Mother Literature Magazine
American Literature of the 80ies as seen in Mother
Its interesting for children but even more so for adults
TAKAHASHI Genichirō
About the author: Born in 1951 in Hiroshima prefecture. After dropping out of Yokohama National University he drifted from job to job and traveled, working on construction sites for example. In 1981 he suddenly made his debut as a novelist with Sayōnara gyangu-tachi (Sayonara, Gangsters) and became one of the greatest authors in quite a while. First winner of the Mishima Literature Prize.2
The first RPG to be populated by characters from the present
Before I started playing Mother, I was a bit concerned. Originally RPGs were a type of game that was firmly rooted in the historical genre, in other words they were stories about the middle ages. Will it still be interesting if you turn it into a contemporary setting, will it be convincing, I worried myself with questions like these. But once I started playing I honestly felt it was a lot of fun.
The game starts with a manifestation of a poltergeist. RPGs up until now had very fixed tropes like searching for a missing princess or a treasure. In a modern setting, since there are no princesses or treasures, its hard to come up with a concrete reason for going on a journey.
However for a contemporary setting there is the fixed form of the adventure novel to fall back on, the pattern of a boy going on a journey to look for something.
When I saw this pattern fall into place as a game neatly from the beginning, that turned out to be quite enjoyable.
Usually in medieval fantasy the enemy characters take the concrete forms of demons and monsters and if you think about what would appear in a modern setting, it makes sense to have aliens, or people and animals that are being manipulated by something making them appear scary and even trucks and cars as enemy characters.
The notion of not killing is what makes a good adventure novel have a good aftertaste
And what I liked the most about it was that you didnt kill the enemy characters. Its common in games to cruelly kill enemies left and right, and as this serves to release our sadistic urges it was essential to games. Yet in Mother, the enemies return to their senses. This means the authors way of thinking, his feelings toward the issue fill the game with life right to its core, and that made me feel extremely good about the game.
That is not to say that sadistically finishing off the enemy makes me feel bad in any way but you cant help but have a bitter aftertaste after watching a splatter movie or reading a splatter novel.
Reading a good boys novel on the other hand leaves an extremely good aftertaste. That was it. As I played the game, I noticed the many concrete cases of the game being considerate about this issue. And that was convincing. This is one example how Mother brilliantly succeeds in putting the boy adventure novel formula into game form.
Horizontal movement through a vast space, the defining trait of American adventure novels
In current American literature, as if by a strange coincidence there are two novels similar to Mother. Stephen Kings Talisman and Greg Bears The Infinity Concerto. What is even more interesting is that in the afterword to The Infinity Concerto Bear says that after finishing writing his novel he read Talisman and was dumb struck by the similarities. The same kind of coincidence happened with Mother. The time was ripe for such a story to be written, and a capable writer couldnt help but write it.
The setting is that of a boy, although living in present times, going on an adventure to the realm of demons.
A boy going on an adventure, growing up and returning, that is a staple theme in American literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or its modern version, Salingers The Catcher in the Rye is the most American type of American novels. The genres bildungsroman and youth novel exist in every country, but I get the impression that the American works in these genres often feature a slightly younger boy wandering through the wilderness, growing up and returning. In the European examples a young man falls in love and is distressed by it, and changes as a person, arriving on a different plane. It touches you in a different way.
America has its wilderness. Originally America was a frontier, with an unknown world to the West, traveling there and a boy growing up, these two aspects conveniently happen to overlap. Love is also an element of that journey.
In Europe, everything turns into vertical movement. Descending into the realm of demons, and rising up to the heavens. Its the vertical movement of life and death.
Compared to that America basically has horizontal movement. Even when going to the demons lair, although feeling somewhat European, the protagonist still moves along a map. This consistent sideway movement is is exactly as in an RPG. Huckleberry Finn too follows the river Mississippi for several thousand miles upwards and downwards. For an American, this invites nostalgia.
The rebuilding of the family is the theme of 80ies America
Another special trait of current American literature is contained in Mother, the theme of rebuilding the family after it was ruined. Stories set in the aftermath of the ruin of a family are numerous in American novels of the 70ies. For an American, the 50ies were the golden age, the 60ies were an age of turbulence and commotion, with kids raising objections towards their fathers, and in the 70ies the scars of these eventful times remained.
Entering the 80ies marks a recovery from these scars, in other words there is a process of golden age turbulence scar recovery. In concrete terms, the generation of the fathers or that of the older brothers went to the Vietnam war and returned from it. There was one generation of people who died or lost limbs, and the generation of their younger brothers and sisters are writing the American novels of today.
At the same time, the 60ies also were a time of drastic changes in the family structure. You had divorced mothers and unmarried mothers, in other words families without a father. Then there were also families which had lost their fathers in the war, in addition the sexual revolution occurred and it was a time when the traditional family broke apart in various senses.
The younger brothers and sisters faced another attack from a different direction with AIDS, or they had an actual injury in their family, making the wish to heal that injury so great that they began to review their family situation.
They didnt want to break up the family structure but rather to return after having left. Lets not do this anymore, The 50ies were much better than this.
So if we apply this to the story of the boy, he becomes the bond that keeps the family together. The boy going on a journey and returning becomes a metaphor for returning to the family itself, to what made the family good originally.
In Kings case also, the father who is depended on by the boy is glimpsed faintly in the background. This means the boy is not all alone, the concept of family offers warmth, and the feeling of wanting to return to that kind of family, the reliable family of the 50ies, overlaps with the image.
Back to the future of the golden 50ies
In Mother too, shades of the 50ies abound. The music is one aspect, the pompadour hair of the older party member another, these are indicators of the time when the family was still alright.
That RPGs chose the middle ages as the time of their setting has the same significance as current American literature seeing the 50ies as the age when there was a father, as the golden age.
There is a classic book by Huizinga called The Autumn of the Middle Ages in which the middle ages are rehabilitated. Huizinga points out the mistake in viewing that time as the dark middle ages, and writes that actually the sensitivities of the people during that time could be said to have been in full bloom, that in a way it was the age of a golden autumn.
Americans feel the same way about the 50ies. High school, first kiss, prom night, yes, the world of American Graffiti is made of exactly these things. There is a hard working mom and a surefooted dad that hasnt lost his dignity. On an imaginary level The Goonies and American Graffiti are one and the same. A child growing up during the age of Kramer vs. Kramer doesnt have time to go on a journey, with their family falling apart. However, as the boy grows up and enters the 80ies, he feels he should do things more gently by going Back to the Future into the 50ies as people personally remember them. Getting in a fight with a young man with pompadour hair, you can feel it in your heart, this is the 50ies. If one is to create the fixed form of a balanced contemporary setting, the result is America of the 50ies.
Paranormal powers are the weapon of the game that links past and present
Paranormal powers serve as an important new element to link the past and present. The 80ies are quite mechanical, arent they. Everything is firmly defined and were surrounded by things that make it hard for a time slip to occur. So there needs to be some supplement. If for an American the 50ies relate to the middle ages, there needs to be a weapon that makes the 50ies appear like the middle ages. For that paranormal powers fill in.
Paranormal powers are a metaphor for a past power that has become dormant inside oneself, a secret power which represents the act of going to somewhere not the present despite it being the present. Kings Carrie is an example for this. I think there are two sides to it: As something that connects to a lost age, giving the boy and girl supernatural powers also becomes a crucial element that serves as the key to make the RPG itself take form as a game.
At present, America is faced with the problem of running out of frontiers but the image of America is still that of a country that demands frontiers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. are really frontiers for the American viewer. Americans never cease to expand their border into what is the outside for them and in that sense aliens from outer space are like a native population.
And in the present, as a way of communication with the unknown outside, supernatural powers become indispensable.
Mother has everything an adventure novel needs
Another important genre British and America literature has is fantasy. It is the same in C. S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia, but the important key that connects boys literature and fantasy literature is Magicant.
The present has a place that directly connects to the fantasy world. To travel that world of fantasy is yet another frontier. In both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz the secret passage to the world of fantasy is a door in ones house.
In that sense Mother both has the elements of the 50ies boys adventure novel and that of the Narnia type fantasy novel, and everything needed for a boys story is covered. Reading such a story lifts the spirits of an American reader.
You could say there is not a single reason why Mother wouldnt be a hit in America.
