Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Starcraft 2's Narrative: A Story of Anti-Communism and Western Hegemony


Robert E. Heinlein's military science fiction novel was noted as inspiration for the original Starcraft. Heinlein's novel was seen as a vehicle of his anti-communist views, and I can't help but notice the similarities in Blizzard's Starcraft franchise.

Starcraft 2's narrative follows the sequel of the original Starcraft, where there are three primary factions at war with one another. The main antagonist in both stories is the alien race the Zerg, who are an insect-like species operating under a collective hive mind. They're somewhat similar to the 'bugs' in Heinlein's novel. And philosophically speaking, their goals are similar to the Borg race in Star Trek: The Next Generation television show, where they seek genetic perfection through assimilation of other species into their greater collective.

Now, this may be a stretch, but the Zerg's philosophy seems pretty close to Karl Marx in his theories against capitalism and his move towards communism and socialism. The Zerg operate under a collective consciousness, where everyone actively works together. There are specific roles that each unit specializes in of course, but it is all for the greater good of their race. This is something similar to the idea of socialism and its stock issue of equality among all. The Chinese Iron Rice Bowl is a good metaphor, in that everyone has their specialized roles in industry, but they all share the same wealth.

Now the Terran's on the other hand are the exact opposite. They are the human faction in the video game. And the interesting note about them is that the developers of the video game had their characteristics come from the American South. Confederate flags decor the milieu of Terran ships and vehicles. The characters all have a Southern drawl. Why did the developers take this aesthetic choice when creating the Terran race? This choice seems to correlate the individualistic nature of the South when they wanted to secede during the Civil War. Furthermore, they seem to emphasize the capitalistic nature of the Terrans. There's a lot of infighting between different human factions in the game. For example, there's Raynor's Raiders, who act as freedom fighters. The United Earth Directorate, Arcturus Mengsk, and Raynor all show the individualistic attributes of the terrans.

So it is interesting, when the game pits you against the zerg in the main storyline, it reinforces the Western ideals of individualism and indicts socialist behavior.

1 comment:

  1. I really like this blog post. I thought that the comparisons made were very well thought out and written. However, I think that some of these comparisons would have been very confusing for someone who does not know anything about Starcraft I think you should introduce the subject matter more to widen your audience.

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