the player ultimately has to figure everything out by themselves, excluding what the controls are. The entire demo sets a very dark eerie atmosphere, in which this little boy is running through an isolated forest that is basically pitch black. Through the course of the game the player begins to learn how to direct this boy in order to maneuver past the traps that has been set up to kill him. As the game progresses, the player begins to feel a connection towards the unknown boy as we become disappointed or angry when he dies by the bear traps, rock, or spider. We want to help this boy to achieve his goal, even though as players we're not quite sure what it is. Finally, I noticed that notions of nature was definitely a key aspect in this game, which plays on the theme of the Gothic

Limbo(Blog #9)

I actually enjoyed playing the Limbo Demo. From the beginning, we see that the character we play as is a small boy in a foggy black and white forest. Although I was not entirely sure of the goal, I just moved on forward. I then had to go through various obstacles that were fun yet challenging at the same time. I liked the fact that some of the obstacles required me to think outside of the box. For instance, there was one particular obstacle that got me frustrated – getting across the little pond without drowning. I won't reveal how I got across it, so everyone else who hasn't played yet could figure it out. I really enjoyed how this game made me feel involved, which reminded me of metafiction.

The War of Worlds Broadcast

“The War of Worlds” Broadcast is a unique example of listeners being truly brought into the realm of the supernatural without any notion that what they are experiencing is not reality. In 1938 a radio station re-enacted a portion of “The War of the Worlds” as a Halloween Prank, but because the broadcast lasted an hour listeners that tuned in after the short introduction didn’t know that the broadcast was a prank. As a result the listeners believed a Martian invasion had occurred and thus experienced the supernatural while in the realm of reality. The manner by which the broadcast is portrayed creates a sense of false relaxation in the listener followed by anxiety and fear. Initially the broadcast is filled with joyful music and occasional interruptions with news about odd occurrences in space. The news is short-lived; however, and the programming returns quickly to playing music, causing the listener to believe there is no need for alarm. But as the act progresses the news interruptions become more frequent and the reporters have a sense of anxiety and bewilderment in their voices.  It is important to note that the scientist that are portrayed are initially reporting that they have full understanding of the occurrences but as the broadcast progresses the scientist are unable to explain the apparent “alien” invasion. The fact that scientist, the voice of reason for society, are unable to explain the assumed alien beings creates a sense of fear in the listener. The lack of confidence in both the reporters and scientist causes the listener to enter into a state of panic. Thus through the use of sound the creators of the broadcast were able to create a supernatural occurrence in the realm of reality. 

Limbo

Limbo is a virtual world. It is a computer game where the player is attempting to go forward through a wasteland. At first, the player doesn't have any clue about what is going on, but as the game progresses the player learns how to direct the character through the maze of obstacles. I played with my friend Paige. When we got to the spider and it stabbed the character he died. We screamed, partly from surprise and partly from horror. We had been working so hard towards some unknown goal that we had become emotionally involved, and the disappointment from the loss of the little guy caused us the players to react. The game is a type of meta-fiction. It requires the player to bridge the gap between reality and this new fictional world. The game allows the player to bridge the gap more effectively than most books or movies do. The player has to physically push buttons to make the character move and the player has control over the character's well-being. It is not such a jump of imagination to put yourself in the little characters shoes.