I just wrote a review for the DS game Flower, Sun and Rain for videolamer. It is half critique, half rambling against the entertainment industries of the U.S. and Japan, but I don't think it ended up crossing the line. I have a habit of railing against the games industry when I should be writing about a single game, but FSR is a game by Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture. These guys are notorious for making games with deeper commentaries on both game design and society, who have a habit of making these points in games which are themselves faulty in design.
It's the kind of conundrum that I feel like I see all the time these days; something comes out that is either bad, or just partially bad, and someone comes along to tell me that this badness is, in fact, intentional. This leads me to stand there and wonder whether they're being sincere, insecure, or so condition to embrace the modern perception of irony that their response is simply rote. With FSR, I came to the conclusion that there's an honest game somewhere inside, but I know that somewhere, someone is out there who would violently disagree. This doesn't bother me, but as one who strives for honest critiques, it makes me wonder if I'm giving Suda's games the same kind of pass that I yell at others for giving the things that I hate.
In case you're wondering, this all stems from the fact that I was this close to devoting a paragraph of the review in order to make fun of the band Muse. Luckily I punched out at the last minute and avoided this mistake. I'm trying to review a video game. I'm lucky to have anyone reading it in the first place. The last thing I need to do is drive them away by trying to impose my flippant observations on popular music onto them. It would be even worse to do so by pretending to make a clever comparison to the game. There are already too many games writers who make their body of work more about them than the games they cover; the last thing I want to do is make that situation worse.
So instead, I'll take that reference and write about it here. Muse kind of pisses me off. In my mind, they are the kind of band that is trying to get away with pulling off a variety of ideas that, in the year 2010, musicians should have a pretty fair grasp of how to pull off (and in some cases, the ideas are simply stupid, and they should know better than to use them). Yet they go ahead with it anyway, and their fans make plenty sure to give it all a pass. They're a fine example of why I struggle to get into a lot of modern bands, indie or otherwise; I can never tell who the fuck is being sincere, and who is simply lost and confused. A good example of my frustrations can be found in "Uprising", the opening song of their latest album, "The Resistance". The song has this funky, fairly cheesy disco beat, with lyrics that tell everyone to rise up and fight against evil governments and corporate overlords. The overall tone and lyrical content makes me almost - almost - think that it is a satire on inexperienced, overly delusional people who rail against The Man without truly grasping what The Man is, or how best to stop Him. Yet the Internet has bred a generation of kids who easily eat this shit up, and the theme of the song is also in the name of the entire album. So the fans can tell me that it's meant as a joke - you can tell me anything on the Internet, if you really want - but I don't have to believe it. The fact that the band has been featured on the soundtracks of the Twilight films, which only know how to take themselves seriously, makes it apparent that at least someone in charge of marketing has deemed Muse as needing the serious angle. That's not really damming proof, but it's a bit more concrete than the words of anonymous fans.
But still, even if we were to buy the notion that Muse is cracking a joke, one more question remains; is it a good one? I don't think so. This gets back to another point I made in the FSR review - these days, an entertainer (or their fans) can simply state their intentions, and everyone behaves as if they succeeded in their goals just because they tried. There's still a matter of quality of execution, and in this regard, the Muse song fails. For comparison, look at most Dead Kennedys songs. You can tell that DK isn't interested in killing the poor, and you know that they aren't cops looking to abuse their power. Their lyrics discuss these topics because they're attempting to lash out at certain aspects of society, and this is made crystal clear by both the tone of the music and the vocal delivery. With Muse, I can't immediately tell what side they're trying to push, and if you think about it, the side the fans want you to believe - that this mega popular band, signed to a major label, is mocking the idea of resistance - is actually a more scary alternative than if they were dead serious in their overblown, out of touch protest. In either situation, good taste loses.
To go back to a previous statement, this shit frustrates me because there is no sincerity in it. There's none in the music, or the fan's reaction to it. A band like Muse exists solely to address the interests that gullible kids have been told to enjoy. I guess the only difference between them and pasts bands of this ilk is that arrested development has caused an army of twenty somethings to eat this up at an age when they should probably know better. But this can be a big problem, since these twenty somethings are so afraid to grow up, or even take a stand for what they think, that they muddy the waters of discussion by sewing doubt in the minds of anyone who dares think that the stuff they started getting into in college may not be timeless.
Muse Nation, take it from an ELO fan: like symphonic pop, symphonic rock isn't awesome by default. If you're not using the string section to enhance and improve the rock sound, then kindly get it out of the song. Don't fuck things up because you feel the need to insert some false sense of classiness into your favorite genre, and are too lazy to explore actual classical music.