Just kidding, haha! It's not Crysis 2, it's a picture of Wall Street following 9-11. This is Crysis 2:
No, I am not attempting to politicize a first-person shooter (or joke about a tragedy). I just find it worthy of note that nobody else yet has pointed out the visual symbolism. Crytek's Cevat Yerli spoke of an international sense of attachment to, and desire to defend, the city of New York as one of the emotional forces driving Crysis 2's world, but 9-11 never came up. Nobody at all made that association when looking at screenshots of the city covered in drifting ash?
Really, it doesn't seem like anyone has, and if they did, they didn't consider it significant. Again, I'm not necessarily saying anyone should. It just seems we've come a long way from the time when Fallout 3 concept art of post-apocalypse Washington, mistaken for an extremist fantasy, raised government hackles.
For more context, you should watch "The Wall" trailer for Crysis 2, which opens with a series of missives and memorials for lost loved ones trying to find one another in the midst of disaster. I've lived in New York City since 2002, but when 9-11 happened, I remember commuting to work in Massachusetts, listening to Howard Stern on my car radio. I'll never forget the poignancy in hearing the abrasive shock jock serving as something of a community pillar, using his broadcast platform to take calls from people who were trying to find other people, unsure whether or not they were alive.
Is there an intentional recollection in the imagery of Crysis 2 that's no longer painful enough to employ in entertainment? Or is it truly that we can now use visuals and concepts like these without even making the connection?
Is it that we're intended to make the connection, in the world of Crysis 2, with the sense of violation we felt at the images in New Yorkers' backyards at that time, and that it doesn't need to be said? Or is it that it's simply become okay to bash up New York again, the way we can and do with any other game world?
Does this mean it's not "too soon" anymore? Does this mean we've "healed", if we can look at this and just see a video game?
22 comments:
Almost nine years now, so I think we can say it's no longer too soon. Our attention spans in the current era seem limited to weeks, not a decade.
By comparison, US involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975. Apocalypse Now released in 1979.
It is hard to say. For those of us that lost loved ones that day it will always be too soon. The crew at giantbomb also thought that the symbolism hit a little close for comfort. For me personally, I can look at a game or film or read a book that leverages that emotion without feeling disturbed. Of course, if this came out the day after then I would feel differently.
No longer to soon? I think not. How long is long enough? I don't think anyone can say.
Cloverfield was a very successful film that completely (and IMO unfairly) co-opted the visual impact of the aftermath of 9-11. Those images are forver engrained in us and as long as the medium exploring the imagary does so for more than shock value,it is not "too soon".
Hard to say. I think everybody makes the connection, but nobody yells 'too soon!', at least not yet. It will be interesting to follow the press, and their future reactions though.
Well, you're not the first and only one seeing parallels ;)
Crysis doesn't intentionally evoke 9/11
I must that I agree with supergg2k. For those that lost loved ones, I think it may always be too soon. For those personally disconnected from the 9-11, that's a different story. Great article though.
I think this just shows that Crytek has done a really good job of dodging the issue. It never came up in my mind either.
As a New Yorker, I'm sure you're as aware as I am that we no longer carry around with us the general sense of fear and loss that we used to after the event. I don't think, as a community, that we bear any special sensitivity toward imagery of our city being damaged any longer.
On the other hand, I know a guy who worked in that building, who lost co-workers, and who couldn't get to work on time that day. He woke up screaming from nightmares of the event for months. I'm sure it still haunts him. I can see this imagery being unpleasant for him, and other survivors. I think it may never be long enough to be ok with imagery like that.
I believe that the impact of things like this depends on the context. I think we're able to sympathize with a fictional victimized new York more than we are shocked by it, if it's handled sensitively. In the past 9 years, we've seen more aggression directed our way by other Americans than we have by foreign powers. We have become the demon of the radical right, when once the entire country united with us in our suffering. Now the jingoistic patriotism and chest thumping is distasteful, to put it mildly. Now our tragedy has become the excuse for rolling back our civil liberties.
So I don't think the destruction is what lingers with us from day to day. I'm speaking in very broad terms, obviously, so there are necessarily many people for whom the pain of that event is a constant struggle. But generally, as a city and culture, our struggle has shifted. Now we worry about our civil rights, our friends over seas in fruitless, criminal wars, and our same sex partners who cannot have what they need and deserve. So much of that started with that one awful day.
So how do we respond to renderings of the event? How do we feel, reminded of it in our media? Speaking for myself, I'm much more offended to see it trumped up as some moment of American strength, after years of seeing America turn on us. When something like crysis 2 makes New York appear as something vulnerable, but worth defending, I sympathize. I worry less about images of destruction and more about propaganda.
To put it more succinctly, I'm ok with the crysis 2 images, but that 9/11 movie with Nicholas Cage is repulsive.
One New Yorker's take on it, I guess.
I'm more uncomfortable watching people play Modern Warfare 2, for what it's worth.
I was uncomfortable playing Modern Warfare 1 but not at all playing Modern Warfare 2.
I remember clearly the first time I played the level in MW1 where you, as an American soldier, drop into the nameless Arab country and make your way to the television station to try to capture one of the leaders behind the war. Running through busted buildings and fighting enemies from all directions was intense and scary. It probably had as much to do with the situation in Iraq 2 years ago as much as the level and encounter design. Since I'm not in the military, I have no idea what a real combat situation is like, but MW1 made me think that maybe it was something approaching that.
On the other hand, MW2's story was so ridiculous that I had no feelings at all running through American suburbs and downtown DC. It was a technically more impressive game, but emotionally inferior.
I still feel a tiny twinge of unease when I see collapsing buildings in movies (any Michael Bay movie does this) but I don't feel like games or movies are wrong to depict them. After a decade I think most people have moved on.
Those who were personally affected by 911 will most likely never heal from that "too soon" feeling.
For what it's worth, I think the collective sensitivity to the events is old enough that it's not inappropriate to draw aesthetic or emotional parallels to it.
That is, however, coming from a very personally unaffected standpoint.
I thought it. Well, It thought poor bloody New York cops a flogging every year from something. Even Godzirra and his mate from Cloverfield gave it a pizzling.
Quick question-- did you intentionally post this on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing?
While this scene may be years back in New York history, and in cases memory, it is not more than a day or so old in other places.
Should those people be upset? Or are the New York people set aside for their time of morning after the smoke and ash settle?
I realize we live in a amazing society that respects other peoples feelings. But WOW, how is the army of two, or any other middle east shooter worse than this?
You may think that I am coming down on the side of quiet. But I suggest the opposite.
Instead of FEELING for people we have a rich playground to play in thier place. In that place you may be killed, but at least you would know what you, and even more so, what they were dying for.
OFC it is family, and friends that any dies for, but I am talking about the overall arch.
Thoughts?
-C
For some strange reason, I am reminded of an old SNL skit. (Transcript here.)
Damn that's crazy, 9-11 shouldn't be in any videogame. Crysis 2 graphics look sick though.
I eagerly await any broaching of a sensitive subject, whether handled carefully or not. The quicker it gets into peoples' minds that it's ok to "go there", that just because you touch on a subject it doesn't mean you are lacking respect for the subject, the quicker it becomes a scar rather than an open wound.
The fact that some people still see this sort of twist on the imagery presented in the Crysis 2 trailer show's that people aren't past it yet. The people that aren't yet probably never will be. Which is ok. It's a big moment in history. Like dropping the big one on Japan, it's always going to be an issue for some. But I'm incredibly happy that someone can create something like this without worrying about it possibly being seen as insensitive. New York is such an amazing place, I don't want to constantly feel like I should feel bad when someone makes a disaster movie/game, or a horror movie/game, or a post-apocalyptic landscape featuring the Big Apple.
As qualifying information, I'm from Northern Ireland, where my home town has been blown up several times. Laughing about it and taking the piss out of it all has helped more than dwelling on it.
I don't feel like it's too soon to use images and things like that. As a medium, I feel like everything is fair game, do what you want. However, I am a NY-er and don't expect me to be comfortable with it or give you a pat on the back for being edgy.
I don't feel it's ever too soon to use images and sounds of something like that. I think that a medium can use whatever they want to. That being said, I'm a NY-er, and don't expect me to feel comfortable with it and don't expect me to pat you on the back for being "edgy".
You have the right to make what you want. I have the right to not buy it and think you're tasteless.
I'm more uncomfortable watching people play Modern Warfare 2, for what it's worth.
I agree. both of those games tread a pretty weird line. The general feeling from riding a tank through an Arab neighborhood and listening to fellow american soldiers remark about not being able to kill them on sight is disquieting. What with the AP reporters having been killed by american bombers in a scene that looks like nothing so much as it does a scene in Modern Warfare is especially frightening.
I wonder how much Infinity Ward wanted to drive home the cruelty of our occupation, and whether there was any intention at all to give those scenes the muted feeling of horror they posess in order to make us question our operations there.
In 2000, the makers of the game Deus Ex had to leave the World Trade Center towers out of the New York City skyline because of technical limitations. They justified it in-game by saying that the towers had been destroyed in a terrorist attack.
So... yeah.
I believed you with that picture thing for a second. However it only took a second to read on, then I said "duh". That would of been bad taste. But it's only a matter of time.
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