Metal Gear: Liminality and Legacy
I didn’t know what I was in for when I first got into Metal Gear. My first exposure to the series was Metal Gear Solid 3, which would have been around when I was thirteen. At that point I wasn’t looking to get anything out of it but to be decently entertained for a few hours at a time, without having to think too much about what I was actually engaged in. The idea of playing a game for any other reason wouldn’t have occurred to me. What I expected from it was based on what little I knew beforehand. The lead character, Snake, was familiar, as was the low growl he has for a voice. I knew the setting and the plot were at least vaguely realistic. That was pretty much it.
The thing I didn’t know about Metal Gear was that it is outright silly. Here I was coming in expecting straightforward action fare and being presented with a cast of colorful characters with over the top personalities and bizarre supernatural abilities. The game presents absurd concepts and characters without so much as a wink and a nod, and no attempt whatsoever at justification. You’re either willing to accept the things it puts forth at face value or you’re not, and in the latter case I imagine the whole thing just wouldn’t work. After its opening, the game puts on a bombastic lyrical title sequence in the style of James Bond, which was the last piece I needed to really understand what this thing was. It’s parody. It’s a pastiche of various genre elements, all exaggerated to a hilarious extent, and very clearly not meant to be taken seriously. Now knowing what to expect, I went in to see the rest of the game through. What I got was a story about loyalty between soldiers, the shifting sands of time and how they change the geopolitical landscape, and ending on an indictment of the US military industrial complex as a violent machine that puts a financial cost on human lives, and leaves those that survive sad and broken. Some parody.
The most of my exposure to media at that time dealt with the military in a very post-9/11 “respect the troops” mold. Soldiers were to be glorified, and there was no room to consider that maybe the military is actually a bad thing. Seeing a video game of all things, and one that varied so wildly between cartoonish excess and somber subject matter, breaking that mold and levying that criticism drew me in. Exploring the rest of the series revealed a similar tendency towards blending the extremely serious and the extremely inane, a technique that would prove a marker of many of my media favorites in the years to come. The best term that I can put to this concept is “liminality.” Sang Hyun Lee explores this concept in his book From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology, where he defines it as a state “in which a person is neither one thing nor another, but betwixt and between” (5). Lee goes on to explain the idea and its applications further:
liminality is a space where a person is freed up from the usual ways of thinking and acting and is therefore open to radically new ideas. Freed from structure, persons in liminality are also available to a genuine communion (comunitas) with others. Liminal space is also where a person can become acutely aware of the problems of the existing structure. A person in a liminal space, therefore, often reenters social structure with alternative ideas of human relatedness and also with a desire to reform the existing social structure. (6)
The way that Metal Gear juxtaposes such drastically different tones is only one way it embodies this concept. As Japanese games that are largely and unashamedly inspired by American movies, the series is the product of a strong pop culture cross current.
In a series of articles written from 2002 to 2003, series creator Hideo Kojima detailed a number of movies he fell in love with at a young age, and what each of them contributed to his own eventual creation. The Great Escape (1963) instilled a desire to create a game that could capture the tension of hiding from your enemies. The Guns of Navarone (1961) lent itself to the structure and objective behind the games, to “infiltrate, destroy, and escape.” Escape from New York (1981) most directly inspired the lead character, with Kurt Russell’s portrayal of Snake Plissken leading to the design of Metal Gear’s protagonist, Solid Snake. North by Northwest (1959) led to the choices around camera use for both first and third person perspectives, the use of recognizable landmarks and tourist locations for the site of the climactic action, and the decision to blend humor and tension to enhance the effectiveness of both. Dawn of the Dead (1978) led to the idea of setting the action in a singular interior location. Lastly, Planet of the Apes (1968) influenced the anti-war and specifically anti-nuclear themes of the games. In this regard the games also take noted influence from Japanese films, Godzilla (1954) especially, the titular Metal Gear being a titanic nuclear weapon capable of striking anywhere on Earth, representing the destructive capabilities of the nuclear bomb in much the same way as the famous Japanese movie monster.
Borrowing from so many sources might lead one to think of the end result as played out or derivative, but it’s a common practice in all media. The book Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory dedicates a chapter by Jenna Ng to understanding this trend, with what she refers to as “Transcultural Fusion:”
Thus transpires the cinephilic impulse of intertextual referencing: love shown in tribute and celebration inherent in the practices of homage and memorialization, conveying an uncanny mixture of admiration and affection – the former in implicit acknowledgment of a unique superiority of the original; the latter in the complicity of unspoken recognition deep in an affected and subjective memory. (69)
The same concept is applied to the film Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) in Margaret Hillenbrand’s article “Of Myths and Men: ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’ and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema.” The film borrows heavily from both teen comedy misadventures and suspenseful crime dramas, entrenching it in a liminal territory of its own. Hillenbrand writes, “Lin’s movie is less about the recital of an encyclopedic list of influences than the bricolage effect that these influences collectively conjure” (62-63). The same goes for Metal Gear, as it goes for anything that owes its style and ideas to the groundwork laid out by the great works that came before it. As it turns out, that’s most things. The process of creating something original is less about coming up with an idea that’s literally never been done before, which is increasingly unlikely, and more about recognizing your influences and blending them together in a way that establishes the identity of your work as its own.
The last of these influences to mention for Metal Gear is the James Bond franchise. Originally novels that were adapted to film, the movies themselves are now fifty-seven years in. While the influence of these films as spy fiction and espionage thrillers is obvious, the way they have carried on for so long was itself an influence on the ideas that Metal Gear is interested in. In the last of his articles on his inspirations, Kojima writes:
While the producer, scriptwriter, musicians, main actor, supporting actors and stuntmen have all changed since the first Bond film, 007 continues. Just like parents passing on to their children and masters to their apprentices, the essence of 007 is passed on so that the series continues generating hits. The way the 007 series passes on to the future is the theme I wanted to communicate in [Metal Gear Solid]. What will [Metal Gear Solid] be like 40 years from now, created by those who share the spirit of Team Kojima? I would like to stay alive and experience it myself.
This “legacy” concept is one of the core thematic elements of the Metal Gear series as a whole, each game taking up and exploring different ideas of how things are passed on from generation to generation.
The first of them to really do this was Metal Gear Solid, its primary concern being genetic legacy. In this story the internal conflict for most characters is driven by a sense of self derived from genetics, struggling to either find some trace of history in their genes, or to break away from them entirely and define themselves as their own person. Solid Snake is dealing with the ramifications of having been created as a clone in order to produce a perfect soldier, and whether or not he can ever be anything more than what he was designed to be. The primary conflict of the game is driven by his heretofore unknown twin, Liquid Snake, and his animosity at having been made genetically inferior merely as a necessary byproduct in order to create Snake. The character of Otacon is something of a stand in for Kojima himself, having created the nuclear weapon Metal Gear based on his fascination with Japanese pop culture, the same way Kojima created the video game franchise based on his fascination with American pop culture. For Otacon, the realization that he is the third generation in his family with ties to the history of nuclear development weighs heavily on his mind. A character named Meryl Silverburgh enlisted to become a soldier in order to better understand her father who was killed in action. This particular example was called to mind when reading Asian-Americans in the Twenty-First Century by Joann Faung Jean Lee, wherein Karl Ludwig ascribes his decision to become a police officer to his biological father who he’s never met: “The uniformed services – just seems like there’s what I call a constant echo” (233).
All of these threads come together in the game’s conclusion. The character of Naomi Hunter, a geneticist, is presented as the in-universe authority on the subject. She’s been trying to come to understand herself and her place in the world through her work, and the conclusion she comes to is that genes were never going to hold the answers she was looking for. The statement the game makes is more or less that genes allow for potential, but they do not realize it. This fits quite well with the conclusion made by Theodosius Dobzhansky in his article, “The Myths of Genetic Predestination and of Tabula Rasa:”
Correctly understood, heredity is not the “dice of destiny.” It is rather a bundle of potentialities. Which part of the multitude of potentialities will be realized is for the environments, for the biography of the person, to decide. Only fanatic believers in the myth of genetic predestination can doubt that the life of every person offers numerous options, of which only a part, probably a miniscule part, is realized. (160)
This message is further solidified with the revelation that Snake, in his victory over his embittered twin, had actually been the inferior creation from the start. This defiance of “genetic predestination” is the note the game closes on.
The sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2, continues these thematic concerns and moves them into a new framework: memes. The term has come to be used quite differently in recent years, but the use here is as it was when it was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene. He explains it as such:
Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. (192)
Importantly, the passage of information this way does not rely on familial relation as is the case with genes, which Metal Gear Solid 2 takes full advantage of. Here character relationships are more often non-biological in nature. We see Peter Stillman, a bomb disposal expert whose protégé takes the skills he was given and applies them to committing acts of terrorism rather than preventing them. Otacon’s stepsister plays a role in the story, having taken up her interest in engineering from her stepbrother in an effort to close the distance between them. The central character of this game, Raiden, is a mirror of Snake’s conflict in the last game, having been raised as a child soldier by his godfather, yet another clone, Solidus Snake. Raiden’s struggle is in trying to find a reason to fight, rather than just playing the role that he’s been given. Solid Snake reappears as something of a mentor in this game, teaching Raiden that each person has the freedom to choose what they believe in, and what they will pass on to future generations. This echoes again Dobzhansky’s article. This is the “biography of the person” that realizes their potential.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is not the last game in the series to be released, but it is chronologically the ending to the story. This game deals with what happens to our legacy after death. Hideo Kojima isn’t dead, but he is no longer attached to Metal Gear in any way, meaning whatever happens with the property from here on happens without his involvement. One of the developments that’s been moving ever so slowly for years is the seeming inevitability of a Hollywood film adaptation of Metal Gear. I outlined this project with a conclusion already in mind: that the ongoing process to adapt Metal Gear to film was inherently misguided. There are so many things Metal Gear is doing that are entirely unique to the medium of games that trying to make it fit the mold of a movie almost seems to be missing the point. There’s a whole narrative through line in Metal Gear Solid 4 that I was going to use as a connection for this, about the misinterpretation of a person’s will. Basically, once a person is gone and is no longer able to express their will directly, it falls to their successors to interpret it, and in many cases this interpretation fails to capture the original intent. This was how I was feeling about any prospect of Metal Gear being made into a movie, that it was inevitably going to misunderstand what the games are really about.
On revisiting Metal Gear Solid 4 for this project though, I found another theme in it that I had forgotten. That sheltering things is an easy way to suffocate them completely. The oft spoken of but seldom seen “next generation” is finally given form in this game in a character named Sunny, an orphaned girl adopted by Otacon and raised by him and Snake in total seclusion all her life. The means by which a future free from oppressive control is able to be secured is due to Naomi Hunter having passed on her work to Sunny to be continued after her death. Even the closest thing to an absolute villain in the series is only given rise to because its creator lacked the faith to pass his work on to the next generation. It’s clear that a part of what the games are saying about our legacy is that eventually leaving it in the hands of other people is a part of the process. The legacy of these games is already written. A movie isn’t going to erase that. I’ll keep my skepticism about the actual quality of the thing, but there’s always a chance that the end result will actually prove itself a respectful adaptation of Metal Gear, which is more credit than I would have been willing to give it before. The prospect of adaptation shouldn’t be seen as an inherent folly, but if the adaptation is going to change the core of what makes that thing what it is, it’s a nonstarter. There’s no point in an adaptation that doesn’t preserve the identity of its source material other than a blatant and shameless attempt at exploiting a recognized name in the hopes of making money.
Media that comes to America, as people that come to America, face a pressure to conform. To change itself fundamentally, let go of the unique aspects of its identity, and slip seamlessly into the homogeneous landscape. Those that stand out are often met with scrutiny and questioned as to why they would even bother coming here if they weren’t going to adopt this country’s every custom in place of their own. This is the affect America has as a global force of cultural imperialism. This is a pressure that must be fought back. People should be able to come here with the comfort of knowing that their identity will not only be accepted, but celebrated, and that their legacy of liminality will live on in future generations.
Works Cited
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. “The Myths of Genetic Predestination and of Tabula Rasa.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 19, no. 2, 1976, pp. 156–170., doi:10.1353/pbm.1976.0048.
Hillenbrand, Margaret. “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema.” Cinema Journal, vol. 47, no. 4, 2008, pp. 50–75., doi:10.1353/cj.0.0024.
Kojima, Hideo. “Hideo Kojima at the Movies: 007.” Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, 3 May 2003.
Lee, Joann Faung Jean. Asian Americans in the Twenty-First Century: Oral Histories of First- to Fourth-Generation Americans from China, Japan, India, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Laos. New Press, 2009.
Lee, Sang Hyun. From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology. Fortress Press, 2010.
Ng, Jenna, “Love in the Time of Transcultural Fusion: Cinephilia, Homage and Kill Bill.” Cinephilia: Movies, Love, and Memory. Amsterdam University Press, 2005.
