Beating Lyrics- SPECIAL

Jan 16, 20149 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Jan 16, 2014

1.6K Views

Welcome to another Beating Lyrics review. This time, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to comment on a video from Moviebob, called Combat, Evolved? Let's dive in, shall we?

Right off the bat, Bob presents this viewpoint that his new show is going to be entirely focused around speaking about whatever topic's on his mind whilst standing on his soapbox. So far, so good. It's well-presented and it leads into the topic of the video, as well as its' needed context.

While I haven't played any of the Halo games, I have read about the synopsis, it's plot and who the characters are. Bear in mind, my comments are going to be coming from a casual viewer, who hasn't played any of the games himself and whose only experience is by reading any information I can find.

Also, right off the bat, Bob mentions three characters from the UNSC on Halo REACH; Catherine ['The girl soldier is a badass'], Jorge ['the really big guy is actually a big-hearted softy'] and Emile ['the other badass likes to stand out?']. Each one of these characters have their own personalities, characterisation and appearance, yet they are still part of the UNSC. Remember this, because Bob certainly won't.

'The Covenant is so much more interesting and diverse visually than the Spartans are. Now to be fair, this does make sense in context. The Spartans are a military outfit specifically raised and scientifically augmented to be largely faceless, emotionless force of living weapons. They're a militaristic, quasi-fascist's wet-dream, right down to being named after the society that wrote the book on being militaristic, quasi-fascist wetdreams'

Called it.

'But in Halo, look who fights for the Covenant. Big Guys, Little Guys, creatures from tons of different worlds in every colour of the spectrum. I mean, just look at all these dudes for a moment. It's like Reach is being invaded by a benetton ad from Space'. Yeah, the difference between Benetton and the Covenant is that the Covenant are much like the Persian Empire or Indian Empire; a racially-divided caste system that enslaves other planets' inhabitants into becoming their army of slaves. Quite a bit different from Benetton, a clothes manufacturing company that uses multiculturalism as an advertising technique to reach different demographics, Bob m'boy.

'In terms of diversity, the Covenant makes the Planeteers look like the KKK by comparison'. Godwin's Law, lose ten points and see me in class for detention. Also, again, he's completely missing the point. It's like Bob is trying to justify an army of space-fascists by saying their slave-army is racially diverse compared to the Spartans. Sorry, the United Nations Space Command, since the Spartans are actually regarded as a special branch of Earth's military, not the name of the protagonist's entire race.

'And of course-these are the bad guys'. Because justifying slavery is perfectly okay as long as your army's ethnically diverse. I mean, it's not like the Covenant are wiping out entire cultures and forcing the peoples they conquer to adhere to a single godlike figure on pain of death or anything, thereby destroying their slaves' choice to believe in whatever they want to believe.

'Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. All these different species come from different worlds because they were conquered and converted by the Covenant- so it's mainly diverse because it's a slave army. Which in turn is supposed to remind us of another famous multinational slave army that went to war with another bunch of guys called Spartans. But come on, how many people actually play Halo for the content?' Saying that people don't play Halo for the content is about as shallow as saying video games don't need context for people playing them to understand what's going on. Contrary to that statement, people DO need context in order to understand who's good and who's evil according to the game, including its' backstory, campaign and characters. True, multiplayer is one of the more commonly talked-about elements from the Halo series, but you don't jump into multiplayer on the first try once you buy a game. You have to play the campaign first in order to have a grasp on what's going on, including the tutorial. Yes, even Call of Duty has to have a campaign, otherwise it's hard to know who or what you're shooting at and why you should care.

'Think about how this looks when viewed in the macro; militaristic culture visually pretext on submission of individual self, to a quasi-fascist level equals good. Multiple races and species working together to a common goal equals....evil?' Again, Bob, you're missing the point. The UNSC are fighting to protect mankind from being conquered and enslaved by an army controlled by a ruthless Theocratic empire bent on total galactic control. These multiple races aren't working together by choice, they're doing so because they have no choice based on their place in the caste system imposed upon them by the Covenant. Who in turn are ruled by a racially-pure ruling caste called the San'Shyuum. By that logic, Mario should stop trying to rescue Princess Peach because doing so would hurt Bowser's feelings.

'I mean, when the skinheads and neo-nazi bigots in general talk down about how diversity is bad and we shouldn't mix the races, isn't this usually the basis of their crazy arguments? That mixed societies are mud-races or whatever they call them...' You mean mud-blood? 'they tend to be these destructive, unclean hordes-while pure cultures emphasising sameness and conformity are superior?' Once again, Bob, the Covenant aren't a mixed society. They're a caste-built society that fanatically enslave countless species and force them to adhere to their own way of life, which reeks more of British colonialism and how they conquered most of the world with little regard toward respecting indigenous cultures. Hell, the Egyptians did something similar to the Nubians, as did the Romans to the Celts, the Macedonians to the Greeks and the Assyrians to whatever tribes they conquered. If anything, the Spartans are more ethnically diverse since not only do they have individual identities, but the franchise's flagship character-Master Chief-is himself a unique character among the other Spartans. Hell, Red and Blue did that as well.

'I'm not here to accuse Bungie of promoting fascism...' Here it comes. 'Especially since what we do see of Spartan creation does cast the whole thing in an air of morally ambiguous gray and...holy crap! Did his eyes just turn blue? So hold up, you got this young guy with the conspicuously well-shaved head turned into the ultimate human weapon, and you know it worked because his eyes are blue now? Uh..bungie, that's some pretty scary unintentional symbolism there.' His picture says 'uh...google 'Master Race'. Which right away sinks his entire argument like the Titanic. Godwin's Law is not an argument, Bob.

'This is some kinda self-parody, right? Right? Okay, maybe that's taking it too far. The show is called 'The Big Picture'. And in this case, the Big Picture isn't the creepy fascist undertones in Halo' Yes it is. 'Or the embarrassingly vast pantheon of Heinlein wannabe 'Space Marine' stories, it's the fact that this primitive, tribalistic idea of the pure and thus noble monoculture under threat by multiculture is still so tragically pervasive in the human imagination that it even crops up here. Which is especially ironic, since the whole idea of the Covenant as the bad guys was supposed to be critical of blind loyalty to archaic belief systems- why does some part of our cultural psyche still fear the concept of racial and cultural mixing. And why is it so ingrained that we hardly even notice it anymore? More importantly, why shouldn't we be more inclined to try noticing it? Or that we should be getting rid of it?' Okay, I call bullshit on this statement, for three reasons. First of all, contrary to what you're saying, some games do get called out for promoting this mentality.

Want a great example? Here's one; Call of Juarez the Cartel, a game set during the Mexican Drug War. Yet it was widely criticised, including in a brilliant video made by Extra Credits, because the game deliberately frames both black and mexican ethnic groups as being evil. It also misinforms players about sex trafficking, that Mexican drug lords frequently cross the border so that they can kidnap American women and then bring them back to Mexico, rather than the other way round. The level in question is tastefully called 'Candy Store' and said misinformation is revealed by casually beating two prostitutes into giving the player that information. That, plus people have noted that there's a level called 'Gang-Bang'. In this level, an achievement can be accomplished by graffitiing a Black neighbourhood in order to incite gang violence in one of the poor districts of LA. Once the fight starts, the achievement is unlocked by killing forty people. It's also the only level where all the enemies are black. This is the only point in the game where you've given an achievement for killing enemies, aptly called 'Bad Guy'. You can check out the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzZHfw…

Also, saying that just because the Covenant are composed of multiple races, that excuses them from also being a strict theocratic society that hates and fears all change or deviation from their own religion, is really a disgusting sentiment. Thirdly, you spent your entire video blatantly ignoring the three characters you just mentioned earlier in order to get this point across. Your argument may have had some promise, but it's gone down the drain because you presented some flimsy argument that the Spartans are an organisation of identically-dressed quasi-fascist 'wet dreams' while the Covenant-an actual fascistic organisation-gets a free pass because they're 'multicultural', even though the entire basis of their society is that their gods are superior to all others and anyone who refuses to believe in their pantheon are heretics. What you're presenting here is a strawman fallacy that wouldn't have been made had you spent any time playing the campaign, whilst presenting an argument that can easily be debunked with a five-second Google search.

And that's how the cookie crumbles. Here's a link to the video; www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS7eeG…