Going Under: Fighting Capitalism With Humanity

*SPOILERS THROUGHOUT*

“We got to get over before we go under” sang James Brown. Whilst his political conservatism and endorsement of former President Richard Nixon two years prior create a more complicated picture, the message remains a revolutionary one.

“Let’s get together and raise,

Let’s get together and get some land.

Raise our food like the man,

Save our money like the mob,

Put up the fight, own the job.”

Last year birthed in me a niche new addiction. Give me media–any media–with not only an allegorical undercurrent of revolutionary anti-capitalist/socialist/communist fervour, but also some manner of thesis on how we actually get there. How exactly do you create systemic change? I don’t want to just hear about how bad things are and how a changing of the guard would set things right, I want to see some shiny, ready-made tools for dismantling capitalism reflecting sunlight into my eyes. Or, if change isn’t possible, and we really are at the “end of history,” how do we make do?

Is such a message or call to action in video games necessary? Of course not. Is it interesting to see an ultra-conservative medium increasingly dip its toes into progressive waters? Absolutely. I’d argue that representation of political ideology in media matters nearly as much as the representation of women, minorities, cultures, and disabilities. All enrich our media by giving us a fuller representation of the real world.  ZA/UM with Disco Elysium last year did the impossible. They released an explicitly left-wing game on Steam and didn’t get eviscerated for it. It’s been widely lauded in fact. It’s not the impact of progressive media I’m most interested in, but what its acceptance indicates. Attitudes are changing and the tide is turning.

Speaking in as spoiler free vagaries as I can of my favorites last year, the Watchmen TV series and Disco Elysium had an awful lot to say. Watchmen posited that such a means of change from the laissez-faire establishment is possible, only no one knows where to find it. From nationalist terrorists to trillionaires, it’s the eventual transfer of power that truly matters. Does the establishment have to permit a progressive alternative for any change to be possible? Disco Elysium allows a universe of interpretation, including no less than imagining the “end of history,” this perpetual liberal capitalism failing people, as a literal force consuming reality, a failed relationship as the end of a communist revolution, and the hope of an alternative or return to communism as a previously unthinkable discovery of the equivalent of a Bigfoot. It also confronts the sheer sadness of inhabiting a failed revolution, “end of history” capitalist society; the grieving after a failed relationship. The mourning what could have been and could be. How do we find solace in a world that might never change – at least in our lifetimes? This isn’t to mention the treats of Parasite, A Bewitching Revolution, Umurangi Generation, and the conclusion to Kentucky Route Zero.

I mention these because I wasn’t expecting when going into it for Going Under to ever join any of them in raw impact, but it surprisingly does. 

Going Under is about James Brown’s “getting over.” Nestled between the more high profile roguelike releases of Hades 1.0 and Spelunky 2, its claymation presentation and playful cynicism about Silicon Valley betray the fact that this is a piece of media that takes cognizance of the need for and consequences of systemic change from a wage slavery reality by fresh-faced generations, but also, perhaps more radically, an urgent need to find compassion under capitalism in the meantime. 

Jacqueline/Jacky is an unpaid marketing intern who joins yet another tech startup on the pile, Fizzle, contained within the drone shipping empire Cubicle. Her hopes are dashed immediately when she discovers marketing is already totally handled by an advanced AI and her duties will in fact be to repossess the assets of Cubicle’s failed gig economy, dating site, and cryptocurrency startups. Naturally, this feat is accomplished by beating their inhuman heads in with Rare’s Grabbed by the Ghoulies-esque improvisatory combat stylings in procedural dungeons.

In Going Under’s world, dissolved businesses sink beneath the earth whilst their employees are cursed to wander the halls for eternity as monsters. Because that’s what capitalism does. It drives workers and their bosses to be inhuman, disfigured, and unrecognisable when the system they’re beholden to drives them to be discompassionaste, manipulative, and predatory. To you, dear reader, who might frequent Uppercut and largely share my politics, Going Under’s prods at corporatocracy will all be blisteringly obvious. But Going Under goes beyond just being a pandering, view affirming joke fest through just how goddamn heartening the whole thing is. The spirited defence Jacky makes of the worker class and the compassion she shows to her colleagues is at the heart of what makes Going Under so special. She’s the perfect protagonist. Assured in her own convictions, she has no patience to listen to the toxic justifications of purveyors of the status quo, delivering eye rolls and interruptions aplenty. She’s outspoken, empathetic, and ultimately revolutionary in all senses.

Is it so revolutionary to have a game so peppered with acts of kindness? I can’t get enough of it. Similar recent games  have hit a similar note. Sayonara Wild Hearts is all about accepting and loving oneself with one of the best conclusions in recent memory. Control had the bizarre, but beautiful scene wherein Dr. Darling from some other dimension talks up protagonist Jesse in an FMV song, at one point calling her “dynamite.” Compassion and kindness. And, in these dark times, rampant compassion is what we need.

Some of the most satisfying moments of the entire game are when Jacky, the fresh-faced millennial (or gen Zer) existing outside the system as an unpaid intern she is, challenges the business-warped minds one-by-one in the literal dungeons of thought. These start-up founders sit atop a capitalist pyramid of workers who never wanted any part in their vision, only to survive (and god forbid thrive) in a system only designed to extract work and life out of them. They too have had their minds warped by being immersed in a toxic work environment. Like a kind of Stockholm syndrome, the system makes monsters of us all.

The absolute best thing Going Under does is avoid the easy trap of being solely playful cynicism about the life of an intern in Silicon Valley. It IS that, but additionally it’s about the humanity of Jacky’s co-workers and how that’s crushed before her eyes by a system that doesn’t serve people. The co-workers are all loveable, if naïve. Fern, for instance, co-founded Fizzle but gave away power and title to work on flavors – a job now being taken over by an AI and leaving him with nothing. By not seeking power in a system wherein it’s the only thing that’s valued, he’s lost the game. Tappi is a workaholic who believes complaining about the status quo is naïve, even when she has her careful budget blown away by her boss’s extravagant party. She abstains from lunch twice a week to make ends meet and vows to never get sick. She also takes offence at injustices like the “legalized slavery” origin of her new tablet being pointed out. Change isn’t possible, so why be a downer? Life is about weathering the hits when they come. Then there’s Kara, who’s the polar opposite of Tappi. Ultra skeptical of technology and aware of the injustices in the world. To cope with this reality she complains endlessly to anyone who will listen. She admits in the end that like Tappi this is only another form of inaction. To be aware of a problem means nothing without another step. Finally, Swomp mostly just hangs out whilst bored enough to “light things on fire.”

Like many interns end up, Jacky is at the beck and call of her co-workers. Instead of fetching coffee, however, she ends up being the compassionate shoulder to lean on and a friend. 

Inevitably (and as it turns out intentionally with Cubicle cannibalizing the businesses it absorbs), Fizzle goes under and all of Jacky’s co-workers are warped into monsters themselves. To over-interpret their new forms, CEO Ray turns into a ruthless business shark, Tappi turns into a workaholic octopus with the tentacles to match, Fern turns into a pufferfish – shrinking in response to opportunity, and Kara turns into an anglerfish which can perpetually see the light of everything wrong, but for which that luminescent esca is always out of reach to actually confront. Oh, and Swomp is just a fish hanging out. Who knows?

All apart from Jacky of course. She’s the best of us. She remains human, since she’s utterly uncorrupted by the toxic corporate culture and tendrils of capitalism. When Jacky realizes the “relics”/assets she retrieved from the fallen companies for her project manager only acted to suck more life from her co-workers (as if she brought back physical manifestations of the toxic work philosophies they ran by), Jacky is henceforth only motivated by the wellbeing of her co-workers. She sacrifices her job by confronting the project manager and when Cubicle dissolves Fizzle she not only confronts her boss, but sets out to go all the way to the top – the big bad Cubicle itself to save her new-made friends.

The contrast between Ray the CEO and Marv the project manager is interesting. Marv, lower down on the rung, is antagonistic and a manipulator. After confronting him, Jacky has to fight him in a duel (twice after he “fails upward”). He’s a toxic product of a system skewed towards failure and the endpoint of Tappi’s perspective. He argues a workspace can’t be the positive one she’s fighting for lest they all face unemployment. Only the toxic culture of crunch can get them the leverage they need to survive. Anything else is naivety. What he misses is that the workplace he cultivates is in itself an unforgivable failure. Ray meanwhile is too privileged and oblivious to see the pain he engenders. An essential cog in the broken system. When confronted he’s even penitent.

Jacky knows working within the system like Marv and Tappi, or being merely aware but inactive like Kara, are all not good enough. Nor is reforming the system at this point. True to Kara’s anxieties, it turns out that the uncaring AI is fully in the Cubicle hot seat. Nothing could better embody the heart of an uncaring system after all than something not human. Going Under ultimately takes the revolutionary road with its finale. Blowing up an oligarchal system really is the only way. Jacky leads a revolution of all the other failed start-ups to the boardroom before destroying the AI and the building in the process. “Together we can have a real support structure,” Jacky now argues whilst encircled by smoke and flames and very little else. It’s a bittersweet, uncertain conclusion.

What’s most interesting about this is that Jacky sacrifices everything and ultimately leads a revolution not over any particular inciting incident, but just the everyday injustice of work. Work that most everyone will be very familiar with. Whilst Fizzle being dissolved escalates things, Jacky starts her fight for her co-workers in response to conditions we all accept every day. Work that monopolizes your time and demands cult-like loyalty without serving you anything but the means to survive–if that.

Compromise is rarely the route to change, as James Brown found out. Going Under recognizes that revolutions might be destructive, but can at least they have the potential of permitting something better out of the ashes. Whether she’s referring to the formation of a co-operative or simply a support group and friendship, it’s Jacky’s unrelenting humanity that makes Going Under so stirring an experience. Going Under fundamentally argues that to be compassionate under capitalism is to be human, and that if we’re not careful systemic structural inequities can make monsters out of all of us. It joins my other choice pieces of media with its appealing revolutionary commentary, but it has a particularly special place for remembering to write in a beating heart at its core alongside its satire on corporate life. Capitalism is a joke and an easy joke at that. Once we’re finished laughing at it, however, we can all be more like Jacky the unpaid intern and fight against its injustices no matter the cost to ourselves. Kindness, both in media and outside, is a revolutionary act in itself.