Is BioShock Unpatriotic?

When I purchased the latest game in this series, BioShock: Infinite, I decided to pick up the first two games in the series as well. They were on sale and I had never played the originals, despite rave reviews. So I found myself instantly absorbed into these video games. Their creepy atmosphere’s and innovative gameplay is a rare sight in an industry that tries to recycle content and gameplay as much as possible in order to make a profit. But as I play these games, I realize there is a deeper message hidden in the story and gameplay. And let me say, it is not a pleasant one.

First of all let me state this right off the bat, I consider myself to be a liberal. I tend to be pretty apathetic when it comes to the entire subject of politics but if asked what side of the political argument I fall on, I would have to clearly say I fall on the left. Which may be why these games appeal to me so much because the hidden message that seems to be stated by these films is that right wing philosophies are evil. Not just misguided. EVIL. If you follow the anti government beliefs of the right it will only lead to ruin.

Now while I am a liberal, the majority of my family is not. Most of my family are Reagan era Republicans and they act accordingly. They are not evil and I would never say they are. So I am not writing this from a hatred of Conservatives. I personally believe the only way we can survive as a country is through give and take between the two political ideologies. Some problems call for Conservative solutions, some problems call for Liberal solutions, neither side is one hundred percent right all of the time.

If you’re unfamiliar with the BioShock games, then I highly recommend you pick them up. They have an atmosphere and gameplay that is unique among the genre. While first glance may have one convinced they are playing a typical first person shooter, the addition of supernatural abilities (called Plasmids in the first two games and Vigors in the third) add another layer to the game. There is also the setting. The first two games take place in the underwater city of Rapture, a crumbling 1950s style dystopia. The third game takes place in the sky city of Columbia, depicting a culture not far removed from the Civil War. All three games depict a steampunk form of technology that can encompass anything from genetic engineering to quantum physics.

Now from the above description of the games you may be wondering where the politics come in. The driving force behind the city of Rapture is a man named Andrew Ryan. Andrew Ryan is where the main criticism of the games being unpatriotic comes from. Andrew Ryan is a twisted version of Ayn Rand’s famous character John Galt from the novel Atlas Shrugged (a book I have not read so I may get this entire argument wrong). John Galt envisioned a world where the great thinkers and industrialists in America just decided to abandon the country due to excessive taxes and regulations. Whereas the novel deals with the collapse of society without these minds, the Bioshock city of Rapture shows where those great minds went and what they did there.

Now Atlas Shrugged is a much beloved novel among conservatives and libertarians. Since the book is all about the evils of government, any type of government, they see it as a foreboding tale of what will happen if Americans continue to put their trust in government. However critically, Atlas Shrugged has been mostly panned as an endorsement of greed and selfishness. Despite enjoying some success as a novel, an attempted film adaptation completely bombed at the box office with a crowd funded sequel doing even worse. Despite those facts, it is considered a favorite among Fortune 500 CEOs and was even praised by former VP candidate Paul Ryan. However Paul Ryan later denied liking the book in later interviews.

With such a beloved book being read by so many Republicans, it would be shocking that anyone would mock it. Yet that is exactly what BioShock did. There are clear reference to Ayn Rand in the game with Andrew Ryan being an obvious play on her name, a character named Atlas guiding you the player through game, and even a character named Rosenbaum which was Rand’s birth name. The entire game says that any society built on the philosophy of Ayn Rand it will become a carnival of horrors with mad men desperately out for their own ends.

While the first two BioShock games were subtle in their unpatriotic message, the latest game, BioShock Infinite, has no subtlety about it. In Infinite you are thrown into a world where the founding fathers have been deified and the entire society, the flying City of Columbia, is one gigantic Christian Cult. The leader of Columbia was a former preacher named Zachary Comstock. He was a Union Soldier who decided to secede even though the South’s secession failed. The entire game is a condemnation of the ultrapatriotic attitudes held by so many Southern Americans with overt signs of racism, even one scene of the game that takes place inside a shrine to John Wilkes Boothe.

So in summary, yes, BioShock is unpatriotic. But only if your definition of patriotism is that of so many negative members of our society. People who praise racist bigotry, corporate plutocracy and American elitism above all other values. If however you do not believe America is a country only of greed and cruelty, then BioShock is a hugely patriotic game series. It shows that all it takes is one man to stand up to tyranny and fight for freedom, which in my opinion are the real philosophies that make America great.