Nathan Drake’s Carnivalesque Tendencies 1

Like many, (indeed most), videogame pro­tag­o­nists, Nathan Drake is a man fight­ing the odds. With alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, Drake will be forced to jump between mov­ing vehi­cles, make it by the skin of his teeth, fight off any well-armed aggres­sors, solve ancient puz­zles, save the girl and make his get-away as some semi-mythical par­adise col­laps­es around him. It all works out in the end.

On top of it all, Drake is funny. The man can crack a witty retort with the best of them, but equal­ly self-deprecate and pro­vide humor­ous asides that make us warm to him with the kind of empa­thy that no hand­some, strong, funny, self-destructive man-child should be able to com­mand. Comparisons with Indiana Jones are, of course, apt. Drake is clear­ly a grad­u­ate of the Dr Jones School of Extreme Archaeology, (Lara Croft being the other famous alum­na). Like Jones, Drake bor­ders on play­ing the fool, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the most recent install­ment, Uncharted 3. On his way through var­i­ous exot­ic loca­tions Drake tum­bles through ceil­ings, falls bod­i­ly from ledges and even shuts his fin­gers in a win­dow when attempt­ing to stealth through an air­port hangar. If he grad­u­at­ed in Extreme Archaeology, Drake at least showed up for a few lec­tures of Laurel and Hardy’s Introduction to Farce.

The Uncharted series, then, is pri­mar­i­ly an ongo­ing nar­ra­tive of the dis­rup­tion of pow­er­ful forces by a comedic but deter­mined under­dog. Nathan Drake is the very epit­o­me of the clown, stum­bling through the care­ful­ly planned show leav­ing destruc­tion and chaos in his wake.

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Carnivalesque is a term used in lit­er­ary the­o­ry to explore the act of sub­vert­ing or revers­ing var­i­ous given hier­ar­chies. Coined by Russian philoso­pher Mikhail Bakhtin dur­ing the Second World War, the sim­ple expla­na­tion is that the car­ni­va­lesque encap­su­lates the sen­ti­ment of the car­ni­val – when the world is turned upside down, noth­ing is seri­ous; sex, intox­i­ca­tion and grotes­query come to the fore and all respon­si­bil­i­ties are aban­doned (or at least aban­don­able). In car­ni­val, iden­ti­ties can be masked over and for­got­ten, the mag­is­trate can become the trans­ves­tite and the pau­per can dress as the king. Dominant social ideals and expec­ta­tions are tem­porar­i­ly lib­er­at­ed from the author­i­ty of the norm and in the ensu­ing free­dom new expe­ri­ences are made avail­able under the caveat: ‘It’s car­ni­val’.

It seems to me that there are a num­ber of ways in which Nathan Drake and the Uncharted games epit­o­mize the car­ni­va­lesque. These are a few thoughts on the way the games might be viewed through this per­spec­tive.

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As I men­tioned above, the nar­ra­tives of the Uncharted games involve Nathan Drake blow­ing his whirl­wind of destruc­tion through the care­ful­ly laid (and intrin­si­cal­ly evil) plans of a given antag­o­nist. In Uncharted 3 this antag­o­nist is Kathryn Marlowe, a cold-hearted British woman at the head of a (lit­er­al­ly) under­ground orga­ni­za­tion con­triv­ing to com­plete the work of Queen Elizabeth I in seek­ing the lost city of Ubar. There are, of course, untold trea­sures and strange pow­ers hid­den with­in Ubar, which is also known as the Atlantis of the Sands. Like many videogame vil­lains, Marlowe is both rich and pow­er­ful, com­mand­ing an army of culty fol­low­ers along with mer­ce­nary pirates. On top of this she per­pet­u­ates a the­mat­ic device of the Uncharted series in bring­ing the past into the present. Juxtaposed with her trick­ster side­kick Talbot, Marlowe becomes a ref­er­ence to her pre­de­ces­sor Queen Elizabeth who, with­in the nar­ra­tive of the game, is often dis­cussed in part­ner­ship with her own court magi­cian, John Dee. While it’s unclear (but unlike­ly) whether or not Marlowe or Talbot are actu­al descen­dants of Queen Elizabeth and Dee, the cor­re­la­tion between their respec­tive roles in the nar­ra­tive give the impres­sion of his­to­ry repeat­ing itself, per­haps bor­der­ing on a sug­ges­tion of rein­car­na­tion. Elizabeth and Marlowe are pow­er­ful and in con­trol. Dee and Talbot are mys­ti­cal, pro­tec­tive and advi­so­ry to their matri­archs. Francis and Nathan Drake work to come between the antag­o­nists and their goal. The par­al­lels between these past and present char­ac­ters in their roles, their quests and their rela­tion­ships set up the game’s vil­lain as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of power and the sta­tus quo. Marlowe is a re-embodiment of Queen Elizabeth’s high-born empow­er­ment. In addi­tion to this, the mys­te­ri­ous power she seeks in Ubar is a mind-control drug, mak­ing her fight with Drake one of free­dom vs. con­trol, insti­tu­tion vs. indi­vid­ual. With Drake as pro­tag­o­nist the game firm­ly states which side of that oppo­si­tion it comes down on. As Drake, we active­ly work to sub­vert the insti­tu­tion­al­ized power of Marlowe’s orga­ni­za­tion and, in typ­i­cal Drake fash­ion, this is large­ly through caus­ing absolute chaos.

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Another plot device the writ­ers of Uncharted are par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of is what I like to call the Ol’ Loyalty Switcheroo. Repeatedly through­out the series there are char­ac­ters whose posi­tion as friend or enemy is called into ques­tion as they switch alle­giance between Drake and his ene­mies. Drake is almost inevitably out-numbered and out-gunned in these games, so when part of the enemy force moves over to Drake’s side detracts from the power of his antag­o­nists. Narratives like Uncharted’s cen­tre around power strug­gles, as each side attempts to com­plete cer­tain goals in com­pe­ti­tion with the other. These decep­tions and counter-deceptions reg­u­lar­ly cause the high-status vil­lain to con­cede a degree of the ini­tia­tive, and Drake is empow­ered in their place. In Uncharted 3 there are no less than two exam­ples of this: once in a flash­back to Drake and Sully’s first meet­ing when Sully switch­es to Drake’s side, sav­ing him from death at the hands of Marlowe’s men, and once again when both the play­er and Marlowe are led to believe that one of her men, Carter, has shot both Drake and Sully dead. The scene is revealed to have been a set-up and Carter an ally of Drake’s all along.

What the Loyalty Switcheroo works toward is a car­ni­va­lesque rever­sal of high and low sta­tus. Part of Drake’s appeal is his posi­tion as under­dog, the witty rap­scal­lion who stands up against the odds. Now, what we know about real­i­ty is this- the under­dog usu­al­ly gets shaft­ed. Tellingly it is in our sto­ries that we try to right this unfair­ness, but the fact remains that in every­day life, regard­less of the wor­thi­ness of the cause, power is every­thing. A net­work of eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als like those com­pos­ing Marlowe’s under­ground soci­ety would no doubt defeat Drake in very lit­tle time, in this world we live in. But Drake’s abil­i­ty to pull the rug out from under Marlowe and score lit­tle vic­to­ries which reverse their dynam­ic make Uncharted’s game space into some­thing approach­ing the carnival- a tem­po­rary loca­tion in which the rules of real­i­ty are sus­pend­ed and the world turns upside down. Here money and an army count for not so much as a good heart and a steely expres­sion. Uncharted cre­ates a new econ­o­my in which strength, belief, trust and deter­mi­na­tion are the cur­ren­cy, an ide­al­ized oppo­si­tion to our harsh real­i­ty.

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Also help­ful, of course, is a prac­ti­cal­ly super­hu­man hand­i­ness in gun­play. Drake’s strate­gic plot­ting is kept in the realms of Uncharted’s cutscenes, while game­play is restrict­ed in the main to gun­fights and find­ing the next ledge to grab. For some play­ers this dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between witty plot­line Nathan Drake and mur­der­ous game­play Nathan Drake leaves a bit­ter taste in the mouth, dis­turb­ing their grasp on the char­ac­ter. “Ludonarrative dis­so­nance”, they choose to call it, the bas­tards. But what ought to be remem­bered is that these games are, and have always been, about the adren­a­line rush and the phys­i­cal spec­ta­cle. Individual moments in Uncharted are played out with the speak­er turned up to 11, designed to awe and inspire. Rather than lit­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of an event, the gun­fights are to real-world fight­ing what the con­ve­nient­ly placed ledges are to real-world geog­ra­phy, a manip­u­lat­ed sim­u­la­tion. In terms of their mean­ing the deaths of Drake’s ene­mies fall some­where between Punch kick­ing the shit out of Judy, and the sac­ri­fic­ing of an ani­mal.

What’s clear is that through the com­e­dy of Drake’s actions and encoun­ters the poten­tial dark­ness of much of Uncharted is alle­vi­at­ed. Drake’s witty ban­ter and phys­i­cal clum­si­ness (astound­ing, given his acro­bat­ic pro­fi­cien­cy) detract from the seri­ous­ness of the events of the game, mak­ing light of phys­i­cal and men­tal pain while dis­tanc­ing what we see from real­i­ty and plac­ing it firm­ly in the realm of play(ful). The game’s com­e­dy enshrines it as a space sep­a­rate and com­part­men­tal­ized, one in which our actions and reac­tions need not reflect those of our real lives. Talk of ludonar­ra­tive dis­so­nance (that’s twice I’ve had to write that now, a pox on all your hous­es!) ignores or mis­un­der­stands this – Drake’s actions are sup­posed to be obscene and overblown, they are spec­ta­cles which par­o­dy real­i­ty and are sit­u­at­ed out­side of and lib­er­at­ed from its con­se­quences.

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A small thought on land­scape. Since its incep­tion, the Uncharted series’ coup de grace has been its var­ied and gor­geous­ly real­ized envi­ron­ments. At its core the series is root­ed in its promise to pro­vide a spec­ta­cle. Along with pro­vid­ing these sump­tu­ous locales, how­ev­er, the games also often pro­vide their out­right dec­i­ma­tion. Drake reg­u­lar­ly dis­rupts the very ground upon which he stands, caus­ing may­hem and destruc­tion. Trains, planes, build­ings and whole cities col­lapse around him through his inter­fer­ence. In Uncharted 3, some of the loca­tions of this envi­ron­men­tal vio­lence group togeth­er to demon­strate a wider metaphor­i­cal impor­tance. A plane car­ry­ing Drake is ripped to shreds in the air. A man­sion burns and col­laps­es around him. A cruise ship rolls and sinks and Drake flees on-rushing water. Finally, the lost city of Ubar is swal­lowed into the sands of the desert. In the lan­guage of a nar­ra­tive steeped in ancient, near-magical mythol­o­gy these indi­vid­ual dis­rup­tions add up to a com­plete dis­rup­tion of the world of the game as based on the four clas­sic ele­ments: Air, Fire, Water, Earth. What is being per­formed here is the destruc­tion and renew­al of the game’s geog­ra­phy, often we see nature reclaim­ing space occu­pied by man-made struc­tures. In the car­ni­val, themes which are usu­al­ly taboo or for­bid­den such as death and bod­i­ly func­tions are brought to the fore and rep­re­sent­ed. Drake’s destruc­tive path through the Uncharted games may well work as a memen­to mori in that it under­lines the tem­po­rari­ness of that which is man-made, and indeed of mankind.

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It’s dif­fi­cult to dis­cuss car­ni­va­lesque with­out strolling into the topic of sex. While Uncharted tends to avoid the sub­ject, pre­sum­ably so as to main­tain a rel­a­tive­ly family-friendly appeal, in Uncharted 3 we can see observe Drake exist­ing in a nec­es­sar­i­ly lib­er­at­ed state. From cutscenes we infer that Drake and his series love inter­est Elena have, in the peri­od between Uncharted 2 and 3, got­ten mar­ried and become estranged. By the end of the third game they look set to give things anoth­er try. But, telling­ly, we can never play as a mar­ried Nathan Drake. From Elena’s con­ver­sa­tions with Drake in Uncharted 3 we come to under­stand that the break down in their mar­riage was caused by Drake’s obses­sive adven­tur­ing, seal­ing the impos­si­bil­i­ty of mar­ried Drake ever being the played Drake. To have a game worth play­ing, Drake must do exact­ly that which destroys his mar­riage – insis­tent­ly place him­self in dan­ger, under­tak­ing all sorts of vio­lent and chaot­ic quests. The game­play there­fore active­ly rejects the con­for­mi­ty of a social­ly nor­mal­ized rela­tion­ship; Drake is nec­es­sar­i­ly placed in the posi­tion of flux that defines him. Only between games, in a sort of nar­ra­tive Hinterland, can a mar­ried Nathan Drake exist.

Something to remind our­selves about car­ni­val is its essen­tial tem­po­rari­ness. It is impos­si­ble for the car­ni­va­lesque to be per­ma­nent because then it becomes the norm. Carnivals usu­al­ly exist for a set dura­tion at some pre­de­ter­mined and tra­di­tion­al time, often before or after a peri­od of hard­ship such as Lent or har­vest. Playing Uncharted is like duck­ing into a soci­ety only for its car­ni­val peri­od. We’ve no wish to take the reins of Nathan Drake while he sleeps, cuts his toe­nails or sits on the toi­let. We want to expe­ri­ence the mad­ness and adven­ture of his quests. We can all sleep, cut our toe­nails and sit on the toi­let in our own lives. What Nathan Drake pro­vides is an avatar through which to safe­ly expe­ri­ence the chaot­ic excite­ment of play.