“There are so many things I love(d) about Los Angeles, which is why I moved back here after my first stint eight years ago: the perfect weather, laid back, creative people, Latino flair, true diversity, food scene, artistic dynamism. In LA I feel like I’m in the center of the universe and like dreams can be manifested. Or I used to at least.
“Unfortunately the cons are worse than they’ve ever been: wealth inequality, unaffordability, gentrification and displacement, racial tension, destitution and despair (over 50% of LA residents are rent poor), traffic, dangerously pothole-riddled roads, litter, filth, homelessness, lawlessness, gang violence. In spite of all the BS, I still enjoy LA, and will be here for a while longer, but unfortunately, I feel like the sun is setting on this iconic city, not rising.”
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This is a direct quote from a two-star Yelp review of the city of Los Angeles. Yes, there are Yelp reviews of cities. Imagine taking an entire metropolis – and one as sprawling and complex as LA, at that, with all its looping freeways, burger joints, tourist attractions, and distinct districts – and condensing it down to a few hundred words and a five-star scoring system. It’s almost as absurd as trying to review an open-world video game in a week.
A more appropriate way to critique a city, of course, is by making a virtual parody of one. Look no further than Los Santos, GTA 5’s caricature of LA, which is accurate right down to the potholes – a place where Fox News becomes Weasel News, American Idol becomes Fame or Shame, and Mark Zukerberg becomes Jay Norris, founder of a social media site called Life Invader.
Los Santos itself is a critique of media-driven America, from the billboards to the television shows, web pages, and radio programs. It’s a city filled with crooked politicians, self-obsessed celebrities, and pharmaceutical advertisements. Its police department’s motto is “obey and survive”.
Take a trip out of the city into Blaine County and all the yokels drive off-road recreational vehicles and hulking pickup trucks. Cruise down to the skate park and you’ll see young adults standing around, staring at their phones – they’re there to pose, rather than skate, much like the burly blokes at Muscle Beach, who stand around flexing more than they exercise.
Through Michael, one of its playable characters, we see the American dream made manifest. He faked his own death to leave a life of crime behind, and now he spends his days lounging by the pool and reminiscing about the glory days or daydreaming about classic movie scenes. He lives inside his own head while his wife cheats on him with the tennis coach and yoga instructor. As he puts it, “ I’m a cuckold, a snob, and a f*****g cliché.”
Michael is critical of capitalist America but unwilling to do anything about it. He still wants more money, more thrills. He neglects his kids, who are spoilt because he thinks that buying them things is a good replacement for being a father. He owns a yacht just so he can drive down to the pier and watch it bob in the ocean in his cargo shorts and sandals. On a surface level, he has everything he needs. Inside, he’s empty – like Santa Monica pier, it looks good from a distance, but the symptoms of a broken system are hiding in tents underneath the woodwork. He tells himself he’s a good guy.
Franklin Clinton, another player character, is the closest we get to a good guy. He’s the classic GTA archetype, starting at the bottom of the criminal ladder and fighting to work his way out of poverty. But even in him, we get to see how white-collar crime is often overlooked. In a series of assassination missions, Franklin gets the opportunity to manipulate the stock market and take part in some insider trading. While netting him far, far more money than his violent criminal activities, these crimes never elicit a police response. When he joined the story of GTA Online recently, Franklin had become a big cheese. He played them at their own game and won.
With Trevor Phillips, the final player character, we get the truth. There’s no hypocrisy with Trevor, a truly psychopathic killer from Canada. He knows exactly what he is – a personification of the player’s worst impulses.
You see, this world is full of things to do that don’t involve violence – a tennis simulation, TV shows, yoga classes, races, parachute jumps, mountain bike trails, and more – but something draws us to the instant gratification of violence either way. Similar to Rockstar’s lesser-known video nasty, Manhunt, it holds up a mirror.
In Manhunt, you’re being hunted by a gang of killers and you have to murder your way to freedom by using stealth and smarts. There’s a mechanic where you can hold down the kill button for longer to perform a more grisly kill. You do this at the risk of being spotted since it forces you to stalk your enemy for longer, and there’s no reward besides a more gruesome execution animation. So why do you do it? It forces you to confront yourself, and Trevor plays the same role in GTA 5. Of course, people can distinguish between real humans and video game NPCs, but you can’t blame a game for your own actions inside it.
With Trevor being a foreigner, he sees the city for what it is. When he comes across self-appointed civilian border patrol agents, he says, “Well, I’m so glad you proud patriots are out here defending this fine American desert… sand.” When he’s waterboarding a terrorism suspect, he calls himself a “genuine government man”. He sees beyond the facade and embraces the chaos.
In GTA 4’s Niko Bellic – an illegal immigrant from Yugoslavia – we also see Rockstar’s take on New York – Liberty City – with fresh eyes. Niko spent his childhood dreaming of becoming an astronaut like the US heroes who landed on the moon, but he was forced to fight in the Yugoslavian war. After some years of petty crime outside of the armed forces, he stowed away on a cargo ship to America, the land of hopes and dreams, where his cousin awaited him with opportunities. In reality, his cousin runs a musty old taxi rank and has a gambling problem, but it still feels like a step up compared to the life Niko lived.
The reality soon sets in for Niko, and he’s drawn back into a life of crime to get by. Forget the land of hopes and dreams, Liberty City turns out to be the land of expectation and reality, the Big Mac burger in the advertisement versus the mushed-up abomination that arrives in your burger box. You can see it on the game’s version of the Statue of Liberty – previously a shining beacon of hope for refugees, now reduced to an advertisement for a Starbucks-esque chain of coffee shops, the iconic torch replaced with a disposable cup.
The GTA games are at their best when they’re showing us America as seen through foreign eyes, which makes sense for a series that’s predominantly developed in Scotland.
Former Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser said in 2018 that he was glad he wasn’t launching GTA 6 in the era of Donald Trump. “Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry,” he said in an interview with GQ. “It is scary but it’s also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd. It’s hard to satirize for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire. It would be out of date within two minutes, everything is changing so fast.”
Since then, Rockstar has confirmed that GTA 6 is in active development. Whatever form its American satire arrives in, I hope it’s seen through the eyes of someone who’s removed from it all. Perhaps a Latinx couple who move across the border for a better life, only to find that the streets aren’t paved with gold, or a Yakuza on the run facing a culture shock. ICE is ever-present no matter what president is in power, and a Japanese person would feel like they’re on another planet if they stepped into the gun culture of the United States. The perspective arguably matters more than the targets of the satire itself. After all, for every two-star Yelp review of LA, there’s another one giving the city top marks.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
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