Why the Suburbs are Terrible

Ah, the suburbs.  A place away from the hustle and bustle of the city, where families can live peacefully and raise their children behind the safety of a white picket fence.  It's the American Dream.  Sure, in the 1990s it was trendy to complain about how monotonous and boring the suburbs are, but a little restlessness is a small price to pay for stability.  Beyond angsty 90s counter-culture, surely the suburbs are great, right?

Well, you saw the title of this post.

The problem with the suburbs is multilayered.  Their rise is the reason when we say "inner city" we think of hoods and barrios, for example, and they have in general exacerbated a lot of problems related to class and race beyond just where people live.  On top of that, the suburbs aren't even that great for the people fortunate enough to live there.  Feelings of being disconnected and lonely are common among many young people today, but those who live in the suburbs have it the worst.  So, what gives?

In this post I'll briefly summarize the historical roots of US suburbia, summarize how suburbia expanded after World War 2, mention what initially drew Americans to suburbia beyond just the promises of prosperity, and then finally explain various problems that emerged as a result.  I will be drawing from books I read during graduate school for many of these sections, so there will be less links than usual to support my points, but at the end I will include a section on sources for anyone interested.

HISTORICAL ROOTS 

"Way back/when America had the red and black lumber jack/with the hat to match."

One thing we take for granted today is that we have anything resembling a common culture.  That was not the case when this country was founded.  Sure, there were some common values, technology, and mythology about the founding of the country, but there was no mass culture or strong government process that connected people the way we have now.  Historian Robert Wiebe coined the term "island communities" to describe how US towns and cities functioned largely by themselves.  While I don't fully agree with the term (trade, travel, and the occasional popular book or song created some common cultural elements, along with the things I mentioned above), the basic idea behind it is correct.

Things began to change with the dawn of the 1900s, however, when industrialization led to the growth of cities, both in the sense that new cities formed and previously existing cities experienced a huge population explosion.  Along with this urban growth came a new "professional" class of people such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, and other specialists who filled various needs within the city (today much of these people make up what we call the middle class).  At the same time, governmental bureaucracies grew in order to meet the demands placed on the state by the expanded cities, and big businesses grew bigger than ever.

The growth of these various groups created the foundations of our current society.  The professional/middle class was the foundation of the Progressive Movement, which lasted roughly from 1900 to World War 1 and demanded things from the government like social services, regulations on businesses, and even giving women the right to vote.  They also, according to historian Michael McGerr, tried to mold the rest of US society to fit their values of moderation, formal organization, professional education, deference to expertise, and centralized bureaucracy.

McGerr also points out they generally weren't associated with the laborers in factories, whom many of them looked down upon as uncivilized.  Though there were exceptions, Progressives believed their professional values were superior to both the greed of the rich and the barbarism of the working class.  They also were generally fine with segregation, too.  Those in the government went along with the Progressives for three reasons: (1) the Progressives were good at mobilizing both popular support and resources for their causes, (2)the bureaucrats saw themselves as part of the professional/middle class, and (3)those bureaucrats recognized increasing the role of the state in things like regulating industry would result in the increase of its overall scope and influence.

This was the beginning of the state as a presence in the daily life of people who didn't directly work for the government or military.  And, speaking of the military, the mobilization for World War 1 helped further entrench the government's ability to organize and expand its authority far beyond what it had been even during the Progressive Movement.  Everything from recruitment drives to manufacturing arms to creating a bureaucratic infrastructure big enough to organize its troops grew the size of the state exponentially.

"Come give your life for literally the most pointless war in modern history!"

In addition to the growth of the public sector, the private sector grew as well.  Of the countless ways this influenced the modern United States, the most immediately relevant here is the growth of consumer culture during the 1920s.  This was helped not only by industrialization creating more consumer products, but also innovations in communications technology like the radio.  Mixed with billboards, newspaper advertisements, and other such avenues of advertising, the United States had more of a common culture than ever before, and it was largely based on buying stuff.

During this time there was also the creation of a limited amount of suburbs in Boston and New York City, the first of their kind.  The previously mentioned information is arguably more important than these early suburbs, however, because it helped set the stage for the expansion of the suburbs after World War 2.  The increased power of the state is why the US would later subsidize the creation of the suburbs; the creation of a mass consumer culture is the means through which the suburbs were marketed to people; finally, the people who bought homes in the suburbs were often (white) members of the professional class.

The explosion of consumer culture and the professional/middle class during the 1920s was slowed down by the Great Depression in 1929.  Herbert Hoover, the president at the time, was an ardent believer in free markets, and did little to stop it.  It was here when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1932 election on his platform of using the government to help people.  His New Deal policies drastically expanded the role of the state, even going beyond the scope the Progressive Era had established.

POST-WORLD WAR 2 SUBURB EXPLOSION

"Surely our victory will mean Nazis will be gone forever!"

Along with the economic boom brought along by WW2, FDR's policies helped bring the US out of the Great Depression.  His policies were so popular that he won reelection in 1936, 1940, and 1944, and helped revitalize the Democratic Party.  In the fifty years before FDR, the Democratic Party only held the presidency twice.  It wasn't doing too hot in Congress, either.

FDR turned that around based on a platform of using the state to help organized labor, provide expanded public services like Social Security, and build an unprecedented amount of infrastructure.  It should be noted, though, that a lot of these policies came about because of both popular pressure from grassroots activists and the more left elements of his cabinet, particularly his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins.  Many scholars now see the New Deal as a compromise that helped prevent socialist revolution.

During World War 2 the United States experienced unprecedented growth because of the production demands placed on the wartime economy, as well as the fact that Europe had been weakened by WW1 and further weakened during WW2, which created openings in the international economy for trade that the US happily stepped into.  Women in particular benefited from this wartime economy, even Mexican American women, as they were allowed to work in factories out of necessity while the men went off to fight (though they were, shamefully, essentially forced out of their jobs when WW2 ended).

When the fighting ended in 1945, the US came out stronger than ever.  Because Europe was in shambles, it and the Soviet Union were now the world's economic superpowers who created their own spheres of influence through trade and diplomacy.  They also mutually feared one another.  The US also feared a number of domestic issues, too, especially another catastrophic depression.  The consumer economy of the 1920s, after all, hadn't been enough to stop the collapse of 1929.  How could the US know it was safe from another such catastrophe in the near future?

Those fears, along with pressure from organized labor and the legacy of FDR's economic policies (the man himself died in April 1945, about half a year before the end of WW2), came together to create what is often referred to as the US Economic Golden Age.  The war time economy boosted the strength of both the private and public sectors of the US.  Unlike after WW1, however, the new set of policies put in place made sure the wealth brought in was more equally distributed and the private sector had more oversight.  There was still poverty (especially if you weren't white), but things were much better than before, even for people of color.

Here we can see Fat Joe and Lil Wayne demonstrating the effect WW2 had on the US economy.

The US was now at a crossroad: what would it look like after WW2?  It not only had to worry about preventing another depression and trying to create growth, but also had to make sure it looked like a more attractive option than the Soviet Union.  Socialists and communists had always existed in the US, but ever since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, they had a model to turn to in the Soviet Union (though there was plenty of debate among leftists if the Soviets were a good model, especially after Stalin came to power).  The US wanted to prove itself a more attractive option for people outside of the elite in order to make sure it didn't face a Bolshevik Revolution of its own.

One of the main answers was the suburbs.  The GI Bill, a bill which still provides benefits for people in the military to this day, was signed in 1944 by FDR about a year before his death.  Among the many benefits returning veterans enjoyed, perhaps none were as important as those related to housing.  Veterans received low interest home loans, only had to make small down payments, and received many tax credits that helped them afford homes in the suburbs, which were created in large part thanks to government investment in both the houses themselves and the infrastructure around them (think of that next time someone from the suburbs talks about the evils of big government).

The result was an influx of many (white) people into the suburbs.  The GI Bill helped make sure many had the opportunity to get the house, while others afforded it thanks to their salaries as members of the professional/middle class; the booming post-war economy helped make sure both groups could afford to keep their houses.  This was a huge contrast to how Americans lived before, and not just in terms of the increased amount of consumer goods available.  Previously people lived in the city in apartments or small houses, in much more tightly-packed neighborhoods than those of the suburbs.

Now they had a ton of space and a ton of stuff.  The American Dream had been realized.

THE ANXIOUS PROMISE OF SUBURBIA

"Gee willickers dad, I sure hope you aren't secretly a miserable booze hound!"

As mentioned above, another depression and the Soviet Union loomed large as fears in the minds of many Americans.  For the former worry, a big part of why Americans embraced the suburbs wasn't just because of a desire for affluence, but also as part of a call from both the public and private sector to spend enough to prevent another depression.  It wasn't just self-interest to buy a house, car, and variety of home appliances.  It was your patriotic duty!

That went double for Cold War anxieties.  The suburban consumer was not only doing their part to prevent another economic collapse, but was also doing their best to show the superiority of US capitalist democracy to Soviet communism.  As historian Elaine Tyler May points out, this created a symbolic link between the nuclear suburban family and US capitalist democracy.  This put a lot of pressure on families to buy into the suburban lifestyle.

Obviously left out of this equation was people of color, but especially black folks.  Latinx, Asian American, and other non-black people of color occupied a weird social status where they sometimes counted closer to white than to black, but other times didn't.  Latina/o people, for instance, often weren't formally segregated from white folks the way black people were, but were still informally discriminated against in housing practices- especially if they were brown, poor, and/or didn't speak fluent English.

Even for those inside the suburbs, however, the previously mentioned pressure to conform to suburbanized patriotism created a mess.  LGBTQ folks had to live in the closet, often having to settle into a heterosexual family lifestyle that made them miserable.  Suburban women, who had tasted freedom during WW2 factory jobs, now were pressured to stay in the home as housewives, with no recognition or appreciation for their domestic labor; those who did get to work were generally only allowed to do clerical or other "pink collar" work.  Leftists and labor leaders had to conform out of fear for being labelled a communist/Soviet sympathizer.

Also, there were plenty of white, heterosexual people with no leftist tendencies who nevertheless just didn't want a suburban lifestyle, but didn't want to stand out in an era dominated by fear and paranoia.

"You're damn right I'm a miserable booze hound. This place sucks ass."

"Wow, dad, I didn't know you were a commie!  Prepare to feel the wrath of Joe McCarthy, Soviet scum!"

Now, all that said, society pressures us to do things all the time, and that's not always a bad thing.  After all, we're pressured to wash our hands after going to the bathroom, brush our teeth, and not murder people.  So, even if people were pressured to go along with the suburban lifestyle, that doesn't automatically make the suburbs bad, right?

That would be correct.

The suburbs are terrible for different reasons.  Let's get into why.

FRAGMENTIZATION

"David, why is there a picture of broken glass here?"

"It's supposed to be symbolic of a deeply stratified United States."

"Wow, that's some 'intro to creative writing' level corny symbolism."

"Shut up, Gary."

There are a few reasons I'm gonna explore here, but they all tie to the core problem of how fragmented the suburbs have made society.  Before World War 2, almost everyone except the ultra wealthy lived in the cities.  From the poor to the middle class, those who lived in the cities went downtown to get their shopping done and enjoyed leisure time in public places like parks.  Because of this, people spent more time around people unlike themselves (though black folks and some other people of color were largely excluded from many of these areas thanks to segregation).

The suburbs changed that.  Shopping centers outside of the downtown area sprang up in mass, thanks in large part to the new roads created by the New Deal and drastically expanded by Eisenhower in 1956 with the Federal-Aid Highway Act (again, think about this the next time a suburbanite talks about the evils of government spending).  Now the middle class no longer had to associate with those filthy poor people.  Instead, suburbanites lived in what historian John Teaford calls "edge cities"- enclaves where they could get their shopping done and spend time in public spaces without having to spend time with anyone unlike themselves.

If we wanted to, we could even apply the homie Robert Wiebe's term "island communities" here.

As mentioned in the intro of this post, this is why the term "inner city" now means the hood/barrio.  As affluent people left the city, downtown areas lost steam.  They had less customers, and those they did have were often low income.  The rise of local city councils and use of local property taxes to financially support edge cities only furthered the growing divide between the city and suburbs, as now suburbanites demanded their taxes only help themselves and not the cities from which they fled.

"Oh Robert, it was awful! I actually had to come within thirty feet of a poor person today!"

The changes didn't come about by themselves, either.  To backtrack to the late 1800s, laborers often fought with people who owned factories during the beginning stages of mass industrialization.  As mentioned above, the cities that resulted from industrialization gave birth to the professional/middle class, who had far more people among their ranks than the rich, but also way more money, resources, and connections to people in positions of power/influence than the poor. These people took action partially because they were exposed to the lives of the poor and working class.

While they created the previously mentioned changes of the Progressive Era, working class people still fought during this time for a better world as well.  This continued into the 1920s.  They gained an incredible amount of ground during the 1930s thanks to the Great Depression and helped add popular support to the New Deal.  The gains from the New Deal created what historians and other social scientists refer to "New Deal liberalism", which loomed large over US politics until Nixon began to challenge it after his 1968 electoral victory and Reagan finally broke it with his election in 1980.

The suburbs played a key role in the destruction of New Deal liberalism, despite the fact that the affluence of the suburbs came from New Deal liberalism.  Suburbanites, now affluent and isolated from anyone unlike themselves, became increasingly fiscally conservative.  As mentioned above, they fought for increasing the power of local city governments and using local property taxes to pay for things like schools.  This not only exacerbated inequality, but also further isolated suburbanites from the rest of the world.  Society became further fragmented.

It can't be said enough, though, that these suburban communities wouldn't have existed without the New Deal.  Not only because it helped create the suburbs and surrounding infrastructure, but because it distributed wealth enough to make sure that a WW2 veteran could easily buy a home and support a family by working even a blue collar factory job.  The middle class became populated not just by the professional class, but even by some people who would have previously been part of the working class.  The resulting society enjoyed much prosperity, but became less connected and conscious of the fact we all depend on one another.

RACISM

"We demand to stay bland!"

Okay, so it's pretty obvious that the suburbs were racist because segregation existed during the time they were created.  Even someone who isn't a historian could guess that the suburbs weren't welcoming to people of color during their invention.  But, hey, everywhere was racist back then, right?  Why single out the suburbs?

Part of the problem is that, because the suburbs were planned during this time, practices like redlining made sure that the suburbs were literally founded on exclusion of people of color, particularly black people.  Even those who served heroically in WW2 or became educated professionals were still kept out.  Confined to their own neighborhoods and kept far away from suburban shopping centers, people of color were kept to the cities.

What makes this more relevant to the present day, though, is that when the Civil Rights Movement began gaining ground, the suburbs is where segregationists retreated.  As historians like Kevin Kruse and Robert Self point out, the battle against segregation occurred in public places in the city like schools, parks, pools, and public transit.  Because of the previously mentioned fragmentation of society, however, these places were already increasingly neglected by affluent white people anyway.  Integration gained ground not just thanks to the heroic efforts of civil rights organizers, but also because affluent white people simply felt less protective of public areas in the city.

Kruse even details in his book, which focuses on the city of Atlanta, that many suburban liberals supported urban integration.  White people of means showing up in support of city integration was by no means uncommon; it was the white people in the cities, who had less money and power, who mainly opposed integration. When the latter group lost the battle for segregation, they used everything from protests to violence to try to undo integration, but it was too late.  Desegregation won out.

Then civil rights activists turned their attention to the suburbs.  Suddenly, white suburban liberals became indistinguishable from KKK members.

Fun fact: Joe Biden got his start as a politician by opposing integration.

The civil rights coalitions around the country began to fall apart after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act for a variety of reasons.  The discomfort of affluent white liberals, who had sometimes helped integration efforts before, was one of those reasons.  Segregationists with money retreated to the suburbs.  Suburban liberals, while not always actively opposed to integrating the suburbs, very rarely offered the sort of helped they offered before.

Legal challenges to suburban segregation were harder to make than legal challenges to urban segregation because the suburbs weren't explicitly segregated.  Though redlining was racist in nature, there was nothing formally outlawing people of color from the suburbs the way there was in the previous form of explicit public segregation.  Because of this, while there were some isolated cases of individual legal victories, as a whole suburban segregation remained in place.

Segregationist Dixiecrat George Wallace campaigned for the presidency in 1964 and found a lot of success by appealing to the racism of some working class white voters.  Richard Nixon clearly took notes from George Wallace, but refined that message to be less explicitly racist and more about "freedom of association" (that is, freedom to not associate with black people).  In doing so, Nixon created what we now call the "southern strategy" in politics: using culture war terminology against the "liberal elite" while using racially coded words to appeal to white voters.

The rising conservatism in the suburbs also worked wonders for Nixon.  A part of Nixon's electoral strategy was appealing to what he called the "silent majority" of voters, which he framed as people who were sick of the civil rights and anti-war protestors.  He campaigned on a "return to normalcy" for the US.  This struck a cord among the suburbs, who wanted to be left alone and not worry about problems outside of their suburban bubbles.  Ronald Reagan would go on to perfect this electoral strategy and reflect the power of the suburban conservatives as an electoral force.

LONELINESS

Why does every stock photo make loneliness look so artsy?

So, we've established that the suburbs were super exclusionary.  But, hey, there are some suburbs that are pretty diverse in the present-day United States.  While the racism is unfortunate, some people in affluence is better than none, right?  We should be focusing on making the suburbs more diverse, not talking about how bad they are!

The thing is, aside from the fact that the suburbs perpetuate inequality today through things like property taxes to fund schools, the suburbs suck for people who live there, too.

Even after the pressures of the Cold War to conform to suburban lifestyle faded, many still saw the suburbs as the key to happiness.  Many feel that way today.  Some people who live there may even enjoy them.  As a whole, though, we are social animals, and the suburbs aren't designed with that in mind.  The isolated houses with few public spaces give suburbanites few places to socialize and interact.

Related to that, as historians Elaine Tyler May and Stephanie Coontz have talked about, the fact that we went from urban neighborhoods with strong family and community ties to nuclear families with weaker ties to both the community and extended family hurt us further.  This trend has happened all across US society, but is especially bad in suburbia.  While we have the myth of the isolated prairie house of the old West, the truth is that many people created communities back then to survive; many who tried to live with no help beyond their wife and kids didn't make it.  As a whole, the myth of US self-reliance is just that: a myth.

"I reckon this town ain't big enough for the both of us.

Let's giddyup and toward creating bigger communities to change that, pardner!"

That matters not just for the sake of truth, but for the sake of how we live.  We've always loved the myth of a self-reliant homestead, but in reality we were forced by circumstances to live interconnected lives with our communities.  The fragmentation brought about by the suburbs changed this.  Now, thanks to New Deal liberalism and the gains brought by an interconnected society, many people (especially affluent white people) are able to live lives isolated from the rest of society.  Now, thanks to how society is structured, they don't "need" anyone else, and don't have to be around anyone else.

And even they're not sure if they're happy about it.

CONCLUSION

No sassy comment here, this actually seems like a cool idea.

So, yeah, the suburbs suck.  They hoard a lot of tax revenue that could be used to help needier communities, and they trap those within into an isolated, fragmented bubble that gives a lot of people mental health problems.  They're not the sole cause of these problems, of course, but they are especially egregious examples of them.

Luckily, there is hope.  A big topic in the field of urban planning is how to make cities less lonely; affordable housing advocates generally demand expanded public housing, which is much less isolating than the suburbs; recent teacher strikes and the unionization of service sector employees, such as retail and fast food workers, are showing a reemergence of organized labor, which means less economic inequality; on top of that, today's unions are much more diverse and willing to fight against other forms of discrimination than the unions of yesterday; the topic of loneliness itself is becoming a big issue that professionals from many disciplines are now explicit talking about.

I could go on, and I'm sure there are tons of groups of people doing great work I know nothing about, but the point is that the world is constantly changing.  Those in history sometimes view the conditions they live in as permanent or unalterable, but it's important to remember that the conditions we find ourselves in today have only been this way for the last few decades.  The fragmented, lonely, society we live in today is not guaranteed to exist as it is in the future.  After all, the US went from the beginning of the Great Depression to the beginning of post-World War 2 prosperity in about a decade and a half.  That's not a long time.

What's important is that we do what we can to make sure we work toward a better future.  Sometimes that means getting involved in politics, other times that means simply getting to know your neighbors or being kind to a stranger.  Not even for moral reasons, but because it's how we're built as humans.  For all of our societal problems, we need one another.

Except Nazis, who should always be punched in the face.

SOURCES
Here are the books that I referenced in this post:
"The Search for Order" by Robert Wiebe
"A Fierce Discontent" by Michael McGerr
"Homeward Bound" by Elaine Tyler May
"The Metropolitan Revolution" by Jon Teaford
"White Flight" by Kevin Kruse
"American Babylon" by Robert Self 
"The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz

Final Fantasy and Power

So, anyone who knows me knows that the Final Fantasy series is my favorite gaming series.  Hell, my (highly subjective) definition of the Final Fantasy golden age, which I think of as every Final Fantasy from VI to X, contains some of my favorite stories from any medium.  Even as their graphics become less and less impressive with age, their memorable characters, intricate stories, gorgeous soundtracks, and fascinating worlds captured my pre-teen imagination like no other, and continue to do so to this day.

One of the many things I love about the series is that there are always some interesting themes floating around in the background.  That's not to say that Final Fantasy games have the sharp thematic insight of a James Baldwin novel or something, of course, but they still hold a surprising amount of depth.  It's pretty clear that the creators of these games have more on their minds than spikey hair and oversized swords.

With their grand, sprawling stories that involve the fates of entire kingdoms and nations, one of the concepts that inevitably come up, sometimes in the forefront of the story and sometimes in the background, is political and economic power.  Who has it?  Who doesn't?  What do those with power do?  What does that mean for the rest of the world?  How much power do the characters have?  What is their relationship to those with and without power?  How does all of this relate to everything that happens in each game?

Ultimately, after thinking about it more closely, it seems like each of my favorite Final Fantasy games has a clear stance: power needs to be challenged.  Unchecked, the hunger for power can lead to threats to the entire world.  Sometimes the entirety of existence.  In most of these games, after all, the final villains are in some ways linked either to the powers that be or powers that used to be.

In this post I'll go through each game and analyze the role power plays, and what it looks like, in that game.  Enjoy!

Final Fantasy VI: Steampunk Empire

Ahh, Final Fantasy VI.  My third favorite Final Fantasy game, yet also the one I like talking about least because of how insufferable many of its fans are (seriously, do they sign some sort of contract where they can't talk about Final Fantasy VI without complaining about Final Fantasy VII's popularity?).  Final Fantasy VI is a brilliant game that, unlike the rest of the series, has no definite protagonist.  The closest person to a main character would be Terra Branford, a half human-half esper, who nonetheless isn't even playable for a large portion of the game.

The game's antagonists, on the other hand, are very clear.  The adversary in the beginning of the game is the Gestahl Empire, a sort of industrial revolution-stage empire with overt imperial ambitions. In the very beginning of the game you play as Terra while she is being mind-controlled to do the Empire's bidding, letting us as the audience know right off the bat what they are willing to resort to in order to further expand their power.  They only get worse from there.  Everyone who's ever played the game remembers the scene where Kefka poisons Doma as the Empire is laying seige to the castle, despite General Leo's pleas to the contrary.

Symbolically, honorable characters like General Leo and General Celes make a very important point: not everyone who is part of an evil empire is bad.  However, and this is a point a lot of people miss in real life, decent people in positions of power aren't enough to prevent a rotten system from perpetrating crimes against humanity.  This is shown in the above-mentioned Seige of Doma, where Kefka is able to poison the water supply and remain in power without so much as a slap on the wrist.  The Empire doesn't care because, ultimately, their goal is a Manifest Destiny-like need for power, and Kefka's methods allow them to advance that goal.  Leo and Celes are powerless to do anything about his atrocities.

This is shown on an even deeper level when Emporer Gestahl and Kefka use General Leo and General Celes to broker a treaty with the espers, only to reveal it was a ploy to allow for the empire to gain access to the espers with their guard down.  Kefka then incapacitates Leo's soldiers, as well as the party, to kill the espers and take their magicite.  General Leo fights off Kefka and seems to beat him, but is so dispirited after Kefka reveals Emporer Gestahl ordered all of this that Kefka is able to kill him right after, symbolizing what happens to decent people, even those with power, when they trust a rotten system to do right.

RIP to a real one.

Of course, it's not long after this that Kefka usurps control of everything and becomes the main villain of the game.  Even though Kefka killing off Emperor Gestahl and reaching for godhood ends the Empire as a formal threat, however, it still lives on in Kefka.  Not only because he used the Empire to get himself in position to gain the powers he eventually gains, but because he is a product of the Empire in the first place.

Kefka was the first experimental Magitek Knight.  He gained immense power, but lost his sanity and empathy in the process.  Because of the Empire's lust for power they not only continued using him, but allowed him to rise up the ranks despite his utter lack of humanity.  Everything that happens during this game, both before and after Kefka kills Emporer Gestahl, stems from this basic fact.  The Empire is so hungry for power that they enabled Kefka because, ultimately, his cruel and destructive ways were in no way at odds with their mission.

I really wanna drive home that last point, because that's something that can't be emphasized enough when connected to the real world.  An obvious example is how much the United States during the Cold War spoke of democracy, but often supported military dictatorships in Latin America over leftist democratic movements.  The goal of the United States and the Soviet Union was a battle of empires disguised as ideology, and both were guilty of abhorrent human rights crimes in order to support that mission.  The current Central American refugee crisis has refugees fleeing poverty and violence largely created by US intervention.

And to be clear, this isn't something the US or Soviet Union are guilty of alone.  The atrocities of empires throughout the ages, from the Mongolians to the Spanish/Portuguese to the British are well-documented, as well as the imperial ambitions other powers today, whether they align with the US or against it.  Final Fantasy VI shows us that, ultimately, imperial ambition and lust for power are not to be trusted, and can lead to some truly horrifying atrocities.

Final Fantasy VII: Military Industrial Complex

You may have heard of this lil ol' entry in the series before.

Final Fantasy VII takes places in a anime-y, mildly cyberpunk dystopia where an immense energy/security company named Shinra runs things.  The company became powerful by using reactors to suck the life force (known as "mako") from the planet and use it provide power for the city of Midgar.  Its influence runs so deep that, by the start of the game, it virtually controls Midgar.  Yes, Midgar technically has its own government, but it's very much a sham.  The mayor blatantly admits as much when you storm Shinra Tower shortly before leaving the city.

 As you learn seconds into the game as you attack a mako reactor, Shinra's power doesn't just lie in its de facto control of the state.  It also has its own well-organized, well-equipped security force.  Hell, considering that security force's size, and the fact that Shinra literally fought a war with the nation of Wutai and beat it so thoroughly it turned Wutai into a tourist trap, it makes more sense to call it a full-fledged private army.

At the head of this private army is the creatively named SOLDIER, which is the elite... well, soldiers of Shinra's little crime against humanity.  In the game Cloud admits to becoming enamored as a child with the idea of joining and proving his strength to the world (luckily, guys embracing militarism to prove to the world and themselves how tough they are is not at all relatable to the real world, am I right?).  He never makes it, of course.  His best friend and role model Zack Fair* does, however, and it's only by uncovering some of Shinra's darker secrets, fleeing the company, and choosing to protect Cloud when Shinra catches up with them that Cloud is able to fight them in the first place.

*Sigh*  So dreamy.

Speaking of SOLDIERs who become disenchanted with Shinra, let's talk about Sephiroth.  As I talked about in a previous post, despite the fact that Sephiroth breaks off from Shinra, he's still a product of it.  Like Kefka, he's a result of experiments brought about by the greed of the powers that be stopping at nothing to further expand their power.  Unlike Kefka, the experiments don't take his sanity at first.  Indeed, he's a perfect warrior and lapdog for Shinra.  This only changes when he learns the truth of his origins, which eventually puts him on course to, long story short, become the main antagonist of the game.

What's wild bout Shinra's grasps for power is that, even as humanity faces danger from both Sephiroth and the WEAPONs (wow, someone should really give the game's naming guy a raise), Shinra is so focused on keeping/expanding its influence that it is willing to publicly execute AVALANCHE just to give the public someone to blame- which, it's worth noting, is something they're openly allowed to do despite being a private company, once more illustrating just how deep Shinra's control of Midgar runs.

In many ways, Final Fantasy VII connects the most directly and urgently of any Final Fantasy to the problems we have with power in the modern day.  Much like how mako threatens to suck Gaia of its life force, last year a UN report warned us here on Earth that we have about twelve years until the effects of climate change become catastrophic.  Unfortunately, corporations exert so much power over the US's political process that they continually shut down meaningful action on climate change.  Meanwhile, on the militaristic side of things, we are increasingly using private military contractors, who come with steep human rights abuses yet are rarely held accountable.  They haven't replaced the state yet, but they have certainly infiltrated it thoroughly.

Basically, Final Fantasy VII urges caution against allowing private corporations to exert power upon the state.  In the realm of energy they will literally suck the planet dry before giving up their profits, while in the realm of the military they will employ security forces to enact violence with little oversight to protect their interests.  Unfortunately, in real life, a buster sword and devil may care attitude may not be enough to stop it.  Hopefully Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal can gain enough traction to became the law of the land.  As for the the alarming privatization of the military...

...hopefully Trump, already wanting to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan, somehow accidentally ends up defeating the military industrial complex through sheer dumb luck?

Final Fantasy VIII: Military Dictatorship

Final Fantasy VIII, like VII, takes place in a more modern world than most other Final Fantasy entries. There are cars, trains, urban buildings, industry, dumb face tattoos, gunblades, and other major hallmarks of modern society.  It also has futuristic sci-fi concepts like teleporters, hi-tech space ships, time travel, and adequate public transportation.

The evil empire in this game is the Republic of Galbadia, led by a dictator (or as he calls himself, president for life) named Vinzer Deling.  Deling is a crafty, power-hungry politician who came to power in then-small Galbadia during a war between it and Esthar of the eastern continent, which was under the rule of a ruthless sorceress named Adel.  Deling, initially elected democratically, consolidated power through persecuting political opponents and expanding militarily in the western continent, which included an occupation of Timber.  Eventually, thanks to an internal resistance movement against the sorceress, Esthar withdrew from the war.  Deling used his popularity to switch from democratic to totalitarian rule and declared himself president for life.

This all happens before the start of the game, which really kicks off toward the beginning when you're sent with your team to help the people of the city-state of Dollet defend themselves against a Galbadian invasion.  Your team losses out, but eventually you join a resistance movement in Timber against the Galbadian government.  This leads the attempted assassination of Sorceress Edea, who has gained power within the Galbadian government because Deling wants her power and ability to intimidate.

Ultimately handing Edea so much power leads to his death.  Needless to say, he wasn't exactly mourned.

Who could have possibly thought this ruthless sorceress would act so ruthlessly?!

While Edea doesn't have the background with Galbadia that Kefka does with the Gestahl Empire, they shared one crucial similarity: their brutality not only wasn't frowned upon, but actually helped them gain power within the empires they served.  Edea's powerful magic, and willingness to use it to intimidate and control people, led to Deling making her an ambassador.  It's what puts her in position to seize power.

After Edea gains power and her assassination fails, the plot gets pretty bonkers even by Final Fantasy standards.  In the midst of all this confusion, though, it's worth pointing out this is yet another case of the main villain in some way using the greed, hunger for control, and short-sightedness of their world's power structures to gain power.  Even when we get to the time compression and reality-bending end of the story, at its core is the fact that Ultimecia is willing to do these things in order to retain power.  She is, after all, doing all this out of paranoia that the White SeeDs of her time (which is the far future) will defeat her and end her reign.

In other words, she's simply a power-hungry despot.

An interesting real-world example of President Vinzer Deling is former Mexican "president" Porfirio Diaz.  A war hero who became legendarily popular after he fought to end the French intervention in Mexico, he came to power democratically but steadily chipped away at the democratic elements of the government until he became a dictator (or, as Deling would put it, "president for life").  Like Deling he was eventually killed, though by revolutionaries rather that a powerful sorceress.

Final Fantasy IX: Empire Redux

Honestly, the evil empire of Final Fantasy IX has the least interesting power dynamics to study of this list.  That's not to insult this game as whole, nor to even call its ideas shallow or simplistic.  Vivi's quest to make peace with his mortality touches on the ultimate conundrum of what it means to be a self-aware being with consciousness: the fact that we must live with the knowledge we will die someday.  There are other big human themes the game explores, too, but really Vivi's personal quest alone is so incredible that it alone gives more than enough thematic depth to the game.

Still, though Alexandria is a boringly generic evil empire, it does have some interesting wrinkles.  One of them is the fact that Queen Brahne used to be a kind, peaceful queen whom her people loved.  It was only a few years before the start of the game that she began to change, partially because Kuja came into the picture.  It's important to note that Kuja didn't trick her into become a greedy, power-hungry despot.  He used persuasion, not mind control, to stoke her ambitions for control of the world.

Though a good person gradually succumbing to greed isn't uncommon in the real world, nor in certain types of fiction, it is pretty uncommon in the world of video games and other sci fi/fantasy/comic sorts of stories.  Especially among parents, who are almost always wholly good, wholly bad, or wholly absent.  Here, though, the game implies that she adopted Garnet with entirely good intentions.  It's only when Kuja tells Garnet about her summoning powers, mixed with him already feeding her growing desire for power by selling her black mages, that her intentions towards her daughter begin to change.

Speaking of Kuja, let's reiterate what I just said above: the guy sold black mages to Brahne.  He's a weapons dealer, a merchant of death, a person who profits off of mass violence.  Even worse, the weapons he sold were made from Mist.  Later in the game we find out Mist is made up of the souls of living creatures who are unable to return to the planet.  He's really knocking it out of the park in profiting off of atrocities!

But hey, shout out to him for having the confidence to rock an outfit like that, I guess?

This is where things get a little complicated when it comes to the whole 'secret, actual final villain' thing.  Because Kuja is indeed secretly in the employ of a bigger, badder force than either Alexandria or himself.  He's secretly been working for Garland, who started releasing the Mist on Gaia (the homeworld of Final Fantasy IX) to prepare it for takeover by Terra, his homeworld he was created to protect.  The protagonist, Zidane, is an avatar created to help Kuja carry out the destruction of Gaia to help make the assimilation easier.

The fact that Terra's overseer has no problem with committing genocide against the creatures of Gaia in order to allow Gaia to prosper is, of course, reminiscent of European colonization of the Americas.  The lack of regard for other life that comes with believing that's okay is astounding.  Garland never has a moment of empathy or hesitation for what his mission is, which reflects pretty damningly on those who created him.  It's the classic colonizer mindset of believing other lives and cultures have no value, and has been used to justify countless atrocities throughout history.

The final villain complication comes when Kuja destroys Garland in order to usurp power and destroy the crystal that created all life, as Kuja cannot accept his own mortality.  On one thematic level, the villain trying to wreck havoc on life itself as an angry response to his own mortality is meant to contrast with Vivi's response to his own mortality, which is to look out for his friends and protect the world.  On another, more political level, Kuja's meltdown can be seen as a consequence of someone who is part of an evil political project realizing how utterly disposable he is in the grand scheme of things.

Kuja's desire to rebel against that meaninglessness is understandable.  Who wouldn't feel upset after finding out their role in an evil power grab is a role designed to end?  But, as he had willingly gone along with that evil system up until the point he realized he no longer would benefit from it himself, Kuja is no hero.  His rebellion against life shows he is exactly the same selfish monster that he was while serving Garland.  Only the kindness and camaraderie of the main party can hope to inspire Kuja to change in any meaningful way.

Whether or not Kuja actually did change, or even live, after the final battle is left up to the audience's imagination.  It makes me wonder how many people in the real world who have sold their souls for power can find a change of heart if given the right example of others living for more than themselves.  Ultimately I don't believe every awful person can change, nor that none of them can.  Everyone is different.  But I'd like to believe that there are more who can change their minds, and more importantly work to atone for what they've done, than there are those who can't.  I hope Kuja became good.  I hope he lived and decided to put everything he had in trying to make up for what he did.

Final Fantasy X: Theocracy

Final Fantasy X asks questions about the human condition that are as old as time: what if your co-protagonist was a whiny doofus with frosted tips (shout out to the early 2000s)?  What if one of your party members starts off the game as the Spira equivalent of a Ted Cruz supporter?  What if your dad turned into a demon whale?  Really makes ya think.

All sass aside, though, Final Fantasy X is an excellent game with a great co-protagonist (Yuna) and great supporting characters (Lulu, motherfucking Auron).  In the world of Spira, which Tidus is thrown into at the start of the game, the land is ruled by the Yevonite religion.  The four leaders of the religion, the maesters, are sorta like Catholic cardinals, except they're able to cast magic and shit (so, y'know, way better).  They're led by the grand maester, which in this game is Grand Maester Mika.

The Yevonite power structure is presented as fairly benign in the beginning of the game.  Of course, this being a Final Fantasy game, there is much more beneath the surface.  Long story short, all of the maesters except for the Ronso maester are deceitful assholes who engage in murder and allow widespread corruption in order to keep their grasp on power.  They also ban the use of technology (called "machina" in this game) for everyday people, calling it unholy, while using a shit ton of technology for themselves in secret.

Speaking of everyday people, let's take a moment to talk about Wakka.  I joked about Wakka being the equivalent of a Ted Cruz supporter, but that's a bit unfair, because Wakka knows how to read and has at least some empathy inside of him.  He's simply an avatar of the sort of person who uncritically accepts whatever religion they grow up with and do exactly what they're told to by said religion.  In Wakka's case it's being anti-Semit... err, anti-Al Bhed.  He starts the game hating the Al Bhed because his religion tells him to, despite the fact Yuna herself is secretly part Al Bhed.

The fact that someone with hair this fucking stupid feels justified in judging anyone else is wild.

Throughout the course of the game Wakka slowly unlearns his hatred.  He's living proof that no matter what you grow up believing, you can unlearn bullshit and think for yourself.  He serves as a stand-in for many of us in the real world who'd like to think that if certain folks were stripped of super fundamentalist/orthodox religious persuasions, they could be brought to overcoming their hatred and, eventually, fighting the good fight against oppressive power structures.

And fight against the Yevon power structure they do.  But that still leaves Sin.  Like IX and unlike the rest of the series, the primary big bad remains the big bad throughout the game.  What you learn throughout the course of the game completely challenges your understanding of what Sin is, however.  He was created in desperation a thousand years ago in a war between Zanarkand and Bevelle, the forebearers of the Yu Yevon theocracy that rules Spira in the game's present day.  The Zanarkand summoner Yu Yevon created Sin our of fear for his people as it became clear Bevelle had the upperhand.  Zanarkand still lost, but the creation of Sin meant the ultimate Pyrrhic victory for Bevelle.

In other words, Sin is the result of Bevelle's war against Zanarkand.  Yet again it's the powers that be which create the game's ultimate protagonist, in this case the result of a cornered summoner worried about the fate of his people.  No one alive during the events of FFX may be responsible for the creation of Sin, but the Yevonite religion/Bevelle state that controls most of Spira was.  Like in every game, the power structure must fall along with the ultimate enemy.

In the midst of all of our confusion with modern society, many people turn to religion to find answers.  There's nothing wrong with that, of course.  But some people dig in so far they turn off their ability to empathize and think critically, and that negation of both heart and mind allows leaders of powerful religions to manipulate their followers into some pretty scary shit.  FFX is a great reminder that we need to be weary of powerful religions, and keep religion as far away from our government as possible.  Otherwise we face the possibility of giant whale demons.

Historical Context?

 I think it's pretty cool that these Final Fantasy games address power in such a critical way.  Other Japanese RPG fans will rightly point out, however, that a lot of games in the genre have similar storylines.  It's pretty common for the ragtag party of a JRPG game to unite against the powers that be, usually an evil empire of some sort, and eventually end up saving the world.  So what gives?

Well, not being a creator who works on JRPGs, I don't know for sure.  But being a historian, I can make an educated guess.  First, notice something about the "good" kingdoms in most RPGs: they often resemble medieval monarchies more than modern democratic states.  Hell, some of the characters who join your party throughout the series are either royalty of their respective kingdoms (Edgar in VI, Yuffie in VII, Garnet in IX) or protectors of their local kingdoms (Cyan in VI, Steiner and Freya in IX).

This leads me to wonder if the evil empires in these games are a stand-in for what we would call the "West" in modern times, which is a nebulous concept that usually means the United States and Western Europe.  During the 1800s the West forcibly opened up then-isolationist Japan to the outside world, starting in the 1850s with Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy.  Japanese consent mattered little to the US at the time; the country would open up whether it wanted to or not.

This started a chain reaction of events that led to the feudal shogunate ruling Japan falling to the Western-backed "Imperialist" forces.  This began the Meiji Era, which saw Japan switch from its feudal Japanese model to a more Westernized state.  This connected Japan to the then-industrializing world, even giving Japan its own industrial revolution that started around 1870.  As a result of these political and economic forces Japan changed radically, leaving many Japanese citizens feeling anxious and alienated.

Thank you, Rurouni Kenshin, for being a surprisingly accurate introduction to Japan's Meiji Period.

It stands to reason, then, that the evil empires of many games are based on the West's invasion of Japan and other Asian societies during the period of colonization.  The benevolent monarchies, therefore, represent Japan after its own feudal kingdom has its sovereignty invaded.  This could even be said of VII, since by the mid-19th Century the West already represented a sort of proto-global capitalism; a private company causing everything to go to hell could certainly still be a criticism of the West, especially as it is today.  Hell, Yuffie's Wutai, despite its Chinese motifs, could be said to be a direct stand-in for Japan.

There is another interpretation, however.  This one doesn't let Japan off the hook; in this interpretation, it is the evil empire.

The totalitarian, imperialist Japanese system the Allies fought during World War 2 didn't happen overnight.  Japan gradually gained power in the international arena ever since it was forcibly opened up in the 1850s.  This came to a head in 1905 when Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, establishing the country as the first non-European world power of the era other than the US.  However, there was also much debate in Japan about how to run the country, and from 1912-1926 Emporer Taisho actually took Japan in a moderate, democratic direction.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression of the 1930s took a toll on everyone, Japan included.  Even more unfortunately, the upheaval caused a takeover by the military, unlike some parts of the world where social democracy emerged instead.  The military took power and worked to create the mindset that militaristic might is everything.  They wanted to strengthen Japan's status as a world power and create their own empire in Asia.  This led to horrific occupations in China and Korea, among other places.

One of the problems with how we portray other countries we've gone to war with in the past is we think of everyone during that time period as being on the same page.  We never, say, talk about anti-war rallies in countries we went to war with, or just the general popularity of a war among a country's citizens the way we do our own opposition to various wars throughout history. However, it needs to be noted that many in Japan opposed the increasing nationalism and materialism, including Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, and celebrated directors like Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, among many others.

Fun [depressing] fact: the Japanese diplomats in the US negotiating for peace during Pearl Harbor

didn't know about the attack ahead of time and, unlike the military leadership, sincerely wanted peace.

In modern times, it's pretty common for Japanese creative types, who generally lean in a progressive direction like most creative types, to denounce the Imperial Japan of World War 2.  The famous Hayao Miyazaki, for instance, has an entire movie expressing dismay about planes designed to give people freedom to travel this skies being used as an instrument of death during WW2.  In the same article he also says Japan should apologize to Korean women used as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WW2, should share the disputed Diaoyu Islands with China instead of fighting, and criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his denial of Japanese war crimes during WW2.

All of this is to say that, like how the United States (and pretty much every country) is still reckoning with its past, and creating art that reflects that reckoning, so too is Japan.  The Final Fantasy series could be an extension of that, a work where the evil empires in each game represent the evils of Imperial Japan during the 30s and 40s.  Perhaps creating a game where the evil empire is vanquished allows the creators and some of Final Fantasy's more conscientious Japanese fans the ability to reject the sins of their country's past, like a movie or videogame in the US that involves fighting slaveholders.  This would explain the Chinese motifs of Wutai in VII; Wutai could, after all, be an actual stand-in for China after what Japan did to it.

Or perhaps the creators have good historical minds and simply wish to condemn empire itself, rather than any specific society or set of societies.  Throughout history, empire has pretty much always been an enemy of human rights.  Perhaps the creators are students of history who believe that local autonomy and respect for human dignity is important.  Not just for modern democratic states but for any society, even those we might consider less "advanced" than ourselves.

Or maybe they just wanted to make a cool game about teenagers with rad, entirely impractical weapons and I'm overthinking this whole thing.

So impractical, BUT SO COOL.

Thanks for reading! 



*Shoutout to Varoujan.