Games, Rap, Rock and Reeboks

If you have got the right sneakers you know who you are.

“I am what I am.”
(Mike Skinner in an advert for Reebok)

If you make music, you don’t know who you are.

“I am he
As you are he
As you are me
And we are all together.”
(John Lennon in “I am the Walrus”)

If you play the game right, you know that you don’t want to know  who you are. Let’s look at this:

“The basic plot of Half-Life 2 is pretty simple in concept, much as the first game was. You are once again Gordon Freeman.”
(Half-Life 2 by Valve Corporation)

Am I Gordon Freeman? Pardon me, who said so?  Do I know, who I am? Maybe. Do I want to know, who I am: Not really.

It appears to me that the problem is such: If I find out, that I am Gordon Freeman, I have to cope with pretty unpleasant situations, e.g. “You are going to have to murder a lot of hostile beings in order to save the day.” That’s not fun anymore, if I really am Gordon. It’s frightening, it is tedious, it is dirty, all the blood sucks and it is painful as hell.

If on the other hand I find out, that I am Mathias Fuchs, controlling some Gordon Freeman, I do not know any longer, why I spend my time murdering hostile beings. There are better ways to save the day.

I guess it is best not to know, who I am. Consciously avoiding to identify with me or him, allows me to float amongst viewpoints, positions and actions. Half-believing in being a lunatic is semi-reasonable.

“You apparently lose control of your body and viciously stab an apparently random old guy in a café toilet. As he regains control and realises what has happened, it becomes up to you to get him out of his immediate fix.”
(Fahrenheit by Quantic Dream, to be released next week)

Good fun, day saved, nobody got hurt! I can avoid the pain of having stabbed somebody randomly in a café toilet by being a poor version of the stabber. And whereas Reebok advertiser Mike Skinner states:

“I never quite fitted into any scene. So I made my own. It’s better to be yourself than a poor version of someone else”,
the real gamer shouts out loudly and proudly:

“I can fit into any conceivable scene. I am the gloriously poor version of whomever I want to be. Halleluja!”

The half-believe of half-living beings from the game world differs not only from the world of corporate pseudo-identities, but also from the complete confusion of the game called Rock. (Not to be mixed up with Rockstar Games ;-))

Rock Music made us familiar with creative identity challenges, where we were supposed to be them, and they want to be us. Bob Dylan complained:

“I am trying so hard to be what I am,
but everybody wants me to be just like them.”

Tragic, for Mr. Dylan, but a completely symmetrical problem, because everybody (the record industry) wanted us (the audience) to be like them (the rock heroes) as well. David Bowie wanted to be like the “Common People” yet the common people dressed, hair-dressed and behaved as if they were him.

”I want to be like common people,
I want to do what common people do.
I want to be like you.”

Rock musicians have an identity problem which is two-directional, they want to be like the common people and they think that the common people want to be like them. Sometimes they are flattered by that, sometimes they are frightened by it, as Eminem seems to be. Uncertain of him being anything other than his listeners he states in an interview on 30^th June 2000 with Free Press pop music critic Brian McCollum: ”Sometimes I feel like I'm living my life for everyone else.”

In his No. 1 song “the Real Slim Shady, he phrases the issue:

“And there’s a million of us just like me
Who cuss like me
Who just don't give a fuck like me
Who dress like me
Walk, talk and act like me.”
(Eminem in “The Real Slim Shady”)

With a slightly different twist, put into the lovely lyrics of C-Murder’s modest rhyming, he believes that the “niggas live like motherfuckin’ G”:

“You don't wanna fuck with C
You don't wanna fuck with me
All my niggas know we live for weed and money
Platinum and vogues on the walls of my company
Cuz TRU niggas live like motherfuckin' G

I make money off the words that I speak
I flip a cassette like I used to flip a quarter key
The rap game is like standin' on a block
Every tape I sell is like a motherfuckin' dime rock
Give me the money so you can keep the bitches
They don't play no game C-Murder bout his riches.”
(C-Murder in “The Rap Game”)

The “rap game” is not a videogame. Both share a conflict in identity of the players, but the mode of deception differs radically.  There are 3 possible modes of deception:

1 - The rapper is a player, who wants to be player and pawn at the same time.

2 - The gamer is a player who prefers to not know whether he is player or pawn

3 - The consumer of life-style commodities is a pawn who thinks, that he might be the player.
Of these three deceptions, the last one is the most pathetic one.

Mathias Fuchs