Space Dandy and Taoism

This is just a reposting from the Space Dandy thread over at Something Awful of some thoughts I had after viewing the series. The response was really positive so I intend to continue it with some individual write-ups on particular episodes later when I can find the time:

I'm really late to the party but I just finally saw the ending of the show. It was absolutely perfect in every way.

I love that ultimately the entire show is basically about Taoist philosophy, which Dandy follows perfectly, and the individual episodes each explicitly explore various aspects of it. Seriously, if you're not familiar then just start reading the wikipedia page on Taoism and it'll become quickly clear how many ways there are in which the show is made to reflect it:

“Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: dào) literally means "way", but can also be interpreted as road, channel, path, doctrine, or line.[45] In Taoism, it is "the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course."[46] It has variously been denoted as the "flow of the universe",[47] a "conceptually necessary ontological ground",[48] or a demonstration of nature.[49] The Tao also is something that individuals can find immanent in themselves.[50] 

 The ambiguous term wu-wei (simplified Chinese: 无为; traditional Chinese: 無爲; pinyin: wú wéi) constitutes the leading ethical concept in Taoism.[53] Wei refers to any intentional or deliberated action, while wu carries the meaning of "there is no ..." or "lacking, without". Common translations are "nonaction", "effortless action" or "action without intent".[53] The meaning is sometimes emphasized by using the paradoxical expression "wei wu wei": "action without action".[54] 

 In ancient Taoist texts, wu-wei is associated with water through its yielding nature.[55] Taoist philosophy proposes that the universe works harmoniously according to its own ways. When someone exerts their will against the world, they disrupt that harmony. Taoism does not identify one's will as the root problem. Rather, it asserts that one must place their will in harmony with the natural universe.[56] Thus, a potentially harmful interference must be avoided, and in this way, goals can be achieved effortlessly.[57][58] "By wu-wei, the sage seeks to come into harmony with the great Tao, which itself accomplishes by nonaction."[53]

Naturalness (Chinese: 自然; pinyin: zìrán; Wade–Giles: tzu-jan; lit. "self-such") is regarded as a central value in Taoism.[59] It describes the "primordial state" of all things[60] as well as a basic character of the Tao,[61] and is usually associated with spontaneity and creativity.[62][61] To attain naturalness, one has to identify with the Tao;[61] this involves freeing oneself from selfishness and desire, and appreciating simplicity.[59] 

 An often cited metaphor for naturalness is pu (simplified Chinese: 朴; traditional Chinese: 樸; pinyin: pǔ, pú; Wade–Giles: p'u; lit. "uncut wood"), the "uncarved block", which represents the "original nature... prior to the imprint of culture" of an individual.[63] It is usually referred to as a state one returns to.[64]”

I mean these ones are fairly obvious; Dandy constantly espouses his philosophy of going with the flow and trusting that things will just work out and he exercises it in pretty much every episode. He also very strongly follows a doctrine of "action without intent" and explicitly chooses not to think before acting, and Dandy is shown to value simplicity and, above all, the simple things in life. There's a huge recurring motif of strings, lines, and paths throughout the series, as well as a major water and "flow" motif (surfing, boats, fishing, etc). Commonly the episode plots revolve around something in the world that is throwing things out of a balance that needs to be restored, and often the solution to their problems involves a regression back to a natural state (a particularly good example is the plant episode, for instance).

“Taoist cosmology is based on the School of Yin Yang[25] which was headed by Zou Yan (305 BCE – 240 BCE). The school's tenets harmonized the concepts of the Wu Xing (Five Phases) and yin and yang. In this spirit, the universe is seen as being in a constant process of re-creating itself, as everything that exists is a mere aspect of qi, which, "condensed, becomes life; diluted, it is indefinite potential".[67] Qi is in a perpetual transformation between its condensed and diluted state.[68] These two different states of qi, on the other hand, are embodiments of the abstract entities of yin and yang,[68] two complementary extremes that constantly play against and with each other and cannot exist without the other.[69]”

Yin and yang is everywhere in the series; on top of the places where the symbol appears pretty explicitly like in the two dragons that appear at the end, you see a constant recurring motif of two forces locked in a struggle/balance. For instance, the two warring empires that hold each other in check, or the two alien races fighting over vests and undies, or the two brothers who kept their machine planet from breaking apart, or the episodes where Dandy is pitted directly against a foil (like in the racing, rock band, and dancing episodes). And, of course, in the eternal struggle between boobs and asses (would it maybe be stretching it a bit far to note that a single bare breast almost has the appearance of one half of a yin yang?). It's also obvious that the concept of death and rebirth is a huge theme of the show, as is the concept of condensing and expanding (singularities, black holes, etc).

I'll preface this by saying that I'm definitely not any kind of expert on Taoism: I've just read The Tao of Pooh and a little of the Tao Te Ching. The parallels are so strong, though, that I think it was intended to be obvious to someone with a light cultural familiarity with these things that Dandy is more or less living his life by them. I actually also ought to point out that Dandy's tag (the one he always wears and holds up in the end when he rejects becoming God) is from Naritasan, which is actually a Buddhist temple, so it's possible that I'm misreading his personal philosophy as Taoist when it's actually intended to be Buddhist. It's also possible that maybe the things I'm picking up on are areas where Taoism and the Buddhism practiced at Naritasan intersect? (It's also possible that Dandy's tag is just meant to be more of a Japanese cultural thing than to indicate anything specific about his philosophy).

At any rate, I think it's pretty easy to tell that Taoist symbolism is huge in the series, and in Watanabe's other works (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo particularly) Taoism actually shows up quite a lot; the most blatant example off the top of my head is the CB episode Boogie Woogie Feng Shui, which is explicitly about it. Watanabe's works are also often very focused on the intersection of different cultures (a large part of why his works go over so well with Western audiences), and there's a significant intersection between the philosophy of Taoism and of Hawaiian surfer culture, which is referenced heavily throughout the show (the Aloha Oe, Dandy's surfing, hula girls and floral prints, etc).

Anyway, to explain how Dandy's attitude is fundamentally Taoist, this is an excerpt from Tao of Pooh that explains the concept of Wu Wei pretty succinctly:

“When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard. 

 When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done. 

 When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don’t have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. [...] If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…" Then you realize that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. 

 Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.”

If you look at what Dandy says and does throughout the series, he pretty explicitly espouses this philosophy over and over again. Just look at his speech in the first episode: "When you're swimming against a raging current, what's the point? What good is it to swim fruitlessly against the flow? If you try to do it, you'll just end up drowning. Everything about it is pointless! Living by going with the flow- that's what I'm all about, baby!". The show presents it in an ironic manner as though Dandy is full of hot air, but the larger point of the series is to show you that Dandy was essentially right the entire time; when he "goes with the flow" things ultimately work out the way that they were supposed to, not always to his own personal benefit but on a cosmic scale that he can't even understand. Repeatedly we see that whenever the crew attempts to explicitly search for a rare alien they never find one (or, at least, they never get them back to the registration center), but when they're trying to do something else rare aliens just fall into their laps. Dandy's best strategy to get what he wants is to simply live his life and trust the universe to provide for him, and if it doesn't then he knows that it was just simply never meant to be.

As an explicit example of this philosophy working out for Dandy, take the episode Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Baby: the episode opens with them going to a market full of food, and ends with them eating a delicious roast fish, but the way they arrived at it was an incredibly circuitous path through which it was unclear how they could possibly end up with the ultimate outcome. And yet, by just going with the flow Dandy ends up with a way better meal than he could have outright bought, and as such he proves to Meow that "slow and steady wins the race", and that if you just follow your intuition and live your life instead of worrying about how quickly your goals are being accomplished you will ultimately find that they come to you.

We ultimately find out that Dandy follows Wu Wei so effectively that he has actually reached true enlightenment. There's a concept in Taoism called Pu, "the Uncarved Block", that is meant to represent a pure, natural state of infinite potential: the uncarved block can conceivably be made into anything, but once you begin carving away at it then you limit the possibilities of what it can be made into with every removed splinter. You want to make yourself as Pu-like as possible, because it means you can more easily go with the flow and adapt yourself to whatever the universe throws at you. Dandy has reached this state: as a person, Dandy is the same and reacts the same way in every possible universe because no matter what life throws at him he always returns to his fundamental Dandy state. As is demonstrated in Nobody Knows the Chameleonian, Baby, the actual truth of Dandy's past doesn't matter to Dandy, because whatever he was before he is Dandy now, and being Dandy isn't predicated on some background or life history; Dandy is a state of being. We also see in I Can't be the Only One, Baby that despite all of the different universe's Dandys being massively different in many ways, they all had the same philosophy and reacted in the exact same ways to the world; they all wanted to go to Boobies, they were all disturbed and upset by emo Dandy's crew, and they all thought it was a good idea to burn the dimensional string and just hope things worked out for the best. As one Dandy is interchangeable with infinite other Dandys, it means that Dandy has infinite potential.

For Dandy, asses represent the simple, basic pleasures of life, and his fixation on them is representative of living for the joy of each moment individually rather than for some grand ambition that he would have to force upon the universe. When Laika questions the purpose of her life Dandy responds with "a good ass should be felt, not seen", and what he's saying is that the pleasures of life should be experienced, not thought about. You should find what makes you happy and live for that, rather than basing your happiness on assigning meaning to a universe that is vastly more complex than you could ever understand (in the same way a dog could never understand why humans would do something like launch her into space). Don't worry about fulfilling some grand plan; if you simply go with the flow, act on your intuition, and enjoy your life things will turn out how they were meant to be.

In the finale, Dandy's last words to his friends are "It will all work out." It seems ironic, because Dandy's final struggle only succeeds in disintegrating all possible universes, but in the end he was right: this was just a part of an eternal cycle of rebirth and everything worked out how it needed to; even if no one, including Dandy, understood that at the time. And then, when Dandy is given the option to become God, he rejects it. To become God would be fundamentally inimical to everything Dandy stands for; it would be the most un-Dandy thing he could possibly do. It would be forcing his will upon the universe in the most direct and comprehensive way. However Dandy doesn't even have to think that deeply about it, all he has to realize is that being God would get in the way of enjoying asses; of enjoying life the Dandy way, and that's enough to justify rejecting the offer.

And then, in the end, when in this new universe Dandy has replaced his ass fixation with a leg fixation, it's meant to show that the object of your pleasure in life is arbitrary. There's nothing fundamentally important about asses. What really matters is that you find something to take pleasure in. What makes Dandy Dandy is not reliant on asses, or legs, or boobs; what makes Dandy Dandy is how much pleasure he takes in simply living. And that's the Dandy way, baby.

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine Review

He burst through the wall again.

I had already had a talk with him about this. At length. “You have to understand, Mole, obliterating drywall and aluminum with nothing but a steel shovel is certainly impressive! It's just not particularly...stealthy. If you're looking to get to the other side of a wall while avoiding detection it might be better to use, for instance, the door adjacent to it. I just think that you should keep in mind that this is a heist, not a demolition project, and we're here primarily to rob the place, not to perforate it.” At the time I had honestly thought that we had reached an understanding. I realize now that I was mistaken.

The other three of us (the Cleaner, the Hacker, and myself, the Lookout) had just finished clearing the western wing of the building of any valuables with the help of a nasty computer virus that disabled most of the laser trip-wires and through the liberal application of chloroform. During this time I can only assume the Mole was busy making impromptu renovations to the executive washrooms. We were now taking turns darting across the expansive, and well populated, lobby in-between sweeps of the security cameras.

That was when the southern wall of the room disappeared in a sudden crash.

There was a very short period of time that elapsed between all of the guards in the room turning to regard the Mole and the sound of the first gunshot ringing out. I took advantage of this period of time to hurry our little group over to the other side of the room and up a ladder into the nearby ventilation system (as the Lookout, I can open these vents faster than anyone). The Mole took this opportunity to turn and run right back through the hole he entered from, and, though I couldn't see them myself, due to the little flashing fists and pistols that showed up on my map to mark where enemy guards were moving (another perk of being the Lookout) I could see that a good dozen or so guards decided to join him.

Alarms were blaring. Panicked civilians were scattered all throughout the corridors we were going to have to pass through to get to the vault. Guards charged down hallways in hot pursuit of our bumbling accomplice. Things weren't, strictly speaking, going to plan.

It wasn't all bad, though. We decided to let the Mole handle himself and move on to the vault. Some guards had abandoned their posts in the nearby security room to go respond to the alarm. This allowed the Hacker to make short work of the cameras in front of the vault doors, giving us ample time to break the lock (if we had brought a Locksmith instead we would've gotten through much more quickly, though). Once we got inside we took a quick moment to assess the situation.

A patchwork of pulsing alarm lasers crisscrossed the floor. In a circle around the center of the room there were also rotating lasers rigged to turrets filled with tranquilizer darts; and this was not a place where one would like to take a nap. Amidst them two patrolling guards protected the safe in the middle of the room.

Without a word we each already knew what to do. I darted out from around the corner to quickly grab a guard's attention, then darted back into cover just fast enough that he was unsure of what he saw. When he walked up to investigate, the Cleaner pounced, knocking him out. Next, the Hacker gracefully dodged in-between pulses of the alarm lasers, moving with the rotation of the turrets to keep out of their gaze. When he got close enough, he was able to shut them off one-by-one, allowing myself and the Cleaner to dart across the room. The Cleaner quickly rounded a corner and knocked out the other guard, and I broke open the safe, spilling out it's contents for our greedy hands to scoop up. For how chaotic things had gotten back there, they were suddenly going very smoothly. All we had to do now was make it back out to our get-away van, and even though it was a circuitous route back through the same tight security we faced on the way in, if we just handled it the same way in reverse we were pretty much home free.

Of course, we would've been, if it weren't for what happened next. It was a tiny mistake, anyone could've made it. The Hacker was standing in just the wrong spot when the security laser sprung back to life. He took a tranquilizer dart to the back and was out cold immediately. Without him the Cleaner and I couldn't hope to turn the lasers back off fast enough. In a panic I tripped the alarm, and both I and the Cleaner joined the Hacker in his nap. The guards that the Cleaner had knocked out sprung awake at the sound of the alarm, and down the hallway I could see the retinue of guards who must've given up chasing the Mole rushing towards our location. By the time the three of us managed to fight through the drowsiness and get back up on our feet, the gunfire had already started, a good five guards and growing stood between us and the vault door, and we were completely, utterly, irrevocably screwed.

And then he burst through the wall again.

Behind him an improvised corridor, scattered with the remains of mangled walls, led directly out to the parking lot where our getaway van idled.

“WE OUT.”

Bioshock Infinite: Thematic Analysis

Having just been released last Tuesday, the first wave of players will be watching the credits roll in Bioshock Infinite about now, and I assume for the most part their faces will be slack with confusion as they attempt to piece together the events that transpired over the course of the game. I don't intend to give my review of the game here, though suffice to say I found it entrancing enough to warrant a lot of thought, nor do I intend to work through the many mechanical ambiguities of the dimension traversing narrative (by the very nature of the story it's excessively hard to tell what's a plothole and what isn't). Rather, what I recognized to be the most compelling component of the game wasn't the admittedly uneven plotting and characterization; it was the degree to which these things actually fit into an overarching metaphor. Despite what appears to be evidence of the plot of the game changing significantly over the course of its development, all the pieces end up fitting together into an incredibly pleasing thematic whole, and I feel like both the degree to which the choices made in the design of the game are influenced by the intended social commentary and the originality of the presentation are both completely unprecedented in games as a medium.

WARNING: SPOILERS. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN THE GAME.

I've already witnessed a number of complaints from people who seem to believe that the social commentary aspect of Columbia is dropped half-way through the game when it begins to shift its focus onto the more personal story of Booker and Elizabeth. I'd argue that the first half of the game is simply setting the stage for the actual social commentary to follow. I imagine that many, if not the majority, of people who play through the game will fail to understand what Bioshock Infinite's message is. The game has a number of very clear and jarring statements that it makes, particularly concerning racism and wealth inequality, but the threads that actually tie these various aspects together into a cohesive message are orders of magnitude more subtle. I don't think that this is necessarily a failing of the writers and artists; the fact that the message is subtle and that you're never beaten over the head with it is a virtue, and I have an inkling that making this message overt would have possibly damaged the studio's reputation due to it rather directly attacking a modern political movement. There is, of course, the significant possibility that I'm reading too much into the story that we're presented with, but I hope to produce enough textual evidence to convince you that if this message wasn't explicitly intended by Ken Levine, that it might as well be safe to evoke death of the author.

To stop beating around the bush; Bioshock Infinite is an indictment of modern conservative thought that glorifies an idealized American past that never existed, and does so to the detriment of America's future. This political message is, however, interwoven with a deeply personal tale of redemption and the human desire to take the easy way out of facing the sins of your own past.

To explain, I'll start where the game both starts and ends: baptism. Baptism is the central recurring motif throughout the game; the gorgeous introductory scene to Columbia is centered around a baptism that all who enter the city must go through, upon rescuing Elizabeth for the first time Booker is plunged beneath the water in battleship bay, Comstock's plan is to use Columbia to baptize the world in fire, Daisy baptizes herself in Fink’s blood, Booker kills Comstock by drowning him in a baptismal font, songbird is killed by being drowned deep beneath the sea at Rapture, and of course the final moments of the game reveal that the deciding factor in Booker becoming Comstock was whether or not he accepted the baptism after Wounded Knee.

The use of religious symbolism here is blunt, but the intended message is perhaps less so. I have seen a number of people mistake Bioshock Infinite’s message for a blatant denouncement of religion. I disagree.

The fact that accepting the baptism turned Booker into a monster is contrary to what one would expect, but deeply tied into Infinite's central theme. Booker sought the baptism because he was haunted by the ghosts of those he killed at Wounded Knee and those he oppressed as a Pinkerton. In accepting the baptism, a symbolic gesture of rebirth, the Booker who became Comstock was able to distance himself from his own actions. What Booker was seeking from the baptism was not a way to atone for his past actions, but rather a way to relieve himself of guilt. Free of remorse, the baptized Booker went on to look back at these events in his life not with pain and regret, but with solemn necessity or even glory. They were idealized in his mind, and rather than horrific atrocities they became exemplary feats to which he constructed monuments. It's for this reason that he would go on to found a city that would accentuate all the worst aspects of his own past. Free of regret, Comstock became a monster. In one of Comstock’s voxophones he asks “When a soul is born again, what happens to the one left behind in the baptismal water? Is he simply … gone? Or does he exist in some other world, alive, with sin intact?” Comstock intends to reference the Booker who was not baptized, but unwittingly references himself: he fails to understand the notion that merely accepting a baptism does not make one pure, that the sinner continues to exist inside of him. You should note that outside of the Wounded Knee baptism scene, Jesus or Christ are never mentioned in the game, nor is there a cross to be found anywhere in Columbia. This is to distinguish between Christianity and the superficial, warped religion of Comstock. To the religion of Comstock, baptism is simply a way of white-washing your past.

The Booker that rejected the baptism recognized that such a symbolic gesture would do nothing to free him of guilt for his past actions. He views himself as completely irredeemable. He would go on to live the rest of his life dwelling on past mistakes and digging himself into a hole of debt and alcoholism, until he is given another chance to "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”. As with the baptism, Booker is initially seduced by the offer but at the last second tries to back out. This time he fails, however, and is further forced to spend his days steeped in regret for his mistakes. Until, finally, the Luteces come back to give Booker one last chance at redemption.

The inscription you see as you’re lowered into the chapel at the beginning of the game reads:

“Why would He send His savior onto us,

If we will not raise a finger for our own salvation,

And though we deserve not His mercy,

He has led us to this new Eden,

A last chance for redemption”

Booker is transported to Columbia, a monument to his sins, and forced to relive them. Each area is a mirror into Booker’s past: Monument Island reflects his neglect of his daughter, the Hall of Heroes reflects his past of violence and racism, Finkton reflects the economic oppression that he took part in. One issue that many have with the game is that the amount of violence that Booker perpetrates in pursuit of his goal of rescuing Elizabeth is excessive. I would argue that this is an intentional reflection of his own violent past, and is meant to strike the player as just as disturbing as it strikes Elizabeth. There is perhaps a bit of meta-commentary going on when Booker makes a statement to the effect of “It’s one thing to hurt someone because you need to, it’s another thing to enjoy it”; possibly a direct stab at the player who’s gleefully eviscerating their foes with flaming crows.

Many have also found it questionable that the final battle of the game is not against Comstock, but against the Vox, in a way that discordantly seems to suggest that they are the greater rather than lesser evil. I’ll get into how the Vox fit into the overall theme later, but I should point out that the final battle may not be what it seems. Note that the “big bad”, Comstock, is already dead, and yet the game goes on. Instead, for the final fight you are standing in Comstock’s place, using Comstock’s tool of subjugation (the songbird) to defend Comstock’s airship from the people who are revolting against Comstock’s oppression. It’s meant to illustrate that for all the differences between Booker and Comstock, they’re both fundamentally the same person. Just because Comstock is dead doesn't mean things are over, because Booker and Comstock are one in the same, and both men were created by the same evil past.

Finally, Elizabeth reveals the secrets of the multiverse to Booker, leads him to realize the truths he was trying to suppress from himself, and drowns him to prevent Comstock from ever existing. What many might not realize about the final scene of the game is that this is Booker’s true baptism. Booker accepts that he would rather face oblivion than allow the future sins that he would later commit to come to pass. He is willing to die, and does not resist as he allows Elizabeth to dunk him under the water (for this baptism she serves as his priest).

There’s many ways to interpret the after-the-credits scene. This is how I prefer to view it: due to this final act of true remorse, Booker experienced a true rebirth. He has awoken in another timeline and is given the chance to live out his life with Anna, and to do things right this time.

Now, how does this tie into the political commentary that I am claiming exists behind the plot of Infinite? Booker and Comstock represent two different ways of looking at the American past. Comstock represents an America that has forgotten to regret the atrocities of its past. Booker represents an America who has clung to regret and allowed it to consume them. The fact that they inhabit two entirely different parallel universes is no mistake. They reflect the different schools of thought in American politics that are so separated in perspective that they appear to inhabit entirely different worlds.

Columbia is Comstock's creation, and it, itself, is an idealized version of turn-of-the-20th-century America. Our introduction to Columbia up to the raffle is a fantastic example of the game's message in microcosm: You walk through gorgeous vistas set on cobbled streets in the sky, a quaint town fair awash in symbols of a simpler time. The world seems wholesome, and is a joy to explore; all up until the raffle. Then the curtains are drawn back and the entire picture falls apart: suddenly you realize this world is brutal and unjust. The entire sequence is an incredible gut-punch. It's because you've forgotten; the American past hides a rotten underbelly. I might also add that it may be no mistake that the imagery used to deliver this blow is one of marriage inequality.

The mainstays of Columbia are meant to reflect on the beliefs of modern conservatives. Their religion is a cult of personality based around worshiping modern political leaders and in deifying the founding fathers as infallible. It borrows aesthetics from Christianity while ignoring the messages of tolerance and kindness found in the New Testament in return for Old Testament morality and the apocalyptic imagery of Revelations. They glorify war, xenophobia, isolationism, and American exceptionalism. They accept economic inequality as just, even explicitly deserved. They've even seceded from the actual political entity of the United States because of their “more American than thou” attitude.

Columbia is the idealized world of white picket fences that embodies the conservative dream. The fact that one must be baptized (in this game, symbolic of white-washing your own past) in order to even enter Columbia emphasizes its status as the image we create when we attempt to envision a bygone America but forget the pain of its past.

Moreover; Comstock's grand plan for Columbia is to bring it into the future, and there rain down fire upon modern America. Those who were paying attention will note that when a brain-washed Elizabeth uses Columbia to attack New York, she does so in 1984. It could be an errant reference to Orwell, or, as I'd like to believe, a reference to Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Walter Mondale: the point signifying the absolute height of GOP power. Columbia, this idealized conservative past, seeks to break through to our present day.

Which brings me to Elizabeth: Elizabeth represents America's future. Booker and Comstock struggle over who will get to control her and thus America's fate. She was the child of Booker, but Comstock lays claim to her as his own, and in a moment of weakness Booker gives her to Comstock in order to "wipe away the debt" (I shouldn't have to expand upon why debt is an important concept for the relationship between American political parties). Some small part of her was left with Booker, however, and thus she became caught between worlds. This gave her an amazing power; because she exists in both worlds at once she is able to pass between them at will: to see the world from many different possible perspectives. This is the foundation of Bioshock Infinite’s multiverse: each world contains a lighthouse, a man, a city. Each universe centers around a city founded on the principles of one man’s ideology, with a beacon that draws others towards it (but, rightfully, should warn them away from it). As Rapture explores objectivism, and Columbia explores American conservatism, each universe represents the natural extension of one perspective towards viewing the world.

The game opens with the exchange “Are you afraid of God, Booker?” “No, but I’m afraid of you.” Both Booker and Comstock fear Elizabeth’s power. Comstock so much so that he has gone out of his way to try to limit her ability to peer between worlds; to prevent her from seeing perspectives he doesn't want her to see. Despite this, he can’t prevent her from finding and pulling open “tears” in his reality; literal holes in the universe in which Columbia resides. Each of these serves as a “what if?” for Columbia’s fate driven by Elizabeth’s wishful thinking. The universe in which the game starts shows us a Vox Populi that is hounded by Comstock’s forces and not equipped enough to fight back, allowing Columbia to remain a relatively stable oppressive society. However, step through a tear and you see a Columbia that is being razed to the ground by bitter, ruthless revolutionaries whose burning ire was created by Columbia’s unjust system.

I should take a moment to address the Vox Populi, which I feel tie into the greater theme of the game but were still somewhat clumsily handled. Daisy Fitzroy’s arc is truncated, and the game’s statements suffer for it, but I don’t think the game was intending to just blindly equivocate the cause of the Vox with the cause of Comstock. Rather, Daisy is intended to be another example of how absolving yourself of guilt can come to a destructive outcome. Daisy’s cause is fundamentally just, but she uses this itself as an excuse not to feel remorse for her actions. Daisy baptizes herself in Fink’s blood, and symbolically she means to indicate that any sins on her part are justified by the sins on his. Using this logic she can rationalize any crime. It’s in this manner that she’s a fitting counterpart to Comstock. The Vox Populi are also meant as a reminder that such revolts in the past have often shared horrible atrocities with their oppressors, and we shouldn't white-wash the actions of progressives either.

For Booker, his trip through Columbia is a journey through his past sins so that he might ultimately seek redemption. For the American player, then, this trip through Columbia is a journey through the past sins of our nation so that we might ultimately seek redemption as well. Your final act is to destroy the siphon, the device that limits Elizabeth’s powers to view alternative worlds: allowing her to see through every door, to see the infinite paths that America may be led down as a nation. The millions of other Bookers and Elizabeths you see going through the same experience are representative of the millions of other individual Americans who must follow a similar, but different path with their own daughters (and sons) to come ultimately to the same conclusion. The final revelation that the player must experience is the truth that Booker and Comstock are ultimately the same man. While they view it from opposite perspectives, they share the same history, and America’s future isn't safe while it’s still allowed to be controlled by America’s past. Booker recognizes his sins and allows Elizabeth to drown him, just as the yoke of America’s past must be thrown off by America’s future, breaking the “Unbroken Circle” of history.

Then, following this rebirth, America’s past may be given a second chance to influence America’s future in a positive way.