In dark times, should the stars/should also go out? ——The Psychedelic World of Disco Elysium (Part 1)

When a group of black youths in Oakland, California, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in 1966, they had no idea how things would turn out when they sold Mao quotes to college students there for pennies. They roam the streets of New York wearing Chinese peasant clothes, nothing but black skin and out of place sunglasses. At least at the time, their dreams didn't look like rootless duckweed. When Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Elaine Brown visited Beijing in 1970, when they returned a year later, they said, "There was a feeling of freedom, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely free, free among my fellow citizens. "

Turning the clock back more than ten years, Huey Newton died in a gun battle caused by drugs. His death is obviously "heavier than Tarzan". The Black Panther Party, which once threatened a violent revolution, even won the election for mayor of Oakland China also ushered in reform and opening up in the 1980s, and even the Soviet Union died suddenly. Later, Wang Xiaobo "visited" a member of the Black Panther Party. In "The Silent Majority" he wrote:

"The host was very happy to see us, and chatted with us all night, talking about Che Guevara, Trotsky... This friend talked about their 1960s and 1970s: anti-war movements, open-air gatherings, large demonstrations, large marches, He also talked about how excited he was when he first saw 'rebellion is justified' in the little red book. When he spoke, his eyes glowed with gold. We had a similar experience, but we didn't like to talk about it very much.

...Generally speaking, he gave me the impression of an old friend who was a brother-in-law back then, but now he doesn't talk about it. "

This black friend is still immersed in the left-wing ideological narrative of the 1960s: college students in Paris sang "The Internationale" to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the barricade under the Arc de Triomphe; 165 universities in Japan entered a state of struggle, and the auditorium of Kyoto University was destroyed by students. They were transformed into bunkers; the people of Lisbon, Portugal, put carnations in the rifles of soldiers, toppling the longest dictatorship in Western Europe in the twentieth century. Even the early Zionists had the idea that "we must emancipate all in order to emancipate the Jews themselves."

But will it be better than before when poetry and the distance are shattered? After the 1990s, Africa was still the normal state of military government. After exploring the labyrinth for half a century, it returned to the bottom of production in the capitalist world. Under the constant efforts of neoliberalism, the grand class narrative was finally quietly deconstructed, split into small social issues after another, and erased its ideological color. Now whoever talks about class, Marx, or even Mao will be looked at by others with strange eyes. Identity politics replaces grand narratives, a new capitalist in Texas may be seen as left-wing by underclass workers for supporting LGBT issues, while a worker in California may be seen as right-wing for opposing BLM while actively fighting for lower rates of exploitation . The divided "leftists" are generally housed in a cage (the left is not the left, but also say another), and the teeth are intertwined, forming what Žižek calls an "impossible alliance." Don't even say "ideology", a word that seems to be completely irrelevant to life. Even politics has become an object of alienation for contemporary people. The fading of ideals has caused a large number of intellectuals to return to cynicism in the face of ideology.

Those who preach "we have all kinds of freedom, this is the best era" (specifically some people who are 100% yearning for or enjoying advanced Western material culture) never think that there is no need to really exist. Individuals stand there wielding whips, and ideology officially no longer exists among ordinary people, and there are no street-wide propaganda slogans of the last century, because it is no longer needed - ideology is deeply embedded in every To become a part of our daily life in the mind of the individual is an unprecedented triumph of neoliberalism over the enslavement of man: this enslavement and obedience is being sold to us as a "new freedom". For example: Fewer and fewer people can have lifetime employment jobs, people can work in one country for a period of time and then switch to another, but they cannot have permanent health insurance in this country. Ideology will tell you: isn't this bad? You have all kinds of possibilities, you can rediscover yourself, you are no longer a defined tool, but you are secretive about not having fixed health insurance. They continue to subdivide the proletarians and create a very magical definition of "middle class", allowing people to squeeze their heads and argue that "I must be middle class in xxx if I earn xxxxx" This kind of topic is completely meaningless. This is actually a new type of anxiety that is sold to people in the guise of freedom. You are voluntarily competing with fellow proletarians, voluntarily accepting a higher rate of exploitation for that little handout.

In order to explain the above paragraph in simple terms, the author tells a small story about Zizek (why Zizek again?): Suppose you are a little girl under the premise of traditional patriarchal authority, and you want to have a relationship with one Sunday afternoon. Friends go out to play, but your dad says to you, "Today is your grandma's birthday, you have to visit her, and you have to do as I say." Sounds very rude and inhumane, doesn't it? Then suppose you have a father who is "postmodern patriarchal authority" (you don't need to know what this is, you will know after reading the story), he will say to you: "I don't care what you want to do, I respect your freedom, But this afternoon is grandma's birthday, it's up to you to go to see her or not, but! Don't forget how grandma usually loves you, and how we usually teach you to respect the old and love the young." Isn't this even scarier? ? In the form of free choice, postmodern patriarchy issues a much tougher command - you not only go, but "willingly" go! This is the erosion of people's minds by neoliberal ideology. It directly disarms people's spirit of resistance at the bottom of their minds and makes people willing to do "right" things.

Why say so much? Because the above are all paving the way to better express my feelings about Disco Elysium. I want to talk a little bit about the survival of the communists in the post-Soviet era, and a little bit about feminism.

"Disco Elysium" is always labelled "Marxist propaganda", "Missing the Soviet Union", "Leftists must play", but I think this is obviously a little superficial. Robert Kurvitz and ZA/UM are indeed from Estonia, and Disco Elysium is indeed sympathetic to communism, but it is by no means a simple propaganda for Marxism-Leninism. At the TGA2019 award ceremony, the ZA/UM team thanked Viktor Tsoi, a rock star with the same surname as Cui (mistakenly), in addition to "Thanks to the works of Marx and Engels for our political education". I don't think a die-hard Leninist would "thank" the so-called "singing down the Soviet Union" rock singer. Oh, and coincidentally, Tsoi, like Inspector Kim, is of Korean descent. Is it a coincidence?

This article is divided into two parts, in the second half, I will explain some scenes in the game, and talk about my views on what this game really wants to express. One of the most impressive passages in the entire game is the conversation between the protagonist and the "naive" communist student:

Steven, student of Communism: "I have to say, I never really understood what that meant, but I thought maybe the answer was somewhere."

You: "But what if human nature fails you over and over again?"

Steven, student of Communism: "No one said that making the proletariat fulfill its historical mission is an easy task. It requires you to not pursue material interests and strive for lofty beliefs, but that doesn't mean we should give up."

You: "Even when they shoot us?"

...

Steven, student of Communism: "That question you asked earlier reminded me of a poem you might appreciate."

Steven, student of Communism: "The author was a young commune who died in the battle of the Union landing. He wrote it on the last night of his life staring at the line of defense. I don't remember the entire poem , but there is one line in it that comes to mind from time to time."

You: "What's the storyline?"

Steven, student of Communism: "Should the stars/should also go out in dark times?"

"Anyway, good night."

"What if it fails? Come on, let's try again."