By Omar (@siegarettes)

This article is intended as a response piece to The Koj Delusion, and is best read following it.

Content Warning: This deals with exploitation, sexual assault and torture. 

In the Koj Delusion, an article published by Eurogamer, Metal Gear aficionado Rich Stanton writes about the series’ approach to various social issues, questions of exploitation, and the distaste often prevalent in reactions to particular elements. 

Of particular note, is his take on MGSV’s character Quiet, a nearly naked female sniper who is also mute, and the torture, child abuse, and rape in Ground Zeroes that is revealed on a set of tapes found around the game’s complex. (A rundown and commentary of those scenes can be found in this piece over at the Guardian). 

As Stanton would tell you, “Kojima thrives on how underestimated Metal Gear is as a narrative vehicle.” Throughout the article, his tone is both cautious and reverent, questioning the series’ use of various methods of exploitation, while strongly believing that the series has a place in bringing meaningful critique to the ills of our society. 

Stanton brings forth the rape, torture, and setting of the game as deliberate mirrors of the US post-9/11 policies that led to similar horrific acts being committed in detainment camps such as Abu Ghrahib. He talks about how Ground Zeroes led him to find out more about these events, helped bring him awareness of these events. To him, Metal Gear is a vehicle to explore and bring critique to these issues, and its reputation for the absurd allows it to fly under the radar and tackle issues that would otherwise be considered taboo. In his words:

This is why he can make a game like last year’s Ground Zeroes, which takes unflinching aim at the modern USA and the War on Terror and condemns the philosophies behind and the realities of its internment camps in such a complete way. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single piece of mainstream entertainment that does this as well as Ground Zeroes. 

I generally find myself respectful of Stanton’s opinions, even when, or especially when, I disagree with him, but at this point I only felt insulted. The idea that replication of an atrocity comments on it is false. The use of exploitation to critique exploitative practices still requires you to exploit the subject, regardless of the questions of effectiveness. 

When talking about Quiet, the aforementioned naked sniper, Stanton quotes Kojima’s own words where he states “I created her character as an antithesis to the women characters [that] appeared in the past fighting games who are excessively exposed.” He remarks that the intent behind this is to take aim at those who’d find a character like her perfectly acceptable, to send up the typical modern female action hero. 

While I don’t doubt those intentions, attempts to out-extreme our absurd modern standards either tend to be eclipsed with time, or fail by default. (Check out the critical reaction to Hotline Miami, whose vision of ultraviolence enamored and horrified writers but whose sequel diminished it and caused a reevaluation of the first). It’s difficult to believe in a vision which aims to make the audience complicit in this exploitation when that same audience is content to embrace, on the daily, media that features adjustable breast physics and the commodification of various sexual rewards. The audience is already more than willing to practice the same complicity here that they do daily. 

Likewise, Ground Zeroes’ attempt to attack the inhumanity of US practices fails because those actions have already been normalized, and so it only continues to contribute to the creeping comfort we as a society have with it.

Ironically, it was shows such as FOX’s 24 that helped legitimize and normalize torture as a “necessary evil” in the public eye, a show whose main character is played by none other than the voice actor for the series’ currently leading character, Kiefer Sutherland. The show enjoyed enormous success in the States, as well as prompting many to question whether or not it inspired real life torture. In fact, the parallels between the show’s torture segments and the atrocities committed by the US became especially obvious in light of the recent CIA torture report, which exposed the incredible extremes and moral failures that the agency went to in attempts to obtain information.(The report also found that torture repeatedly failed to bring out usable information, though this isn’t reflected in the public’s perception or the television show).

Stanton also dismisses critique of “Skullface”, the character responsible for the aforementioned rape and torture. While his evaluation of of the argument that “a game with an antagonist named Skullface shouldn’t deal with such issues” as a “non-starter” is technically correct, he fails the engage with the underlying sentiments. These actions are performed by someone so cartoonishly evil (whose appearance immediately calls to mind Marvel’s Red Skull, a supernatural Nazi elite) that it implies, and contributes to, the mindset that the horrors explored in Ground Zeroes are something that is done by “evil” people for the sake of evil, rather than human beings, agents and soldiers fighting for what they believe to be the greater good, people who are celebrated and rewarded for their contributions.

Most insulting, however, was the declaration of “Hands up if you knew about these abuses perpetrated in the name of freedom and liberty." 

Yes, Mr. Stanton, I am aware of the atrocities committed in the name of God and Country. I am aware of the policies of extraordinary rendition that disappears citizens without trial away for "enhanced interrogation”. I am aware of the systems of prejudice, xenophobia, and profiling that picks them out.
I am aware that the city I live in is reported to house a Chicago Police black site where suspects have disappeared to, to be tortured and sexually assaulted in ways as horrific as those that “Skullface” performed. I am aware of reports that these sites may have been where torture methods used in places like Abu Ghrahib were inspired and refined. 

I am aware of these because I am an Arab-American who has to live with this knowledge everyday, and no, nothing in Ground Zeroes provides me with anything but the feeling that the pain of human beings, likely human beings who look like me, have experienced is being anything but exploited.  

So while I am insulted, I am not outraged. I’m upset because I am reminded of the constant devaluation of human beings, disappointed in reading this from someone I held in esteem. I’m disappointed that a mundane “neutrality” is being praised as nuance, a neutrality likely born of geographic and emotional distance, will be raised to a position of authority and used to bludgeon and immediately dismiss critiques of the issues presented. But I guess I’m also used to it.

Stanton states that Metal Gear has both the right to explore these issues, and that its failures do not devalue its successes. To that end, I’d say that its successes do not excuse its failures. Enjoying Metal Gear’s brand of excess does not come with exceptions to its tasteless mishandlings of real world issues, or continual exploitation of women. Achieving greatness does not imbue exceptionalism. If anything, that’s something Metal Gear should have learned from studying the horrors committed by the US.

But I guess this is just another hot take, isn’t it?