The screening surrounding Machinima showcased a lot of… interesting experimental films. From She Puppet to Tension Building, the films demonstrated the odd relationship between manipulation of machinery, particularly video games, and what the fundamental game mechanics or observations can be thought to mean something about reality. Some of these films were fun to watch, while others kind of made me either bored or unreasonably annoyed (She Puppet), but one stood out to have meaning immediately upon watching: Corey Arcangel’s Super Mario Movie (2005).
This film was one of two I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed almost the entire way through and it was because of how cool the entire concept was. Modifying a cartridge in such a way that it can create something with a (kind of) storyline, and the cartridge being from an era of games where speech bubbles in game were not entirely possible yet but having commentary anyways is an incredible feat. Moving on from my shock at this even existing in the first place, the Super Mario Movie conveys a clear narrative inside of this heavily fucked with game: Mario’s breakdown at realizing his own existence.
The movie starts pretty normally (well, as normal as something like this could start), but when the first black text screen appears, something is clearly being set up with the talk of “Poetry Journals.” As the movie continues, these text screens become less like simple poems put into the game and more like something- someone- is communicating through them. It becomes obvious that this is actually Mario attempting to communicate through the text, asking questions like “How did I get here?” and even observing the world changes around him, like that fact that he “used to c familiar shapes in the clouds,” but cannot any longer because of how messed up everything is. While this is an interesting manipulation of code from an outside perspective with the knowledge of what has happened to the cartridge, for Mario, this is an absolutely HORRIFYING situation to be forcefully made aware of.
In the base game of Super Mario Bros., it is unclear if Mario is aware of his existence in a video game or if he is just simply lines of code with no real thoughts at all. Regardless, somewhere along the path of Corey Arcangel ripping apart the cartridge and sewing it back together like some sort of mad-scientist, Mario must have learned of his existence, or more accurately, he was forced to see himself and the world around him for what it is, and in true Frankenstein’s Monster fashion- he freaked the fuck out.
Imagine for just a moment that you are Mario. You have a purpose and a goal programmed into you, you know what the world around you is supposed to look like, how you are supposed to act, where you are supposed to be, and you know all of this before a player even thinks about booting up the game regardless of if you know about the player or not. Mario in this case is quite similar to an animal, both knowing that they are separate from their environment by observation, as seen in Mario’s comment on the clouds, but not really having the capabilities to understand what that means. Okay, you got that? Great. Now imagine that your world is torn to shreds and crudely put back together, with nothing being the same as it was before, and because of this, you are forced to reconcile with the idea that there is something going on far beyond the reach of your world and you can do absolutely nothing about it. You are a puppet to whoever has decided to do this to you. Mario’s mind essentially shatters but he is not allowed to just stop existing, because that would be going against the code of this new world. The clouds Mario once knew are gone, he has no control over his actions, doomed to only speak through the text screens afforded to him but the game’s limitations never allow him to fully convey what he wants to say. This is torture for him, and we are all watching it play out for our amusement.
It could be argued that Mario is not aware of what is happening around him, that Corey Arcangel simply made it seem as though Mario had consciousness. But in that case, that would really call into question what existence even is both in and outside of a video game. Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club! is an extremely well-known example of consciousness in a video game, as she directly talks to the player and even messes with the game files as the game goes on. However, Monika is supposed to act like this, she is supposed to know that she is in a video game and there is someone else on the other side of the screen. Deadpool in the movies he is part of knows he is in a movie and is being played by Ryan Reynolds, but once again, that fact about him is written in the script. Is forced consciousness still consciousness?
Mario is driven essentially mad by not being able to understand what is going on around him but still knowing that his world is being manipulated, Monika feels trapped in the black void that occurs whenever the game is off and is angered by not being a romancible character in her game, and Deadpool seems to just not care and even has fun with knowing he can talk to his audience. How then can we even begin to define existence as a whole? Mario and Monika and Deadpool are all just as real as we are in their respective worlds, those worlds just so happen to be digital. Mario and Monika and Deadpool may have it written into their very being that they are supposed to know they are just code, but isn’t that what we are too? I know I exist, but how certain am I that this was not a thought purposefully placed in my head to get me to perform certain actions? Does it even matter? The thought is almost too much to bear, isn’t it?
Perhaps that is what the Pong reference in this movie is about, too. Now video games started out so simply, but now we can use them to force lines of code into existence inside their video game worlds and torture them with the knowledge that we can manipulate the game, turn it off, delete them, rebuild them, and so, so much more and they cannot do anything to stop this from happening. Maybe we want to share the burden of existence so we aren’t so alone in it, and perhaps that is the cruelest torture of all.
I talked about a similar thing in my own discussion post, and I liked how you brought up the Pong reference as a way to discuss the differences between the start of video games and what they have the potential to become, which is a major focus of Machinima.