Ah Humanity!

At least once in your life, you should just give up the whole enchilada.  Quit. It is hard - so hard that the only thing harder is to keep going, and when the going gets that tough, it's time to get going yourself. 

I mention all this because of a game I played called Every Day the Same Dream. It's a really short game - you can give it a try if you like, and it should only take about ten minutes or so, then we can have an informed conversation regarding what I don't like about it. 

Once upon a time, I was a cubicle dweller.  From about 1999 to 2003 or so, I worked in the IT industry.  It's an industry which, all things considered, can be rewarding and stimulating.  Some of my best friends are administrators, technicians, and programmers.  I, however, hated it.

I liked the money just fine, though I spent a lot of it (read: all of it) on booze and parties and little toy soldiers.  Yes, those three things totally go together.  I started out as an intern, which was awesome because I'd just come in and install Y2K patches, rack up lots of overtime, and then go out at night and live it up.  Then I started working the help desk and was subject to a never-ending parade of (l)user calls that all ended with me telling someone to reboot and commiserating that, yes, they should have saved more often. 

After that help desk job came another help desk job, and after that help desk job came a stretch of unemployment, and then a user training job.  It was my job to hold the hands of auto-assembly linemen as they labored to understand the essentials of PC operation.  You may wonder what line workers need PC access for - so did I, until they started getting fired for exchanging inappropriate e-mails.  I don't think it was necessarily a conspiracy on behalf of my employer, but by the time the project completed there was a significant number of persons to whom my employer did not have to pay unemployment benefits. 

In any case, it was dull work for which I never developed a passion, so in 2003 I went back to school.  The work was hard, I was poor, and the next six years kicked major ass.  My writing improved exponentially, and I got to travel, all because I looked at my situation of the 4 years preceding and said to hell with it.

Which is sort of the problem with Every Day, and the small buzz surrounding its so-called bleak profundity.  It has a theme that a lot of people seem to get, which is that of "...alienation and refusal of labor," but it doesn't do anything that "Bartleby the Scrivener" didn't do just as well, if not better, 150 years ago.  Indeed, the game is sort of like a mix between Bartleby and American Beauty, albeit seeming to explore a new medium - except that to be perfectly honest, Adult Swim's Five Minutes to Kill (Yourself) beat this game to the punch by a good year or two. 

But EDTSD is in black-and-white and all slow and mood-music-y and shit, and I think that's the argument that people would like to make.  If you didn't read the link I referenced off of American Beauty up above, it makes reference to a manifesto by Manny Farber written in 1962 called "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art."  Arguably, EDTSD, Like American Beauty is so much White Elephant Art - high-minded and elegantly executed, but too precious by far. 

Really, let's break the themes of the game down:  Alienation?  If by no other means, that theme is realized by the minimalism of the game's design and a healthy dose of contrasting color - the leaf, the stoplight, the TV all provide enticing notes of variety and set just the right tone.  It's got alienation down pat.

But refusal of labor?  Yes, ultimately (SPOILER ALERT: Like Nuclear War, the only winning move is not to play) you must refuse to work, to be one corporate cog identical to so many others, but it's your only relief option.  There's no way to commiserate with co-workers, no way to actually look at your workload, no way to just quit - nope, gotta try to kill yourself.  Gotta let the job push you into all-consuming despair. 

The other assumption this job makes, and one I've heard often, is that your character has no reprieve from his daily routine, no diversion or distraction:  you have a babbling TV, a  domineering wife, and, well, that's it.  Then you open your eyes to a magical world of experience, a mystical vision of the world all around you that you never knew was there!  But yet, the protagonist implicitly never thinks to read a book, visit a museum, have a cocktail, or go for a walk in the country.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that "[n]o one can make you feel inferior without your consent," which read one way sounds like the kind of thing you say before you put on a copy of Chaka Khan's I'm Every Woman and dance, DANCE!  But read as another extreme reflects why I'm such a big fan of the second amendment.  If something is trying to depress, oppress, subvert, or destroy you, HIT IT BACK OR GTFO!  Your job sucks?  Fix it , find a new one, or sell your shit, quit your job, wait tables and file for bankruptcy. 

One of the complaints I grew up hearing was that of the soul-sucking corporate job, the nine-to-five humdrum, the droning whine of the middle class who would sob and sniffle (but never roar) about how work was turning them into a mindless drone, and then spend their paychecks on frivolities. 

We heard this sort of thing in the 90's in the grunge rock movement: the mumbling moan of the anti-corporate rejected class, the generation with no goals and no heroes: that people in suits with no souls would try to use your beautiful magical art to sell sneakers or toothpaste or economy cars.

In Western culture, generally, everything is a commodity.  That only has to reflect your identity so much as you let it.  Are you alienated?  Go to the bar, strike up a conversation, make a friend.  Would you refuse to work?  Good for you.  You'll be a little hungry, but good for you.  There are worse things - like jumping to your death over a job.