This is an adaptation of a term paper I wrote for a graduate class on linguistics and gender

Somehow, cyberpunk fiction has become one of the defining modes of popular mainstream narrative entertainment in the 2010s. Perhaps this is due to the ever-growing power of real-life megacorporations mimicking depictions in the dystopian style, or omnipresent technological advancement sparking broader discussion on post-humanist fiction, or maybe our culture’s 30-year nostalgia cycle merely resurrected one of the kitschier aesthetics of the 80s. Nonetheless, the success of works like Ready Player One, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Blade Runner 2049 demonstrated a surprising desire for cyberpunk narratives amongst Western audiences and one with widespread commercial viability. Arguably the definitive media product to capitalize on this trend would be CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, a AAA video game adaptation of a long-running tabletop RPG released in 2020 after several delays. The Polish development studio spent nearly a decade and over $300 million producing the game, a project which would never receive proper funding and resources unless significant profit margins were expected (Spurlin, 2021). For this reason, 2077 would be crafted as the ultimate genre pastiche, seeking to embody a broader cultural notion of “cyberpunk “rather than trailblaze a new path. Thus, analysis of Cyberpunk 2077 is widely applicable to other contemporary science fiction works in the same vein, as the game functions as a purposeful amalgamation of its genre’s tropes and trends.

Given the incredibly multifaceted nature of a large, modern video game, examination of highly specific aspects of a text like Cyberpunk 2077 (listed on the popular gaming data website “howlongtobeat.com” as lasting well over 100 hours for completionist players) can be far more effective in a shorter academic format and even illuminate overarching metanarratives in novel ways. For this reason, alongside the surprising prevalence of slang and morphology within the subgenre, I have chosen to focus my analysis on the linguistics of Cyberpunk 2077 and specifically the game’s depiction of both ethnic and queer dialects. While progressively inclined and respectful to marginalized groups in many ways, 2077’s often stereotypical and tokenized showcases of these individuals leave something to be desired. This is evident in the linguistic depictions of its prominent minority characters. I posit that Cyberpunk’s quasi-bigoted portrayals of historically downtrodden groups function as a microcosm of broader genre trends and address an uncomfortable paradox at the core of cyberpunk’s equality-based ethos.

My analysis will first provide a brief overview of the cyberpunk genre, its multicultural historical development, and its prominent usage of slang terms. I will then turn to specific depictions of Latinx and Japanese English through the characters of Jackie Welles and Goro Takemura before focusing on lesbian and queer linguistics with the character Judy Alvarez. Through this analysis, I hope to engage with Cyberpunk 2077 through this relatively narrow frame to highlight a broader flaw with cyberpunk fiction. One which functions as a negative consequence of hyperaggressive consumerist practices, where post-identity bigotry tacitly manifests in media as a simulacrum of the world that produces it. In doing so, the fiction undermines its utopian promise of equality for all; a process that Semley (2019) succinctly voices with “…cyberpunk’s futures were usurped and commodified by the powers they had hoped to oppose” (p. 64).

Cyberpunk Context

Innate to a thorough understanding of modern cyberpunk works is its inherent multiculturalism, which functioned to popularize and evolve the subgenre. Like many current stylistic movements, cyberpunk was introduced and rose to prominence in the mid-20th century. The science fiction subgenre envisioned near-future dystopias controlled by megacorporations, with a focus on transhumanism and technological advancement and jargon. It was created predominantly by white, western men. Many of these important authors had Liberal, utopian notions of identity, notions which promote universal equality regardless of one’s cultural background, where the only force of oppression stems from horrific megacorporations. This is echoed in scholarship navigating cyberpunk identities like “Feminist Cyberpunk” by Cadora (1995) which envisions feminist cyberpunk (or any marginalized identities in the genre) as evidence of “fragmented subjects who can, despite their multiple positionings, negotiate and succeed in a high-tech world” (p. 358).

In the 80s, cyberpunk reached a commercial height on the backs of authors like Gibson and Stephenson, allowing for an international reach and influence. As a response, Japanese creatives would take inspiration from many cyberpunk themes and meld them with their technical aesthetics from mecha anime. Animations like Akira and Ghost in The Shell would make their way back across the sea, leaving an undeniable visual mark on the style. The contemporary notion we have of cyberpunk fiction is thus indebted in equal parts to its Western origins and Japanese furthering, alongside smaller points of influence from other places across the globe. With this evolutionary context and the central cyberpunk ethos of “post-identity equality,” the subgenre is situated in a sense of multiculturalism unique to modern else world media and a factor that is echoed in its linguistic tropes.

Cyberpunk Slang

Unlike other fantasy subgenres which feature entirely fictionalized languages and dialects, cyberpunk almost always takes place in a near-future setting where humans still speak a version of English incredibly close to ours. Due to this limitation, cyberpunk creators often delineate their worlds linguistically through slang terms that usually relate to the specialized technology of the setting. Basic linguistic acquisition recognizes that much of English’s vocabulary arises due to cultural contact and is influenced by racial, economic, and social factors. “Slang” or any sort of informal word or phrase is no different and as evident in countless pieces on college or African American slang, arrives at a conflux of cultures and is used by individuals to signal and navigate various social identities (see e.g., Hummon, 1994; Zeigler & Osinubi, 2002).

Cyberpunk slang is no different and even a cursory survey of terms from notable works reveals a clear multicultural undercurrent in their etymology. Terms like “bithead” from Gibson have English origins and are typically formed by combining two existing words, yet other notable examples like “gomi” and “puerco” from the Blade Runner universe are borrowed from foreign tongues like Japanese and Latin respectively. This leads to a tacit promotion of linguistic equity amongst the fictional characters who use cyberpunk slang, as these individuals can pull from a rich tapestry of multiculturalism through everyday speech and are equal in their ability to do so. As Cheyne (2008) recognizes in her piece on created languages (while not analogous to invented slang, the two bear enough similarities for this comparison) in science fiction, the usage of these invented terms functions as a means of characterization in marking in-group/out-group dynamics, “a created language is not just spoken by the beings who belong to a particular alien culture. The language also speaks to them” (p. 396).

2077 accomplishes this with its slang as well, borrowing mostly from English with reappropriated terms like “deck” and “black wall” but also pulling from colloquial Spanish with the community favorite “choom” and from French with the shortened form of “bourgeois” with “bourgy.” Through these various slang words, the game’s vast cast of characters from a variety of ethnic and sexual identities are part of a broader linguistic whole and can leverage these words to distinguish their outward societal perceptions. However, when considered in conjunction with the game’s depiction of racialized dialects, this socially positive cyberpunk trope seems almost at odds with more egregious, borderline offensive speech from marginalized characters.

Methodology

Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive game, with thousands of fully voiced unique dialogue lines from the player character, important NPCs, and even the various factions of standard “grunt” enemies. For this reason, a comprehensive examination of all the game’s spoken lines is not only unpractical but superfluous in furthering larger conclusions. Instead of compiling all dialogue from Latinx, Japanese, and queer NPCs into a database for quantitative, technical analysis of linguistic trends, I will instead focus on the speech of prominent characters from the respective identity groups. This mode of broader, textual analysis is more apt for tackling a contemporary media artifact like a video game, as the medium functions more closely like a traditional work of literature merely placed along the lineage of post-textual production rather than a pointed, research-based study or examination of real-world interactions. These characters have been chosen by importance to the main questline which players will engage with, as an open-world game like 2077 features a plethora of entirely optional interactions and quests. My specific dialogue examples are pulled from mandatory conversations on the main story’s route. I hope to elucidate trends that arise from simple engagement with their incredible number of recorded lines. This mimics the more common mode of interaction that an average consumer would have with Cyberpunk, making value drawn from this analysis far more applicable through the lens of media construction and reproduction.

Ethnic Depictions of Latinx and Japanese Dialects

The characters of both Jackie Welles and Goro Takemura are featured heavily throughout the game’s main questline and demonstrate linguistic patterns adhered to by the other minority characters of their same group. The Mexican gang faction of “the Valentinos” and its wide swath of important side characters all follow a linguistic model showcased by Jackie, while the Japanese gang “the Tyger Claws” and the Arasaka bloodline do the same for Takemura. A longer paper on this subject would also consider the ambiguous “Africana” and creole of the game’s Black characters associated with “the Voodoo Boys” gang but given their lesser prominence in 2077’s main story and absence of a core NPC, their examination is not integral in demonstrating the game’s depictive tendencies. Nonetheless, Cyberpunk’s depictions of ethnic dialects are not straightforwardly racist, but the consistency with which it draws on outdated media stereotypes for nearly all its non-white characters is disappointing and signals a broader lack of engagement with its intended ideology

Take Jackie Welles for example, in each of the game’s three possible opening sections, Jackie is quickly established as a familiar friend in a world of countless cutthroats. Jackie and the player will experience a rise through the criminal underground of Night City buoyed by the overwhelming charisma and likeability of the Latino mercenary. Aside from embodying the tired entertainment trope of the “heavily accented sidekick” (Davé, 2017), Jackie comes across as undeniably human and the player’s connection to him is core for narrative engagement as his death provides the propulsive force for the main storyline. Yet, this is undercut by his thick, cliché Mexican accent.

Jackie’s speech falls into the category of “Mock Spanish” as defined in Hill’s (1998) piece: “Language, Race, and White Public Space.” It functions as “covert racial discourse” in selling a white audience the perception of Latinx English by pulling on imperialist impulses of class and competency. For the actual linguistic characteristics, I will refer to Garcia’s (1978) “Toward a Grammar of Chicano English” which provides a solid list of features that are handily showcased in Cyberpunk. While the article is outdated socially, it does provide a frame from an era that had not quite reckoned with the bigotry inherent to certain academic disciplines, allowing for an analysis that surprisingly suits racist depictions.

For native Mexican Spanish speakers, they must learn the set of eleven English vocalic phonemes using only the five Spanish vocalic phonemes, meaning the Chicano speaker will often substitute the Spanish vocalic, consonantal, and suprasegmental phonemes unless trained otherwise. The result is several vowel mergers and “incorrect” consonant substitutions. In a line from the game’s first mission, Jackie says: “top quality don’t come free, ya know” while pronouncing the [ə] in “ya” with the same [I :] in “free.” We see something similar with the tense/lax merger of [I :] and [I] as well as th-stopping throughout Jackie’s speech. Suprasegmental substitutions give this dialect its distinct “sing-song” quality as speakers will alter their tone and pitch throughout phrases in ways foreign to native English. Take a line from another early Jackie interaction “You raise your glass to your mama, your Hermana. To the Mamacita you meet at the bar.” When delivering the vowels of “raise, glass, mama, Hermana, Mamacita, and meet,” Jackie noticeably raises his pitch before returning to standard English delivery. Rising glides are used multiple times in conjunction with a less-emphatic mode of romance language syllable stress.

With that example, we can also observe the casual usage of Spanish words interspersed in English sentences, something which Jackie does constantly. The words used are almost entirely out of a small pool of nouns and phrases like “Senorita” and “Dios Mio,” which a Western audience would likely know and associate with the stereotypical accent. When these dialectic aspects are then applied to wide swaths of other Latinx characters like with the Valentino gang members, the charm and uniqueness of Jackie Welles cease to work and covert bigotry arises. Regardless of the verity of this depiction of Chicano English, the way Cyberpunk uses it as shorthand to signal other characters’ racial identity works more to pull from and solidify Latinx stereotypes than anything else.

The game’s treatment of Japanese characters is no better and Goro Takemura functions similarly. Takemura is a well-realized NPC whom the player is meant to form a begrudging adoration towards as the pair works through an unlikely alliance. His arc has several emotional peaks, but once again the character embodies a racial archetype through the “disgraced Ronin” trope (McKevitt, 2017) and speaks with an incredibly thick Japanese accent. This “Mock Japanese” which Takemura and the other Nippon characters use serves the same purpose in reifying Western notions of their otherness. Yet, instead of a class-based superiority, this perception is one built on a post-WWII sense of villainization and technical inferiority, enforced by the Japanese character’s positions as heads of the malevolent Arasaka megacorporation which governs Cyberpunk’s world.

The most straightforward manifestation of a Japanese accent in Takemura is his pronunciation of English vowels and consonants. Compared to English, Japanese has a very small set of viable sounds, totaling only 71 when including diacritics, thus an incredible number of English sounds simply cannot be imitated with Japanese phonology. Take Takemura’s simple “I refuse to believe it” from early in the main quest for example. When delivering this line, “refuse” becomes [li:fu:Zu:] while “believe” becomes [vi:li:Vu:] and “it” is [i:tu:]. Diphthongs are very difficult for Japanese speakers coming from a phonetic vocabulary with only 3 core vowel sounds. Likewise, consonant sounds like [l] and [ɵ] are absent from the language, making English words containing them very difficult. The added [u:] to words ending with hard consonants is also a consequence of Japanese’s strict phonetic rules, as its only hard consonant without a connected vowel sound is [n] (Yamaguchi, 2018). Like most Japanese English speakers, Takemura’s speech falls prey to most of these challenges, but the exaggeration and persistence of them for a prominent character who is canonically meant to have spoken fluent English for nearly half a century is questionable.

Like Jackie, Takemura also uses Japanese words like “neko, meiyo, and shine (pronounced shi-ne)” though not as frequently as the former. Instead, the persistent delivery of Japanese words in English sentences is reserved for the villainous Arasaka family members and the Tyger Claw gang. Once more, the stereotypical “Engrish” on display serves to communicate cultural shorthand to a predominantly white, western audience. When the player encounters a Latinx or Japanese character, they will know instantly based on their dialects. To further this disappointment, both Jackie and Takemura are well-written characters with empathetic, deeply human arcs undercut by their exaggerated accents, especially when their speech is emblematic of others who share their ethnic depictions throughout the game. There stands the tacit implication that those without a “proper” mastery of English are somehow “lesser”, and this unfortunately extends at least partly to the game’s queer linguistics and Judy Alvarez.

Depictions of Queer Linguistics

When placed alongside its treatment of ethnic linguistics, Cyberpunk 2077’s handling of queer linguistic depictions is significantly stronger by comparison. With one notable exception, nearly every character on the LGBTQ+ spectrum is handled with linguistic indifference as there’s nothing that differentiates the speech of prominent gay NPC Kerry Eurodyne from a heterosexual, cis-gendered man. Most of the game’s main cast is canonically bisexual or pansexual, which not only fits its core ethos of post-identity equality but also bypasses the cheap tokenization that Jackie and Takemura fall into. Of course, this is contrasted heavily with the prominence of Judy Alvarez, 2077’s main lesbian character and potential romantic option for a female player character, who was featured heavily in promotional materials for the game. Judy, while handled extraordinarily well in some respects, embodies a litany of lesbian stereotypes, alongside others relating to her Latinx background, both, of course, extending to her speech.

Firstly, let us examine Judy’s overall portrayal and narrative arc, which tie closely to notions of contemporary queer stereotypes and serve to frame her coded linguistic delivery. Judy appears as a modern take on the “butch” lesbian archetype, complete with a short, dyed haircut and a litany of visible tattoos, a cultural marker traditionally associated with masculinity. Judy’s occupation is that of Cyberpunk’s “brain dance editor,” a cross between a futuristic video artist, software engineer, and porn producer. The adult industry and artistic aspect invoke more queer stereotypes, while the coding portion of her job once again reflects a traditionally male-dominated field (Eaklor, 2012). Finally, Judy falls into the trope of “U-Haul Lesbians” (Queen, 2005) and offers a romantically involved player character the keys to her in-game apartment after completing the first step of her quest line. She is also the only of the game’s main love interests to focus heavily on a future together after the events of the game. This is implied to be a response to a history of displacement and lack of strong familial support, once again checking off a lesbian trope (Einion, 2017). This portrayal is constantly brought to the forefront of the player’s mind in their countless interactions with Judy throughout the game and her hundreds of dialogue lines, all delivered with plentiful aspects of “gay speech.”

Given the lack of definitive scholarly consensus on quantifiable linguistic traits of queer speech, I will be pulling from Zimman’s (2013) “Hegemonic Masculinity and the Variability of Gay-Sounding Speech,” which provides a thorough overview of existing scholarship in its first half as well as recognizing the misplaced premises of using utilitarian technical measurements to measure an unobtainable “objective” sexuality. From Zimman’s literature review, we can conclude that people generally associate higher-pitched voices with femininity and lower-pitched ones with masculinity, which lesbians might seek in navigating their vocal presentation. As a character who embodies the butch stereotype, Judy of course speaks with a deeper, gruffer voice than the other female characters. She delivers lines with a distinct brusqueness and smoothness of prosody typically linked to masculine figures. In Judy’s introductory sequence (a mandatory quest for all players placed early in the game) her last words to the player character before sending them on their first “brain dance” are: “Lemme give you the tailored version first, let you get your bearings — then we’ll jump into editing mode. 3… 2… 1… Braindance.” In what should be a moment of individual excitement, Judy instead inflects with a slow rhythm and steady prosody rather than the varied delivery associated with feminine voices.

Relating to Judy’s distinct aural pattern is her subtle vocal fry present in nearly all dialogue lines. Zimman’s piece devotes much of its text to a quantifiable interpretation of vocal fry in gay speakers as a “creak” variable and at least concludes that we broadly associate the gay creak with homosexual and transgender men and by extension, the queer identity. While Judy might not embody the creak in the same way “feminine” gay men do, she does employ a consistent use of vocal fry, linking an audience’s perception of her clearly with the gay community.

Finally, it is important to consider the Latinx aspect of Judy’s character and how it manifests in her queer speech. Unlike Jackie Welles, Judy’s Chicano English is subtle, but it combines with her lower voice and consistent fry to amplify these lesbian linguistic elements. The only consistent observable feature she exhibits from this subset of characteristics is the formation of certain diphthongs, specifically the [Iə], [eI], and [əʊ] vowels which Chicano English speakers can stumble on due to the adaption from Spanish’s smaller vowel set. In a line from the earlier braindance scene: “Slow, deep breaths,” she lingers on the [əʊ] in “slow” and the [e] in “breaths” just a tad longer than most native English speakers. The effect is that of a less exaggerated Chicano accent which draws upon cultural norms to strengthen her other dialectic traits. In Mendoza-Denton’s (2008) “Homegirls,” she finds that much of the social presence that Latina youth gangs engage with is a sort of armor that shields their more vulnerable emotional cores with a veneer of pseudo-aggression. Judy’s Chicano English pulls from this cultural background and utilizes this alongside her gruffer vocal delivery as another marker of masculinity to hide her inner vulnerability much like the subjects of Mendoza-Denton’s work.

As the only prominent queer character to fit linguistic stereotypes, it seems her ethnic background melds with her sexual identity to make her a focal point of tropal depictions. Similar queer characters like the transgender woman Claire Russell or the cavalcade of prominent bisexual NPCs are all some flavor of mixed-race or white and display no visible linguistic markers. Yet, it is Judy Alvarez’s combination of lesbianism and Latinx identity that informs her hyperbolic linguistic depiction. It is the intersectional conveyance of the two separate social characteristics which each signal a lower-class position which mandates her linguistic tokenization and highlights an inherent tension at the core of not only Cyberpunk 2077 but all of Cyberpunk fiction.

Conclusion

Ultimately, 2077’s linguistic depictions of ethnic and sexual minorities are not malicious, but rather a product of a media artifact that needed to appeal to as wide a Western audience as possible. The thousands of individuals from different backgrounds at CD Projekt Red who worked on the game needed a cultural shorthand that consumers would recognize and resonate with, and Cyberpunk’s stereotypical accent portrayals are entirely in line with other popular entertainment in the west (Dragojevic et al., 2016). The fact that this wildly successful game has likely furthered a “covert racial discourse” in the millions who played it is unfortunate, especially when given the immense care put into marginalized characters’ narratives and their high quality as a result. Jackie Welles and many of the Latinx characters as well as Goro Takemura and the Japanese cast are inadvertently minimized by their stereotypical accents. Furthermore, Judy Alvarez stands as a bizarrely unique example of queer tokenization in a game with generally solid representation as a product of her intersectional oppression from a simultaneous Lesbian/Latina identity. Both examples function as contradictory to the game’s linguistic ethos promoted by cyberpunk slang and its broader social prescriptions held as an amalgamation of cyberpunk fiction.

When the cyberpunk genre was introduced, it served as a countercultural critique of increased otherization for the cold war west and sold a utopian vision where individuals of any ethnic background or sexual orientation were not only equal but could thrive in the unique forms of self-expression offered by futuristic technology. A future where the pragmatic replacement of identity-based oppression was instead swapped with the exclusive class might of megacorporations. Now that we have reached the prophesied era of unthinkable corporate control, it has become clear that marginalized suffering merely exists alongside this collective ruling-class fist. As a pastiche of its subgenre — a style that finds itself at an unprecedented zenith of science fiction popularity — Cyberpunk 2077 reproduces the trends of its contemporaries, thus conclusions drawn from its text can be applied more broadly. Its linguistic depictions signal an inability to move beyond archaic delineations between identity groups still seen in a vast majority of science fiction; the group distinctions themselves a product of inter-class warfare hatched from the horrific free market system cyberpunk fiction seeks to critique.

References

Cadora, K. (1995). Feminist Cyberpunk. Science Fiction Studies, 22(3), 357–372. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240457

Cheyne, R. (2008). Created Languages in Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 35(3), 386–403. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475175

Davé, S. (2017). Racial Accents, Hollywood Casting, and Asian American Studies. Cinema Journal, 56(3), 142–147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44867828

DRAGOJEVIC, M., MASTRO, D., GILES, H., & SINK, A. (2016). Silencing nonstandard
speakers: A content analysis of accent portrayals on American primetime television. Language in Society, 45(1), 59–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43904634

Eaklor, V. L. (2012). The Kids Are All Right But the Lesbians Aren’t: The Illusion of Progress in Popular Film. Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 38(3), 153–170. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42703741

EINION, A. (2017). The Urge to Merge and the Marriage Imperative: The Happily Ever After in Lesbian Relationships. In L. R. Ennis (Ed.), After the Happily Ever After: Empowering Women and Mothers in Relationships (pp. 43–58). Demeter Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvt5.6

Garcia, R. L. (1974). Toward a Grammar of Chicano English. The English Journal, 63(3), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/813844

Hill, J. H. (1998). Language, Race, and White Public Space. American Anthropologist, 100(3), 680–689. http://www.jstor.org/stable/682046

Hummon, D. M. (1994). College Slang Revisited: Language, Culture, and Undergraduate Life. The Journal of Higher Education, 65(1), 75–98. https://doi.org/10.2307/2943878

Mendoza‐Denton, N. (2008). Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs (1st ed.). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470693728

McKevitt, A. C. (2017). Authenticity in a Hybrid World: Sushi at the Crossroads of Cultural Globalization. In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (pp. 154–176). University of North Carolina Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469634487_mckevitt.10

Queen, R. (2005). “How Many Lesbians Does It Take…”: Jokes, Teasing, and the Negotiation of
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Semley, J. (2019). Cyberpunk is Dead: At the inglorious end of a once-promising genre. The Baffler, 48, 58–67. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26842284

Spurlin, B. (2021, August 20). How much cyberpunk 2077 cost to make. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-budget-cost-development-cd-project-red/

Yamaguchi, Toshiko. (2018). Lexicogrammatical Features in Japanese English: A Study of Five Speakers. Research in Language, 16(3), 341–355.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329016109_Lexicogrammatical_Features_in_Japanese_English_A_Study_of_Five_Speakers

Zeigler, M. B., & Osinubi, V. (2002). Theorizing the Postcoloniality of African American English. Journal of Black Studies, 32(5), 588–609. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180954

Zimman, L. (2013). Hegemonic masculinity and the variability of gay-sounding speech: The
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.2.1.01zim

After about 8 months of on-and-off reading divided into 3 or so periods, I finally finished Joyce’s monumental work of literature. As expected, I have plenty of thoughts on the masterpiece so here we go.

I’ll start with some personal context to shed some light on my eventual literary commentary. Firstly, there are 2 main groups of people who read Ulysses: English grad students in a semester-long course on the tome, or curious sadists with some love of the literary canon who hope to provide a more full understanding of English narrative history. As a 21-year old English major who’s still finishing my undergrad, I guess I fall more firmly into this second category. Reading Joyce’s opus on one’s own is certainly daunting (the text’s reputation really does precede itself) but I found a few strategies to work well for me.

Having some sort of background information is incredibly helpful in deciphering the 18 parts of the modernist novel. Personally, I was very familiar with the stream of consciousness prose style in Joycean contemporaries like Faulkner and Woolf. Joyce’s prose eventually becomes a beast in itself, but the first half or so of the novel should be familiar to any readers of Absalom, Absalom! or To the Lighthouse. Where Faulkner is concerned with temporality, perception and American mythmaking and Woolf’s focus is on intimate personal relationships and their surprising gravity, Joyce is far more interested in producing a definitive literary work which stands for the English tradition. With this in mind, some sort of familiarity with the distinct modernist style will make your trek through this literary odyssey (pun intended) much more bearable.

Speaking of the Homeric epic, I’d recommend brushing up on the broader points of Odysseus’s tale. As a kid, one of my favorite books to reread was a middle school picture book of the tale with a surprising amount of textual detail, so this just happened to be covered for me. We’re also fortunate to exist in a post-Riordan world, where his young adult series have become incredibly popular, assuring that a sizeable number of contemporary readers will at least recognize Joyce’s intentional parallels. A quick SparkNotes read of the poem should suffice for those who need a quick brushing up on the Odyssey. While the Homeric parallels are obviously important, I found their actual prevalence to the text to be relatively mild compared to what I was expecting.

Finally, a read through of the Dubliners or Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man will give the reader a strong familiarity with many of Ulysses’ major characters and broader Dublin historical context. The text is very much rooted in the Ireland of 1904 and a few Wikipedia articles on the Invincibles, early 20th century religious tension and Ireland’s colonial history will prepare you more than one might realize. Of course, a complete knowledge of the English literary canon would also be nice but not everyone was absurdly well-read as a certain Irish genius. That’s where guides come in.

The Guides I Used

I made my way through Ulysses with the help of 3 additional resources which I used to supplement my initial reading. Blamire’s New Bloomsday Book is an academic standard, and for good reason. The guide provides a succinct, but detailed summary of each of the book’s 18 chapters, outlining the Homeric parallels, delving into notable literary references, outlining the particularly notable moments of symbolism (of which there are virtually endless) and generally helping to clarify whatever confusion might arise out of an initial reading.

The website UlyssesGuide is a leaner, recent attempt at a similar goal. Its tone is more contemporary and the site doesn’t delve into the themes and imagery quite as much, but I found the author’s casual use of humor and clear reverence for the novel to be very helpful. It also delves more into the specific schema’s of each section and provides some useful context for Joyce’s writing process which can frame the novel in an easier sense.

Lastly, upon the recommendation of one of my university's modernism experts, I listened to an audiobook of Ulysses during moments of downtime around my general reading timeframe. There are plenty of great audio versions of the text, but I personally used RTE’s 1982 Full Cast Production for Irish radio. This adaptation is incredibly faithful to the text and does a wonderful job of differentiating between narration, character thoughts, dialogue and the odd grey areas in between.

I consumed these sources in differing orders in relation to my cold reading of Ulysses and I found the following reading pattern to be helpful. First, I’d start by reading the section of UlyssesGuide before tackling the chapter. Then, I’d read the chapter itself, usually in one sitting, without any outside sources. After that, I’d read the Bloomsday Book account to clear up whatever confusion I had. If you choose to take an aural companion on your first read, I’d recommend consuming that asynchronously after you’ve read the chapter during activities like driving, exercising, relaxation or really anything that allows you to focus on the textual nuance. Over the 3 reading periods which I finished the book, this pattern worked the best for me.

The Act of Deciphering the Text

As one actually reads the novel itself, I would strongly recommend not delving too deep into the often labyrinthian prose. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t closely read and contemplate Joyce’s incredible authorship, but more of a practical concern. Over the novel’s 700 or so pages (the widely-read Gabler edition totals 647) Joyce packs unimaginable detail into nearly every line. On top of the straightforward Homeric comparisons, allusions to Shakespeare, the old and new testament, Chaucer, Dante, Milton and just about every notable English work are constant. This coincides with persistent and often conflicted symbolism (Joyce likes to paint the protagonists Bloom and Stephen as multiple figures simultaneously; Bloom is at once Odysseus, Hamlet, Christ, Sinbad, Abraham and many more to give an example) to create a cavalcade of literary depth in every moment. Those who hate themselves enough to actually attempt Ulysses (English grad students or heavy readers) will likely be familiar with plenty of the references, but trying to nail all of them on a cursory read is too much for any mere mortal to attempt. People often use the term “let the text wash over you” and I think that’s apt here.

On top of these plentiful references, Joyce’s word choice and syntactic decisions are momentous in themselves. I had read the Dubliners a few years ago as part of a literature survey course so I knew Joyce loved his 10 cent words and lofty sentence construction, often filled with rhythmic repetition directly tied to theming (the persistent characterization of dark with hard consonants in Araby comes to mind) but the actual text of Ulysses is a beast unto itself. Not only do we have plenty of the wonderful high-fallutin modernist words like “effluvium” littering nearly every sentence, but the literary schema makes certain sections incredibly difficult to decode as Joyce’s very style and technique changes in every section.

Initially, the prose isn’t too far removed from the more esoteric sections of Faulkner. There is a 3rd person narrator who describes most of the physical happenings of the actual Bloomsday who stands alongside constant digressions into the various character’s thoughts and musings. Personally (probably as a result of years of consuming this style of literature) I don’t find Joyce’s “standard” delivery to be too difficult. Sure it’s confusing, but the main characters have distinct inner voices which help to differentiate between the inner and outer world. Joyce is also relatively liberal with his helpful punctuation and organization so the reader can generally get the feel and flow of different moments in text. Even if we’re not understanding absolutely everything, it’s doable to surmise the events and thoughts of the novel’s first half.

The main difficulty for me personally prior to Section 11 (The Sirens) was keeping track of the various Dublin characters and Irish history references. My mom is Irish and I’m relatively well-read on the country’s contemporary history, but even I was struck off guard by this aspect. Especially in sections like Section 7 (Aeolus) and Section 10 (The Wandering Rocks) there are so many middle-aged Irish men whose names might as well be “Marty O’McSullivan” and all have similar, yet distinct, backgrounds and connections to each other. I’m usually pretty able when it comes to keeping tracks of large and confusing character casts (The Count of Monte Christo, Wuthering Heights and The Sound and the Fury are among my favorite classics) but the sheer volume and similarity of those in Ulysses is brutal to say the least. This isn’t because the characters aren’t well-written or memorable, but simply due to the narrative structure so many of them enter and exit the plot with an assumed familiarity on the reader’s part.

The late-19th century Irish history references can also throw you off quite easily. I had no trouble powering through Stephen’s lengthy Shakespeare thesis in Section 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) but the rhetorical back in forth in Section 7 about the finer points of contemporary nationalist rhetoric was practically indecipherable.

Honestly, I think these are the biggest barriers for 21st-century readers of Ulysses. Obviously academics at the time of its release had trouble as well, but the assumed familiarity with Irish politics and historical setting would have at least applied to those who dared to read the novel 100 years ago. A dedicated modern reader can understand the text with the help of a guide (or 3) but the period-specific terminology and Irish context are much harder to explain or intuit.

Oh Lord, Schema

Really though, the biggest hurdle for nearly everyone is going to be handling the grand nature of Joyce’s design. The lengths which his literary changes go to in the novel’s second half would perplex even the most adept reader. The first 10 sections are obviously incredibly difficult, but they remain grounded in Joyce’s “standard” delivery. They’re focused usually around Stephen or Bloom during a particular hour on Bloomsday. The mundanity of the activities here are easy enough to understand and the digressions into the depths of our hero’s minds (even with Section 3’s (Proteus) amorphous dialogue) are digestible in context. The most “out-there” technique being that of the “enthymemic” in Section 7, which, while engaging, is easy enough to read through. As I’ve mentioned before, Section 11 is where things really start to heat up with the increased prevalence of “the arranger.”

“The arranger,” as most scholars refer to the figure as, is the conscious manifestation of the novel itself within the prose’s broader narrative. This voice — which may or may not be indicative of Joyce himself — begins to play tricks on the reader. The arranger starts commenting on certain happenings with an ambiguous tone and situating certain character thoughts in accordance with the literary technique and even with other character’s inner monologues. The line between stylistic prose, stream of consciousness, dialogue, 3rd person narrator and the arranger begins to blur and the difficulty rightly spikes.

In mimicking Odysseus’s encounter with the magical bird-women, Joyce expresses this episode through the technique of “fuga per canonem.” He essentially turns the prose into a songlike verse, by accenting the melodious nature of dialogue and the rhythm of the bar which Bloom finds himself in. This doesn’t seem too bad and the relatively straightforward contents of this hour are certainly appreciated, but understanding them is incredibly trying. Joyce switches between the patrons of the bar, Bloom’s own preoccupations, our arranger and imbues all of them with a stylistic virtuosity. The chapter is a pleasure to read (seriously the man’s ability is just gorgeous to experience sometimes) but suddenly the bar raises from “difficult but understandable” to “you need a master’s in Joyce specifically.”

The remainder of the book fluctuates in accessibility and mileage will definitely vary depending on your reading strengths and weaknesses. I personally found the “gigantism” of Section 12 (the Cyclops) and the “Tuescence/Detumescence, Retrogressive Progression” of Section 13 (Nausicca) and even Section 18 (Penelope) to be grokkable enough. Section 17 (Ithaca) and Section 16 (Eumaeus) are somewhere in the middle and were generally understandable in between moments of absurd technological detail and extended geographical asides. Yet the “embryonic development” of Section 14 (Oxen of the Sun) and “hallucination” of Section 15 (Circe) are borderline impenetrable. Seriously, I don’t think a first-time reader would be legitimately able to understand everything here even in the broad plot strokes.

Despite this, one can’t help but admire the masterful craftsman ship in these two chapters, which are not without their moments of hilarity or extreme emotion. Joyce really did plot out 32 different stages of the English language and then move through them in accordance to the development of the human fetus for just Section 14! I almost don’t mind that I barely understood half of the chapter (the gothic horror and Dickens spoofs were great I will say) it’s such an impressive literary and technical achievement that I can’t help but marvel at the craft and appreciate how it connects to the rest of the novel. I feel the same way about Section 15, albeit with a more intense liveliness which makes the book so special.

Joyce’s Emotive Modernism

I think what separates Ulysses from a Finnegan’s Wake or a Gravity’s Rainbow and what has allowed the novel to survive for a century is its incredible emotional core. I alluded to it earlier, but my mother is Irish and my father is Jewish so I certainly felt a predisposition to Bloom going into the novel. Likewise with Stephen, whose brief description reminded me of the ill-fated Quentin Compson, one of my favorite literary characters. I was excited to see these 2 modern heroes exist through what I assumed would be a heartless display of intellectual might. My prior experiences providing favorable opinions for these characters whom I would assume occupy a grueling ordeal rather than a narrative. I was surprised and elated to discover that Ulysses spins a such a compelling interpersonal narrative and comes across as to very “human.”

With someone like Pynchon, he wants to punish the reader. The demi god Timothy P is smarter than you, he knows it and he hates you for it. While Gravity’s Rainbow is undoubtedly a masterpiece, this feeling of superiority does characterize the whole work and I’d argue it lacks the “empathy” of other major technical literary beasts. While Faulkner or Woolf or even Foster Wallace might employ increasingly complex modes of delivery, their obtuse stories are defined by a quintessential personal element. The quiet sorrow and defiance of Caddy Compson, the incredible maternal care of Mrs. Ramsay or the isolation of Hal Incandenza; these characters and their struggles are emblematic of a broader existential struggle. The best part about Ulysses is how Joyce accomplishes the same with his protagonists.

Central to the novel is how our heroes recover from an all-consuming grief. Stephen’s mother has recently died, and coupled with his abandonment of faith (something which was a much bigger deal in 1904 Ireland) he has also lost his direct familiar connection, living with a few students in a lighthouse on Dublin’s pier. Bloom, is still reeling from the death of his infant son, Rudy, and poisoned by the thoughts of his own father’s suicide. Like Stephen, he’s upsettingly distant from his wife Molly and daughter Milly and ostracized from his country simply by the fact of his ethnicity. These seem like sad, but unexpected clichés to a modern audience, but their hardships (and that of the other Dubliners) manifest in such incredibly touching ways which elevate the text incredibly.

There are too many to count, so I’ll just point out a couple instances which stick in my mind after reading. Stephen’s meeting with his sisters, seemingly out of nowhere in Section 10 is a prime example. Out of the chaos of bouncing between 20 or so viewpoints, we land on the familiar Telemachus in the midst of a devastating run-in with 2 of his siblings. Under the watch of their drunk father, they’re having a very difficult time and as the eldest Dedalus son, Stephen’s chosen absence at home is almost directly responsible for their suffering here. Stephen’s thoughts on the matter here are absolutely crushing: “She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul, Salt green death. We. Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite. Misery! Misery!” The fact that the poignont “she is drowning” and silent cry of “misery!” exist in a stream of more obtuse thought only strengthen their weight. This can be said about many moments throughout the novel.

Bloom also has plenty moments of soft humanity, but the most touching one for me occurs at the end of Section 15. Circe’s “hallucination” technique manifests as a bizarre script in the early morning as a drunken Bloom pursues Stephen to a brothel. The lines between reality, fantasy and inner turmoil are blurred throughout this lengthy episode, making for an incredibly difficult read. Luckily, the chapter is filled with moments of humor and personal endearment on Bloom’s part to make it all the more palatable. After nearly 150 pages of impossibly dense waking dreams, our calm after the storm is given in the form of an apparition of Bloom’s dead son Rudy. “Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.” A grown version of the long-lost son whose death has caused unbelievably sorrow for our hero is loaded with gravitas. It anchors the entire chapter in the human experience and reminds us of the important-stakes of our modern existence.

When Joyce wants to, his prose is impossibly elegant and evocative. The contrast between ridiculous high-concept literary virtuosity and these quiet moments of emotive reflection are what defines Ulysses for me. This epistemology of opposed dualities has always been at the core of literary modernism and unsurprisingly, Joyce’s masterwork stands tall in this regard.

“The Fuckin Regularness of Life” and Moving Forward

After finishing the novel, more so than any other related contemporaries, the piece of media which it reminded me of most clearly is the legendary HBO series The Sopranos. David Chase’s opus has many of the same themes as Joyce’s work and communicates them in surprisingly similar ways, albeit in a far more digestible fashion.

Both works are concerned with the plight of the modern man in a time where systems have been uprooted and the promises of old have been utterly eroded. They deal with the day-to-day struggle of a family man experiencing cultural diaspora and focus on verisimilitude, connectivity and literary tradition. Much of what drew viewers to The Sopranos initially was the immediate satisfaction of physical violence in a new gangster storyline. The show of course had plenty of “hits n’ tits” (to put it bluntly) but its 6 seasons were far more concerned with the monotony and petulant boredom of good ol’ American living, which is far less glamorous than media typically portrays. Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti so eloquently states in Season 1 episode “The Legend of Tenessee Moltisanti”: “It’s like the fuckin regularness of life is too fucking hard for me.”

So much art has historically focused on feats of grandeur which allow audiences to experience something far more evocative of their boring, regular lives. Campbellan archetypes like The Odyssey and The Aeneid are of course guilty of this and gangster movies are practically the purest distillation of that notion in an American context. These stories are wonderful in their own ways and certainly fit the Aristotelian model — I recently caught up on every Marvel movie so lord knows myself and countless others enjoy that sort of thing — but lack the sincere empathy and relatability of more rooted works of fiction.

Tony Soprano is one of the most beloved characters in television history and for good reason. He is unequivocally human, filled with contradictions, at once abhorrent and relatable. This notion of character construction is applied to every other aspect of the show and is probably the single largest factor in its continued success. Likewise, this is why Stephen and Bloom are so universal, they’re portrayed as flawed people, floundering and trying their best in an unjust and flawed world.

As a hero, one might be quick to criticize Bloom’s passivity with his wife. His casual extramarital communications, his advertiser’s keen opportunism, his questionable encounter with a “lame” teenager. Yet, you can’t miss Bloom’s quantifiable empathy, his good intentions, his familiar love and his undeniable perseverance in the face of cosmic loss and discrimination. In the modern era, nothing can be distilled down to simple bimodals. Joyce demonstrates this in his protagonists, in the whole of Dublin and for the broader world around them. I know this conclusion is far from revelatory or novel, but after finishing the novel it feels so much more tangible. Something about the wild array of styles, technical experimentation and touching private moments just drives home that central theme so much more.

This defining ambiguity is everywhere across the novel’s pages and I was amazed by how it effects even the two major narrative payoffs at its end. The mythical meeting of Stephen and Bloom is rather underwhelming and Stephen’s refusal to stay the night left me utterly shocked. I had always assumed that Molly Bloom’s famous “yes I said yes I will yes” was a direct revitalization of their marriage that mimicked the Homeric parallel. I was unprepared for the implications of these events, but in retrospect in certainly aligns with Joyce’s broader message. Ulysses is just about a single day in the life of infinitely complicated individuals who have been and will continue to be molded by their life experiences. Ultimately Stephen’s destination and the fate of Bloom’s marriage is unimportant in the broader scheme of things and that crushing ambiguity is the point.

Am I “Better” For Having Finished This Book?

Much of the initial conceit for certain strands of literary modernism had to do with the innate superiority of well-educated, white authorial geniuses. The original “lit bros” wanted to flex their intellectual might with lofty prose and technique, allusions to obscure literature and history and subject matter which most would consider taboo or uninteresting. It’s this movement which spawned several masterpieces of the 20th century, but unquestionably fostered some rather toxic discourse and excluded marginalized voices. I think it’s worth recognizing that some of this sentiment still exists for those who have read and study these works.

Looking back on why I got into stream of consciousness literature, this was probably a reason for me. As a college freshmen unsure of what I was doing with my major or my life and dealing with excessive personal issues, I think I turned to this type of literature as a way of maintaining some abstract sense of superiority. If I could read and understand these books, then that made me somehow “better” than people who couldn’t. Since then I’ve come to adore the prose style of more experimental modernist and postmodernist literature, but I often think about that initial driving inclination.

Now after having finished Ulysses, the white whale of the genre, it feels nice on a personal level to have done so, but I no longer feel a need to “flex” my reading ability or assert some literary superiority. Instead, it’s just a feeling of contentedness to have experienced such a wonderful work of literature.

I plan on doing my master’s thesis on a related subject, so I’m sure I’ll revisit Joyce’s baby in due time and I look forward to doing so. The text is incredibly deep and rich and I have no doubt that rereading it is a fine experience. I hope the reader of this ramble enjoyed it somewhat, I just needed to get my thoughts for this incredible book on paper. Until then, maybe I’ll finally finish Infinite Jest…

— Sam Graff

On YouTube, there exists a sizeable and relatively popular community of “video game analysts.” The site has always been a beacon for gaming-related internet content, from the Newgrounds-adjacent shorts of its early days to the let’s play explosion of the early 2010s to the consistency which media companies like IGN or Gamespot have maintained since its inception, but in the later half of the 2010s a more long-form and academically minded type of gaming video gained serious traction. “Video game analysis videos” have since become a notable way which audiences interface with the format and represent a new type of media commentary which taps into the unique interaction that games allow as a medium. These videos are generally long, ranging from 10–15-minute digestible nuggets all the way to 8 hours or more of long-form discourse. While the subject is always video games, the content can vary wildly from thematic discussion, technical evaluation, historical time capsules or even sometimes approaching traditional analysis. One creator who expertly blends these desperate threads into an enticing format is 33-year-old Oregon native Noah Caldwell-Gervais.

Gervais produces monthly videos, always over an hour in length, which discuss various video games and series from his unique perspective. Gervais never graduated college or even fostered a notable career before he started producing analysis videos in 2013 — in fact he had worked exclusively in a series of low-paying cook positions — but his unique perspective lends his content and undeniable edge that few can replicate. As a lifelong gamer, avid reader of classic literature and sci-fi and cinephile, Gervais pulls from an incredibly broad yet specific nerd repertoire. This blend of vast media knowledge and midwestern working class experience manifests in his videos and helps to account for their style and content.

Gervais’ scripts (delivered aurally over relatively unedited game footage) feel like Hunter S. Thompson-led tours across the changed America of the post-Vietnam era, but instead of Nixon campaigns or Nevada benders, the audience is treated to sights and wonders of the contemporary gaming landscape, complete with their cultural baggage and implications. On paper, this might seem boring (who could find time to watch an 8-hour long video about the Resident Evil series?) but in execution, Gervais’ work functions as sweeping media criticism, capable of uniting the personal, political, and cultural into societal commentaries through the medium of game analysis. If there is one element in particular that allows him to effectively accomplish this, it would be the general interconnectedness of his essays. Let us look at several examples from Gervais’ vast catalog to demonstrate the different techniques he uses to mold impressive commentary out of an unlike source.

As was alluded to earlier, the main form of video game discussion on YouTube for years was the consumer review. Generally, these focused on answering the question of “should I purchase this game?” and did so by seeing how competently made the game was or if it was generally a pleasant experience to play. Much of video game analysis on the site still seeks to answer this fundamental question and Gervais is no exception. However, when Noah is speaking about a technical aspect or design choice or gameplay feature, its almost always in service of a broader point. In the video “A Thorough Look At God of War,” Gervais takes a look at every game in the Sony series, and he consistently comments on the game’s combat and action and emphasizes how good it feels to play. This itself is not particularly novel, journalists have long praised the series’ combat and its action focus allowed it to sell quite well in a post Devil May Cry landscape. Yet, when Gervais is praising this more technical or “gamey” aspect of the work, it serves to further his cultural argument.

For Gervais, the God of War series works so well because it allows players to actually embody the Greek heroes of yore through its action. The combat feels and focus on set pieces not only make for an enjoyable video game, but they amplify a cultural resonance with widely known myths and archetypes to make for something both engrossing and subversive. Where most reviewers would use this gameplay topic to talk about how God of War is a good game series, Gervais pushes it a step further and uses it as a springboard to a more engaging conclusion.

Another common technique used when discussing video games, is to relate a section or piece of a video game to a personal anecdote from the reviewer or commentator. This can allow the audience to better grasp a certain point being made by imbuing a human element to the analysis and it can also let one better understand the creator’s perspective. Gervais is no stranger to this strategy, and deploys it in most videos, usually to make staggering points about visceral aspect of the game’s intended experience. In his video “Scars & Stories [Planescape Torment Vs. Torment: Tides of Numenera,” Gervais brings up an anecdote about reading an incredibly emotional short story with his wife to highlight the potential emotional impact that narratives can have. In “How Does the Last of Us Part 2 Compare to The Last of Us Part 1?” he recounts a tale where his dog was nearly killed by another dog to show our capacity for violence in survival situations. Both of these examples might seem benign, but Gervais is able to spin them into powerful statements about the games he is covering and turn these conclusions outwards to something more far-reaching.

Arguably the most important aspect which functions as a glue for Gervais’ sprawling essays is his persistent use of outside references. These allusions are not only to other pieces of media ranging from 50s Russian cinema to obscure science fiction novellas, but also to prominent cultural understandings of genre and ideology. In the months after its release, a great deal of analysis was produced regarding CD Projekt Red’s colossal disappointment Cyberpunk 2077. Much of this content was far more focused on the game’s technical shortcomings and relatively buggy performance, yet Gervais took a completely different route. In the video “What Kind of Game Did Cyberpunk 2077 Turn Out to be Anyway?” Gervais pulls from a litany of Cyberpunk fiction from Blade Runner to Snow Crash to define what makes a piece of Cyberpunk media successful and then demonstrates why 2077 fails along these lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWEkeqJ2djM&t=4551s

According to Gervais, Neal Anderson’s Snow Crash succeeds because of the voracity in which it tackles a hyper interesting world. Likewise, William Gibson’s Necromancer works due to its nuanced critique of contemporary society and the subversive nature of its narrative. For Gervais, 2077 does not achieve either of these goals in its attempt at crafting a quintessentially “cyberpunk” experience and the game’s cardinal sin is the dumbing down of the genre’s strengths for a mass, yet forgettable, experience. In his critique, Noah is also able to touch upon though-provoking topics like the commodification of science fiction media, the horrific working conditions of Triple a gaming company and what makes us fundamentally attracted to the fantastical. While there is nothing inherently wrong with a more straightforward consumer review which focuses on games for their monetary value, Gervais can achieve something more poignant by pulling liberally from a variety of related media. This strategy is of course augmented when the essayist combines it with the previous two analysis techniques.

In perhaps his greatest video “Home, Home on the Console: From Red Dead Revolver to Red Dead Redemption 2,” Gervais givesa stunning commentary on the western video game series. His analysis here works so well because of the ease with which Gervais blends gameplay evaluation, personal anecdotes, and broader media touchstones.

In discussing 2019’s Red Dead Redemption 2, Gervais paints it as fulfilling the promise of “the Western” by synthesizing an experience which speaks to American diaspora and the sense of wisteria that permeates the genre. In this frame, the game’s incredibly detailed open world and the ease of access it allows players to explore it do not just serve as an exciting gameplay feature but amplifies the sense of novel American wilderness which birthed the nation as we know it. The game world reinforces the inherent duplicity of American promise and contrasts the savagery of its nature with the serenity of its wide-open vistas. To further this point, Gervais pulls from his personal experience of a lengthy road trip across the American west with his wife and dog. Gervais goes into great detail about the loneliness of the whole ordeal and how certain towns and monuments made him feel a uniquely American sense of disassociation. This frame and merging of personal experience with the technical aspects of the game itself continues throughout the video’s entire 4-hour long runtime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2utf6yph_QQ

Finally, his analysis of the Western would not be complete without a sizeable number of references to the Western cinema of the mid-20th century and conveniently enough, Gervais has seen just about every notable Western. Over this video, Gervais reaches throughout the annals of American cinema. He discusses nearly every John Wayne movie, giving particular focus to his final performance in The Shootist and tying it into the actor’s relatively abhorrent political views. Noah talks about more recent Western blockbusters like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and looks at their ultimate failure to adapt an older art form to something contemporary which abides by our current social norms. Lastly, Gervais speaks about True Grit (both the original and remake) at great length and pays special attention to the epilogue scene where an older Mattie reflects on the film’s events with a simply solemn: “they were times.”

In this video, Gervais merges all three of these analytic dimensions into one cohesive whole. His strategy employs a simultaneous storytelling approach, so as an audience we experience a layered narrative thread while consuming his videos. Gervais dips into his different modes of critique throughout his essays and weaves in and out of them to punctuate certain conclusions. In this Red Dead Redemption video for example, his gameplay critique ties in to his personal anecdotes which also relate to the western cinema references. By the end of its runtime, the viewer feels as if they have born witness to a cohesive media experience which speaks to the uniquely American art form of the western and how its genre tropes transcend a bygone era.

This genre analysis, which draws from an interdisciplinary approach to art critique stands out in a sea of more traditional gaming videos. Noah Caldwell-Gervais’ unique experiences and style allow for far broader cultural commentary borne of a depth of tropic understanding. Alongside other notable video essayists, Gervais has paved the way for a more “academic” type of media critique, one that bodes well for the democratization of scholarly discourse.

Ian Kochinski, known popularly as Vaush, is a sensational Leftist content creator best known for his incendiary political content. Since joining platforms like YouTube and Twitch in early 2019, the millennial personality has amassed a startling following through videos which focus almost exclusively on the specifics of American progressivism and Marxist thought. The media scholar Joshua Meyrowitz outlined 3 different types of para-social relationships in an era before the internet. These relationships are one-sided and are formed when an audience member begins to feel a connection to a media figure they follow. According to Meyrowitz, there are media friends, heroes and villains. In the digital era, media figures operate in a unique space which allows more audience interaction and feedback than ever before and much of the burgeoning political figures online lean into this discourse more heavily than figures from prior eras. It is because of this unique hypermodern engagement that a YouTuber like Vaush can occupy all 3 modes of Meyrowitz’ media relationship: the friend, the hero and the villain.

Like many popular video creators, Vaush presents nearly all his content with his face front and center. The primary screen setup for a Vaush stream or video places his face in the center of a camera at about webcam distance, with his background of anime memorabilia, gamer rgb lights and cats framing his body. When reviewing a video or reading an article, Vaush will move his camera to the bottom righthand quadrant. This maneuver allows the material to become the primary focus, but also allows viewers to see Vaush’s face at any given time. This is a similar method used by vloggers and lifestyle YouTubers to create a sense of intimacy. By displaying the creator’s face so prominently, we as an audience feel as if we’re in constant conversation with them. This is just one of multiple techniques which allow Vaush to become a media friend for much of his audience.

The term itself simply refers to a media figure whom an audience feels a friendly, para-social connection to. The viewer might view their media friend as another aspect of their social circle and feel generally endeared to them. The persistent vlog-style of Vaush’s videos help to achieve this effect, but so does his rhetoric and general manner of delivery. Over the course of his regular 4–5 hour streams, Vaush presents himself as a free-wheeling, funny and knowledgeable younger millennial with thoughtful and well-reasoned positions on humanitarian and social issues. Vaush covers a great deal of sordid subject matter relating to the less favorable aspects of American politics, yet he delivers it all in a tongue-in-cheek manner which helps to diffuse the dower subject topics. In the same breath, Vaush may touch upon the bleakness of a minority-controlled conservative government and then crack a joke involving gaming and anime references or ridiculous internet terms like “nussy.” On this note, the positions Vaush takes on political issues are almost always incredibly agreeable to any left-leaning audience. Where some lefties might have too harsh of a stance on certain issues or vice versa, Vaush seems to always land upon the most agreeable of progressive viewpoints. This and the fact that he constantly advocates for marginalized people daily make it easy for his audience to see him as a media friend.

Meyrowtiz’ media hero occupies a similar position to that of the media friend, in the sense that the viewer will usually hold a certain level of reverence for the media figure. In the case of the media hero, this idolization overtakes the sense of mutual respect an audience might feel with their media friend, and they begin to see them as something inherently greater. In the arena of online political debates, Vaush becomes more than a friend to his audience.

During the early and mid-2010s, there was a massive influx of far-right rhetoric on the internet which sought to popularize a great deal of abhorrent, conservative ideologies. Figures from this boom gained much of their audience by posting “debate” videos, where they would recite a list of reactionary talking points against generally unprepared college students and pick the best of these segments to upload. It cultivated a dishonest sense that American conservatives were on the side of “facts and logic” while anyone remotely to the left of Reagan was an unjust snowflake who only cared about pointless social issues. As a direct response to this movement, media figures like Vaush would appear to combat these false perceptions.

As a so called “debate bro,” Vaush has hosted hundreds of verbal fisticuffs on his channel where he pits himself against virtually anybody whom he is ideologically opposed to. The bread and butter of this content, however, is when Vaush argues directly with figures from the far right and pushes back against their prevailing media narrative cultivated this decade. Debates with internet conservative figures like Tim Pool, Charlie Kirk, Sargan of Akaad, Jesse Lee Peterson and many more offer a unique sense of catharsis for audience members who are tired of seeing these faulty media framings hailed as objective truth. Vaush himself is incredibly rhetorical efficient — able to counter his opponent’s factual errors with comprehensive studies of his own, catch them in ideological traps and come across as a reasonable individual who just wants America to be a better place for everyone; all while delivering his own leftist framings in a comprehensive manner. It is this combination of conversational proficiency and ability to push back against prevailing internet hegemonies which transforms him from a media friend to media hero in the realm of verbal debates.

Given the nature of debates and ideological clashes, it comes as no surprise that to a great deal of audience members, Vaush can even come across as what Meyrowitz would dub a media villain. Like the prior two terms, a media villain is defined by the para-social relationship between an audience and a media figure. Unlike them, however, the villain represents a negative emotional bond. Whereas media friends and heroes offer positive anthropologic enforcement through likeability and ideological sanctity, the villain embodies the inverse of these things and can become an emblem of archetypal resentment for the viewer (a good example would be how Donald Trump represents nearly everything bad about modern day America to a vast liberal audience.) With Vaush’s immense popularity within the internet political community and the efficacy for which he advocates his views, Vaush’s media villain status is all but guaranteed.

Within conservative internet spaces, there is a near disproportionate level of distaste for Vaush given his relative popularity. Despite not being quite as popular as other leftist figures, he garners an incredible amount of hate. A typical scroll through any anonymous chat forum like 4chan’s /pol or Bitwire’s live discussions will reveal a litany of Vaush hate posts, usually focused on fabricated or arbitrary aspects of his media presence. More “neutral” zones like YouTube comment sections (particularly those on right-leaning channels) also have many inflammatory quips. The same can be said for political Twitter, which somehow manages to get Vaush’s name trending once a week or so with a clip taken out of context or a particularly entertaining dunk from one of his debates. This phenomenon of media heroes functioning as villains for an audience of opposing world views is nothing new, but the visibility of this public split is nearly omnipresent in the internet era. It lends an utterly duplistic nature to Vaush’s media persona as an internet content creator that feels distinct to our hypermodern era.

Originally, Meyrowitz coined his para-social terms to discuss a world defined by mainstream media personalities from television, film and music. It is surprising then, how prescient they feel in our current era and how the terms even deepen with the internet’s capability for broader discourse and cross-cultural communality. In the past, on more traditional forms of media interaction, a figure like Vaush would generally be restricted to the position of media friend and hero to some and villain to those ideologically opposed. Yet, with the near endless stream of internet involvement and the speed with which topics change, Ian Kochinski can embody all three media relationships nearly simultaneously. Even wide swaths of the online left despise Vaush for one reason or another! Vaush, however, is far from alone in this para-social amorphousness. In fact, nearly all popular media figures on the internet operate in this space of friend, hero and villain. Sure, Vaush’s political characterization opens him up to more ideological disagreements, but internet celebrities from all walks of content find themselves embroiled in Meyrowitz’ trinity.

No matter how mundane their content may be, popular YouTubers, Twitch streamers and TikTokers all seem to occupy these media positions for wide swaths of their audience. Personal connections are incredibly easy to foster in an age of increasing impersonality and the widespread usage of vlog-style techniques only helps this factor, bolstering media friendships. On that same note, young people specifically are looking for role models in an era where monumental figures of the past are being exposed to much-needed scrutiny. This, coupled with the prevalence and commodification of internet activism allows for many individuals to see even the most menial of content creators as something more, as media role models and heroes. Finally, with the widespread speed and ease of discourse, more and more unsavory aspects of these internet figures are revealed than ever before, fostering distasteful relationships between audience members and content creators. A process which inevitably turns them into media villains in the eyes of some.

Vaush serves as a fine example of the applicability of Meyrowitz’ theory, but this phenomenon is observable in nearly every mainstream internet star. Our hypermodern era is defined by many things, but chief among them is the unprecedented access to information. This novel media democracy allows for infinitely more interaction with media figures than ever before. Without the carefully-constructed constraints of most traditional media, audiences can engage with their media figures more frequently and experience all aspects of their para-social relationships in ways that simply were not possible even 10 years ago. One could make several loaded prescriptions about the societal implications of this trend, ranging from exceedingly positive to apocalyptically negative, yet a more measured response suggests a happy in-between. Media has always functioned as a simulacrum, as a reflection of the society that birthed it. The figures in media are merely aspects of this relationship and a greater focus on the nuance behind this artist-medium dynamic can at the very least be mildly beneficial. Ultimately, facilitating a greater anthropological bond between the audience and their ever-present talking heads will probably lead to a deeper understanding of the backbone of hypermodern communication.

Meyrowtz’ Article:

From Distant Heroes to Intimate Friends