Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media, Volume 29, 2017
Abstract: Some players argue that they experience nostalgia while digitally immersed in the streets of 1940s Los Angeles, an experience that entails driving old cars and visiting historical landmarks. Part of the LA Noire gameplay experience provokes players to engage in this feeling of living a past that they may not ever experience outside a digital context. While the game exemplifies this aspect of nostalgia, LA Noire also shows an exploration of this concept deeper, particularly when one refers to the psychoanalytic concept of melancholia. If players define this psychoanalytic interpretation of melancholia as an expression of the ego to recover a lost object, they gain a different perspective of the use of nostalgia in the game. For instance, through the examination of the homosocial relationships between protagonist LA detective, Cole Phelps, and three of his detective partners, they unveil examples of covert intimacy, especially in the ways that Cole’s sense of integrity in the investigations positively change his partners, perhaps allowing them to recover their hidden personality traits. While some players argue that the representation of hypermasculinity is evident as seen through the comments, misogynist attitudes, and the notions of war hero, the homosocial interactions between the detective partners counters the hypermasculine behavior.
Figure 1. Cole Phelps, the 1940s police detective in LA Noire (Rockstar Games, 2011) .
With the sleek remodeling of 1940s Los Angeles, LA Noire (Rockstar Games, 2011) attracts players through the visuals, accompanying soundtrack, and activities such as shooting, chasing and interrogating suspects, and exploring places that no longer exist. LA Noire presents an exciting gameplay experience as the player embodies Cole Phelps, a 1940s police detective and WW II veteran, who climbs up the ranks of the LAPD only to encounter a dilemma between his own integrity and fame (figure 1). Throughout the gameplay, environmental stimuli enhance a player’s emotional experience of the game, thus affecting their responses (Jarvinen 96), as seen in different investigations and driving tasks. This quality arouses players to long for a past that they have not experienced in their lifetimes, until they navigate through the different landmarks of the game. When players excavate a store, for example, they are privy to different fragments of conversation from other people watching Cole investigate, thus making the experience realistic. LA Noire’s visual and auditory aspects are so captivating that they enhance the way that players emotionally respond to stimuli in the game (Jarvinen 96).
While LA Noire’s gameplay entails nostalgic feelings either real or imagined, players discover the recovered lost traits from Cole’s partners, showing that the investigation goes deeper than solving cases and locating landmarks. Through understanding of nostalgia and the psychoanalytic dimension of the concept of melancholia, one perceives the game as a larger story of brotherhood with unpacking of masculinity. Nostalgia serves a dual purpose: by looking at the psychoanalytic component of nostalgia, one perceives the covert intimacy between characters in a video game whose setting is set in the past. By feeling nostalgic through gameplay, players feel as if they can experience the joys of the past while transgressing the sexist and limited notion of masculinity. The player uses two forms of nostalgia that impact the gameplay experience, particularly in embodying Cole Phelps and witnessing his moral stance to sacrifice his life to eradicate moral corruption in the LA Police Department. By exploring the car as a symbol of a man’s power, one examines the way the characters transgress corrupt power and reveal their vulnerabilities.
Nostalgia as longing for a past
In Martin T. Buinicki’s discussion of nostalgia in Bioshock, he uses several notions of nostalgia, in particular Janelle L. Wilson’s notion, to define it as a feeling in which one regards the past with an idealized view of an American past when confronted with images and sounds of a time without the harsh realities inherent in the lived experiences of that time (723). When discussing the layering of music, the speech, and the dress of the characters in the games, Buinicki asserts that the player feels nostalgic for a past that they never experienced, as it coheres with American popular culture, a way that ideology is transmitted in order to instill an idyllic time for the player (725). In other words, the games use music and images that refer to a previous time that the player has not personally experienced while giving them a sense of having lived that past. In a similar way with the use of music, old retro LA setting, and ways of speaking, LA Noire puts the player in a similar situation, also commenting on the use of former uses of noir.
Figure 2. The dark, claustrophobic spaces of L.A.Noire.
The game functions as self-referential or commentary on film noir as a film genre, thus adding another layer of nostalgia to the gameplay. As Rebecca House indicates film noir expressed the existential crisis of individuals after World War II and the malaise since the Depression. Through the strong contrast of dark lighting, the films demonstrated a perspective of life as alienating, claustrophobic, and hopeless, as the motives and causes to fight for were no longer valid especially after the war (House 71) (figure 2). LA Noire uses the trope of the exposure of a corrupt police department similar to the film, The Big Heat (1953), and uses the protagonist, embodied by the player, to attempt to rectify his guilt and trauma of having seen his battalion killed in the war. As House suggests in her assessment of film noir as expressing the disillusionment of servicemen (72), Cole Phelps, the protagonist in LA Noire, exemplifies the counter to the typical sentiment of former soldiers, a loss of the world that he fought to protect and a return to a cold and uncaring world (72-73).
The depiction of LA as a paradox, a city filled with beautiful and elegant buildings as seen in downtown’s main library and City Hall buildings yet filled with evident crimes and lawlessness (Lent 332-332), is a trope used in the game to reference film noir (figure 2). In his study of LA Noire and film noir style and genre, Thomas J. Erb attributes LA Noire’s use visuals such as dark clubs and characters such as detectives, the fallen hero and femme fetales and film technique such as voiceovers, flashbacks, and dreamlike imagery as a film noir aspects remediated into a ludic form (Erb 12-15).
In terms of game mechanics, Steve Conway (2012) offers a counter explanation to the feeling of empowerment in terms of gameplay experience in LA Noire. After explaining that hyper-ludicity offers the false notion of agency and empowerment, he comments that LA Noire is guilty of having the player become more passive than overcome a challenging obstacle (38-39). Yet, the player can decide the manner of by which they execute the tasks and learn from previous mistakes, showing their control over gameplay experience. Since the player learns from previous mistakes in gameplay, such as getting enough information from crime scenes to get the right information prompted on interrogation tasks, Erb asserts that the player’s agency impacts the way the narrative unfolds. Unlike cinema’s version of film noir, LA Noire gives players a chance to depart from the main narrative and engage in the experience of driving around a digital version of old LA and collect film reels of classic Hollywood films (Erb 24-26). Thus, even when there is some momentary curbing to a tough challenge as Conway states, the player’s ability to exert their own desires for a particular experience makes the game a unique experience. While it is the case that the cut-scenes and automation in gameplay remove a strong challenge from the player, the more psychological aspects of gameplay, as in reading of clues and interrogation tasks, make the game rewarding. Moreover, the bonding experience entailed in gameplay and the deeper implications of the characters’ nostalgia shifts the view from simply focusing on gameplay mechanics to an emotional experience.
For instance, the nostalgic factor supersedes the story-telling and action sequence and becomes a way to bond with one’s father. In his review of LA Noire game, Chris Donlan reminisces about his experience of driving around the virtual 1940s Los Angeles with his father, who used the game environment to relive his childhood experiences. In addition to commenting on the realism of the old car models, the Richfield Tower, the Los Angeles public library’s pyramid top, crates of bottles next to a vending machine, darkly lit streets, Donlan’s father also recalled his own father’s experiences as a cop in the 1940s. Even though LA Noire revealed fancier cars than the cops in the real 1940s, Donlan reveals that the games did capture the corruption in the police department, as seen in his own admission of overlooking parking violations and zoning infringements. Perhaps more illustrative of the appeal in the gameplay experience is that Donlan shared a bonding experience with his father, who was described as someone who strongly dislikes video games. The nostalgic factor superseded the story telling and action sequence, since Donlan was able to experience viewing the Richfield Oil Tower, as his father did in his own childhood, a feature in the game that strengthened the bonding between both men. Instead of focusing on the violence and aggression in the actions involved in the game, father and son use nostalgia in their emotional exchange of details in their familial past, incidentally reversing what Kellner refers to as a “crisis in masculinity,” in which men partake in masculine activities to further suppress vulnerability or emotions (Kellner and Katz para 9-11). This experience also showed an intimate sharing experience that is referenced through the characters’ confessions in the confined space within a car, thus also referring to the way that the game represents the trope in film noir such as that of suppressed intimacy between male characters due to their experiences from active duty in the war (Greven 26).
Figures 3 & 4. L.A.Noire’s obsessive focus on cars.
It is no accident that Chris Donlan and his father made gameplay an emotional experience, given that much of the unexpected rewarding experiences from the game arises from an investigation of masculinity as seen in the use of particular symbols and in the interactions between the characters—a quality of the games more easily perceived through the exploration of the way it uses nostalgia. The focus on cars, evident in not only Donlan’s review of the game, but also in the “Auto Fanatic” side quest [1] overshadows the point that I wish to expand upon in this essay concerning its symbolic use (figures 3 & 4).
Much of the symbolism of the car and the confessions within its confined space unpacks a hidden aspect of the game, one that uses nostalgia in its aforementioned common use and its psychoanalytic dimension in melancholia. Such an investigation involves looking at the car as a visually aesthetic item, an item within the player’s view, through a different perspective similar to Jacques Lacan’s discussion of the letter in plain sight as a detective method. This technique exemplifies how an item in plain sight best provides the method in examining the multifarious role of nostalgia in the game through the visual of the car. In context of a detective story, “The Purloined Letter,” Lacan describes the idea of the misplaced letter here, as a conundrum of a letter in plain sight: “that what is hidden is never but what is not in its place…as a call slip says of a volume mislaid in a library, (Lacan 25). The context of the story is that a Minister D— stole a letter with private information in it from a woman’s chambers. An amateur detective, Dupin, finds the letter, as he visits Minister D—‘s room and has a conversation with him through the guise as a blind man. Lacan’s use of the detective tale, however, focuses specifically on the issue that the misplaced letter is one in pure sight, yet this tale functions as a metaphor for uncovering a person’s identity (Lacan, Seminar of Purloined Letter 29).
The use of metaphors, metonyms, and symbols resides in Lacan’s symbolic order, which consists of the signifier’s ability to replace one unit for another. Lacan describes this analysis of the signifier, symbolized through the letter, as only that which surfaces as a form of repetition that arises in interpersonal situations later surfacing in social interactions (Lacan, Seminar of Purloined Letter 21)[2]. Yet, it is through making oneself another object as one does in conversation that allows one to perceive the manner by which one is structured through the signifier (Lacan, Seminar of Purloined Letter 21). Further articulating this idea more in his essay, Function and Field of Speech and Language, Lacan describes speech as a way to recognition from another person to validate or invalidate their thoughts, character, and abilities so that one can define oneself in a certain way (Lacan, Function of Field and Speech in Language 298-300). As a result, through the guise of nostalgia, both in the ideological content and the psychoanalytic dimension (a view that I explain later in my discussion), the car becomes the vehicle within full sight that unveils the different facets of masculinity and identity. As I explain that the car symbolizes masculinity and male power, the speeches inside of the car depict male vulnerabilities, thus commenting on the relationships between these two factors as well as how the speeches overturn the façade of hard masculinity.
While some players focus on the fights, interrogation, and shooting scenes, or the aspects of gameplay where one’s actions affect the direction of the game, I argue that the game also makes use of nostalgia to show subtle ways that the games empower one to perceive nuance in the interactions between Cole and his partners. Such conversations convey details on the corruption of the LAPD or secrets about the detectives’ lives. Much like the more active searches through crime scenes, the car drives provide players insights into the lives of the different partners as well as the intervention that Cole provides. Even though nostalgia may be an ideological factor in the game, one can undo the manipulative aspects imposed by the ideology—such as wishing for the past, thus inherently also wishing for the sexist, racist, and prejudiced views of that time—by looking at the implications in the subtle conversations in cars and tracking Cole’s influence on his partners and their influence on him.
Car as Symbol of Hypermasculinity?
Figure 5 & 6. Two of the many car scenes in L.A.Noire that signify masculinity.
While the action sequences in LA Noire allow different players to play with masculinity, players initially perceive signifiers of masculinity in the form of the city and the car in the first few seconds of the game (figures 5 & 6). In introductory credit scenes, Arson detective, Hershel Biggs describes LA as a “city where man’s home is his castle, city of dreams, city pioneers, city of dreamers, city of undercurrents where everything is not what it seems” as the scene pans to the spectacle of the cars to different girls auditioning for movie parts to a large classroom in a university (Rockstar Games). Moreover, he begins his narrative by introducing LA as a city based on the symbol of the car as a man’s freedom and vitality, as opposed to encountering the man himself. The car captures Laura Revjani’s definition hypermasculinity as “an idealization and embodiment of very stereotypically macho and masculine traits,” (para 6) which embodies “virility, high status, power, strength, and aggressiveness” (para 6). Therefore, the car, symbol of hypermasculinity, shows how its ownership contributes to an idealized concept of manhood—one that the player counters through uncovering more of the nuances of the interactions between the partners in a car— but also unpacks the different performances of masculine gender. Some actions in the game, such as the shooting, chasing suspects, punching suspects, or exploring dangerous sites—while fun and part of the overall gameplay experience— are associated with hypermasculine forms of behavior, aptly matching the dichotomous gender lines in the 1940s, the time to which the player is transported. Within the first few moments of the game, the car functions as a metonym for all the aforementioned hypermasculine actions, as it is a means of transport that takes the characters to locations to perform such actions.
In one of the later scenes in the game, the car’s symbol as hypermasculinity becomes overturned as the site where both outsiders, Cole and Hershel, discuss “cleaning up the filth in the police department” (Rockstar Games) after numerous warnings to not further their investigation into the Suburban Redevelopment Fund. Cole and Hershel smoke in the car and discuss that Cole is sorry to have Hershel’s pension revoked if he continues helping him; Hershel responds that getting the bad cops and their superior is well worth the risk. The scene of them talking while smoking in the car suggests a form of intimacy, the car symbolizing a secluded area for secret conversation or actions. While Cole and Hershel do not engage in sexual intimacy, the secretive nature of their discussion brings them together and recovers Hershel’s loss of confidence and hope in his own contribution as well as the camaraderie that he was missing. Even though one meaning of its association of LA with cars entails the growth of the city, the car also symbolizes freedom conveyed through the honest conversations taking place within it. Yet, this particular scene shows both men also unveiling their façade to act according to the desires of the LA police department. As revealed in Hershel’s introductory statement in the game, the car and secret deals between men symbolize their power, yet this is reversed through the scene with Cole and Hershel, as they conceal their plan in a car to dismantle the corrupt power in the department. Hershel’s decision to enter into financial hardship and forgo his pension, however, arose from his continuous interactions with Cole’s moral stance against the police, an infectious feeling that provoked Hershel’s past.
Hershel Biggs—an Institution or Rogue?
Conversations in cars expose detectives’ forms of masculinity, albeit in a different form than their initial introduction to Cole. Hershel Biggs, Cole’s last detective partner, has moments when he engages in nostalgia in the sense that he refers to his past on numerous occasions. This aspect become further meaningful, however, when he introduces the game in the form of a rhetorical question to Cole: “So, who do you trust, Cole? I made up my mind a long time ago,” (Rockstar Games) suggesting that the entire game functions as a cautionary tale using fraternity and trust as means to expose hypermasculine form of power corruption, as seen in the crude jokes with other policemen at the station and tough behavior. Being the last detective with whom Cole works but the first players are introduced to, Hershel symbolizes a social outcast, a pariah, someone who failed to play the political game and consequently earned the title of “an institution.” Curiously, the metonymic language accurately depicts his character as someone crazy enough to fill an institution, yet upon further examination, another underlying meaning is that his instincts differentiate him from the rest of the department who play along. Hershel’s difference, therefore, makes him a different type of institution, one that is outside of the inner circle and the only one suitable to address the player through the cautionary tale. He does not partake in homosocial actions—one defined as interactions between men that involves both a paradoxical connection between the men in a group and distinction from them in order to assert a masculine ideal (Messner 75)—until his interactions with Cole.
Throughout the Arson cases, Hershel furthers the theme of nostalgia as seen through his character development, particularly in instances when he allows a certain aspect of the present time to emotionally take him to his past. Even though the moments are not always pleasant, he becomes nostalgic for the past with an interesting twist: he uses his agency in the present moment when reflecting upon his past. As these reflections continue throughout the end of the game, it seems to inform his decision to solve a dangerous case.
Some of the instances where he revisits his past and recovers his conviction to help overthrow the hypermasculine power in the police department include emotional outbursts both during crime scene investigations and car drives. For instance, after Hershel witnesses a family burned alive and Cole starts indicating that they were moved and placed together for the killer’s own benefit, Hershel cries out that he wants to “kill this miserable fuck!” (Rockstar Games) The outcry refers to Hershel’s post-traumatic stress from seeing men trapped in a building during his time in the army, another comment he made during a car drive. Consequently, this is also the case where he starts a conversation with Cole by giving him the lead on the housing development in Rancho Escondido, the Elysian Fields, as a possible connection to the Suburban Redevelopment Fund. After Cole tells Hershel to investigate a long list of names of victims, Hershel exclaims, “I haven’t done this in years!” (Rockstar Games) as a way to directly state that he recovered his willingness to revisit his former years when he engaged in serious detective work.
Other instances refer back to comments made in car drives, where the symbol of power intermixes with vulnerability. With some hesitation, he confided in Cole regarding his inability to fire a gun in his army days and in his tenure in the police department. When Cole unfolds a flyer for the Suburban Redevelopment Fund that is made into an origami crane, Hershel pleads for him not to break it, revealing a bit of his childlike innocence not too dissimilar from his inability to fire a gun. Later when searching a house during the downloadable case, Nicholson Electroplating, Cole finds an expensive watch and comments that as a kid, he always wanted a watch. Hershel then comments that he always wanted food on the table, showing a difference in class structure. Being the only detective to sincerely comment on his own hardships, Hershel shows his vulnerability as a way to further demonstrate the risk he takes in going against the police department. By making the sacrifice of forgoing his pension, Hershel risks experiencing poverty as he did in his childhood, yet the sacrifice for his own integrity in upholding justice supersedes financial wellbeing. Furthermore, it complicates the notion that engaging in nostalgia, at least for the characters, involves deep reflection of the past with some ideological content embedded. Evident in the aforementioned scenes, Hershel does not look upon his past with an idealized view; rather, it becomes his motivating factor for his rebellion, an outcome that will lead to financial hardship. Furthermore, the use of Hershel’s character as that odd misfit whose outsider status is perfectly compatible with Cole’s new direction to question the authorities. When one considers that Hershel is the narrator of the game (although dropped after the introduction and resumed only at the end of the game), one examines the clues in the nostalgic tale differently. For example, during Nicholson Electroplating, when investigating the whereabouts of a lead suspect, Cole and Hershel find a dead man inside of a refrigerator, prompting Hershel to ask if Cole thinks he could fit in a fridge. While it may seem like a non sequitur, Hershel’s comment reminds the player that his and Cole’s position as detectives in crimes is liminal: since they have to envision the crime and the criminal’s thought process, they are closely related to the crime itself insofar as they enact the motivations and through process without actually doing the crime. This liminality functions as foreshadowing when Cole and Hershel consider that their rebellion against the corrupt police department makes them outlaws, not too different from the criminals they investigate.
Since Hershel is an outsider, it makes him more open to looking at connections that most might discard. For example, his keen observations to make the apt association between Cole and his former army combatant, Jack Kelso, a factor that directs the concluding investigation and gameplay experience. Through Hershel’s trust in Cole to ask him about his association with Jack, Cole’s symbolic sibling rival, he makes uncovering police corruption possible by asking Jack to take over the investigation as an outsider. While the player’s embodied experience with playing as Jack shifts the narrative further into the outsider status, it also reveals another aspect to the game as a narrative of brotherhood, a part that I explain further in the next section. A significant part of the nostalgic factor of the game arises through Hershel’s narration, so it is appropriate that Hershel witness Cole’s tragic end, showing that the game functions as Hershel’s unmasking of his social ineptitude.
Psychoanalytic Dimension to Nostalgia: Sibling Rivalry
Figure 7. Interrogation – L.A. Noire.
As I previously mentioned, Jack Kelso, Cole’s former friend in the army, functions as the symbolic rival, one who made an alternative choice from Cole yet possessed similar personality traits. Hershel makes this observation during a car drive. Interspersed in different scenes with his partners are flashbacks from Cole’s army days, showing Cole’s rise to sergeant but also the secret mistake that earned him a silver star. The flashbacks depict a ruptured relationship between Jack and Cole, as well as the origins of Cole’s moral character, a façade that covers his guilty conscience. Driven by his own integrity, Jack refused to give into higher command in his Official Candidate School, showing a decision that represented the moral courage Cole acquires throughout the game only after his initial ambition to play the political game fails him. While these flashbacks function as painful nostalgic glimpses of the past, they also show the relevance of the sibling rivalry relationship as a component to nostalgia in its psychoanalytic context. Cole’s Traffic partner, Stefan Bekowsky, mirrors the sibling rivalry that players perceive in his old flashbacks. This relationship, however, resolves the tension evident in these flashbacks, as if they function to temporarily release the damage done in Cole’s guilty conscience. The narrative, filled with numerous moments of reliving the past, repeatedly depict another dimension of nostalgia as further explained through the psychoanalytic concept of melancholia.
In his essay, “Mourning and Melancholia,” Sigmund Freud defines melancholia as sickness involving self-debasement, loss of ability to love, and interest in the outside world due to the loss of a loved object or object of desire (Freud 244). This ego’s critical agent, the ego ideal or superego, abases and criticizes the ego, making the person feel as if the loss of the object-choice equates to an internal loss (Freud, The Ego and the Id 23; Freud, Mourning and Melancholia 245). Freud further explains this loss of the object-choice turns the libidinal drive to withdraw towards the ego, instead of motivating the subject to find another person to cast one’s affections (Mourning and Melancholia, 249). Thus, the fact that a person’s ego identifies with the desired object makes the bond narcissistic, which also makes the loss of the desired object motivation for the person to punish oneself (Freud, Mourning and Melancholia 251; Freud, The Ego and the Id 23-24). The feelings of self-punishment or abasement mirror the internal struggle of love and hate, which consists of the subject’s desire to strip the libido from the object while also simultaneously wishing to guard the feeling of loss by upholding the libido (Freud, Mourning and Melancholia 256). For the purposes of the article, I use the psychoanalytic dimension of melancholia to show another component to nostalgia in LA Noire. Both Stefan and Jack function as those characters who share Cole’s desires to be more, despite their differences in action. One could argue that Cole becomes melancholic over his loss of courage to confess that he made a mistake and accidentally killed innocent civilians in the war. Jack is witness to Cole’s actions, thus taking the role of Cole’s ego ideal. As Cole becomes nostalgic and filled with guilt, as perceived through his frequent flashbacks, he learns he could recover his moral integrity by rising up the police ranks and positively influencing Stefan’s mindset as they discuss the cases during car rides.
When examining the internal struggle in melancholia, I consider its application to the discussion of nostalgia, especially in regards to the sibling rivalry relationship originating in the flashbacks but resolved in his relationship with Stefan. Like Jack, Stefan is similar in age to Cole, yet more personable and gregarious, often making jokes to ease the tension. The effect of Stefan’s difference from Cole, however, is that his affable nature makes it possible for Cole to use his ambition, as a contrast to Stefan’s easy-going attitude—also alluding to the trope in film noir where the masculine hero is split into two male characters due to inner psychic conflict (Dreven 25). When they first meet, Stefan teases Cole about receiving his silver star in World War II, perhaps as a way to get him to talk about how he managed to get to Traffic so quickly after it took Stefan 6 years to do so. It is significant that this silver star connects the roles that Stefan and Jack share: Jack knows the real reason Cole received the award, and Stefan comments on it, showing his belief in the lie.
Initially as the Traffic cases begin, Stefan symbolizes a contrasting mentor than Cole and voices the moral stance that he had but couldn’t show as a leader. Furthering the similarities towards Cole, Stefan demonstrates their shared sympathy towards wrongly accused victims, thus showing how his honest confessions to Cole gives Cole the role of the moral mentor, a role he wants due to the fact that he thought he lost it when he made his mistake in the war. A few examples include Stefan’s admission of his remorse towards the city’s legal department’s unjust acts demonstrates his moral opposition to such injustice but also his helpless feelings in openly voicing it in the case, Match Made in Heaven. In another case, Marriage Made in Heaven, after interrogating a male victim’s wife and her business partner, Stefan mentions that they may get a partial ID of the person hitting the victim. Relating the fight or flight response to the hit and run case, Stefan further explains that the perpetrator has a flight response, thus showing how it takes courage and moral strength to admit to vehicular manslaughter. As a witness to Stefan’s true moral character, Cole is put in the role as one who instigates this development from Stefan, therefore erasing his previous mistake. While his interaction with Cole elicits moral integrity from Stefan, his character, like Jack’s character, functions to create the difference between them while making Cole the mentor he wished he was during the war. Yet, it is also significant that like Cole’s previous thoughts of the Official School’s authority figures, Stefan’s opinions about the infrastructure in the police department are kept secretive. Since Cole becomes more vocal in his disagreements with the police department—thus showing his moral integrity more openly—he simultaneously takes Jack’s role. More importantly, it is no coincidence that Cole starts showing this new role in the Traffic cases, those dealing specifically with issues of the car. In this way, both aspects of nostalgia arise: the role of loss that Cole feels and the internal struggles between the ego and ego ideal onto the sibling rivalry relationship.
Nostalgia and Melancholia in Homoerotic Contexts
One could argue that all of Cole’s interactions with his partners reveal homosocial aspects, considering that all partners reveal their vulnerabilities to Cole during car rides. Yet, Cole’s interaction with Homicide detective, Rusty Galloway, are most evident of homosocial behavior through the use of crude jokes as a cover for a desire for intimacy.
Further extending Freud’s explanation of internalization and identification with the lost object to her analysis of gender identity and sexual orientation, Judith Butler explains that in order to claim a heterosexual orientation, the process entailed a previous loss of homosexual desire (Butler 134). The loss of this desire, as instigated as a prohibition of an attachment to the same sexed parent, also entails a process of identification with this lost object (Butler 136). Thus, the melancholic identification, or the process of identifying as the same-sexed parent, becomes a crucial part of gender expression. The subject performs a feminine or masculine gender as a form of loss for homosexual desire, as implicated through compulsory heterosexuality (Butler 140). In this way, Butler explains that a straight man acts as the man he will never have, as the straight woman acts as the woman she will never have. The internalization of the loss incorporates aggression within the subject, causing feelings of renunciation towards gay desire and any inclination to perform a certain gender that falls outside of a straight orientation (Butler 143). Thus, in the case of a straight man such a loss expresses itself in other desires for intimacy[3]. In relation to homosocial activities, Scott Kiesling mentions that desire arises through such social practices in the function of demarcating masculine and feminine roles (Kiesling 701). By constructing homosocial activity as one that opposes female intervention, the men involved coincidentally create a brotherhood filled desire for closeness—a form of intimacy.
Making a similar observation in his work on the video game, Grand Theft Auto 4, Marc Ouellette examines the jokes and playful banter between male characters that celebrate masculinity and their function as a means of introducing more intimate forms of discourse, in which male characters discuss parts of their lives otherwise kept hidden from most people. While noting that some scholars may find this type of discourse homophobic and exclusive to straight masculine men, Ouellette uncovers that this discussion—specifically in jokes and playful banter celebrating masculinity—functions as a way to introduce more intimate forms of discourse, in which male characters discuss parts of their lives otherwise kept hidden from most people (Ouellette 168-169). Ouellette further states that the homophobic discourse, or initial display of covert intimacy, functions as a mask for masculinity should this gender expression be questioned later when the men are discussing more intimate details of their lives (170). When looking a few noted comments from Rusty Galloway, Cole’s partner from the Homicide division, one perceives the initial sexual content, but as the collaboration continues, they show more vulnerability.
In stark contrast to Stefan, Homicide detective, Rusty Galloway, furthers Cole’s deeper journey into the hierarchy of the department, but he functions as a foil to Cole’s intellect and egalitarian attitude. He teases Cole about his thorough investigation techniques—most aptly seen in his suggestion to “blame the guy who ‘bangs’ the victim” (Rockstar Games). Rusty’s sexist remarks about women, men’s authority over them, and his encouragement towards Cole to beat up the suspects is reminiscent of Kellner’s discussion of hypermasculinity in particular to the socialization and cultural context that gives rise to guns culture, violence in the punitive system, and school shootings (see Kellner’s “School Shootings, Violence, and the Reconstruction of Education: Some Proposals”). Despite his crudeness, Rusty’s character is significant in that he is one of the few to engage in direct homoerotic comments stated in Cole’s presence or directed at Cole for the purpose of getting a reaction.
Figures 8 & 9. Deidre Moller moments before she meets her violent death in The Golden Butterfly Case.
In one instance, during the interrogation scene with Mr. Moeller during The Golden Butterfly case (figures 8 & 9), when Mr. Moeller admits embarrassment about his small feet and the implication about his penis size, Rusty makes the open-ended comment that the rumor is true in his experience. In another case, The White Shoe Slaying, Rusty and Cole engage in extensive investigation of numerous leads, and Rusty complains that he has not had his alcohol consumption for the day, prompting Cole to tell him that proper detective work requires diligent investigation. After some playful conversation about nudging each other and a comment on how Cole is just as bored with the case as Rusty is, Rusty states that nudging Cole is a job for Cole’s wife. While the comment is a joke, it plays on the homoerotic, suggesting that while the men assert their straight sexual identity, the comment displays an intimacy similar to marriage and an openness between Rusty and Cole. Their intimacy arises from long car drives and investigations where one becomes better acquainted with the other’s quirks and personalities that compete with a wife’s knowledge of her husband. Beyond providing humor to the game, Rusty shows the consequences of further suppression of conviction.
Echoing the function of Cole’s flashbacks, Rusty reveals that beyond his boredom and loss of joy in police work, he understands power and a man’s post-traumatic stress after coming back from the war—after witnessing much murder and cruelty, many men cannot recover psychologically, making them succumb to drinking. Like Cole, he also suffers from effects from the war, silently shutting out the effects of the need to be hypermasculine from the war. Instead of maintaining that façade, Rusty mentions his daughter when discussing part of his motivation for heavy drinking but also shows vulnerability in his desire to put away the child molester as opposed to a wife-beater. Rusty’s disgust in child molesters shows his concern for his own daughter and her safety, despite not ever mentioning her in other contexts.
Furthering the effects of covert intimacy that arises in Rusty’s collaboration with Cole, they discuss the clues the Dahlia killer leaves in Percy Shelley’s poems—coincidentally Romantic poetry—that lead to LA landmarks with further clues. During a car ride, when having a conversation about the killer’s motives for leaving clues in the romanticized form, Rusty alludes to the stanza in the first clue that Cole deciphered, by referring to the killer as “the titan guy who had the stouch with God?” (Rockstar Games). It seems as if he is reconnecting some of the earlier points by alluding to poetry in relation to the killer’s motives, yet Rusty withdraws immediately to his lower intelligence, as if ashamed to reveal that he is different from his performance as a tough guy. By admitting that “reading the simpler stuff makes him sleep better at night” (Rockstar Games), Rusty reveals that he might be intelligent but fears his own sanity if he thinks as much as Cole does.
In this relationship, Rusty, the partner who most demonstrates hypermasculine traits, also reveals some tender moments only after using crude jokes and allusions to his own emotional dexterity. His comment about his time in the war shows identification with Cole, yet it also a simultaneous reaction against this closeness. Nonetheless, the comments depicting Rusty’s vulnerability show his unconscious desire for closeness with a man whose similar experiences might elicit understanding despite some differences in character.
Cars as a Shelter for Covert Intimacy
Car rides show intimacy and makes use of nostalgia in both contexts. This overrides the idea that LA Noire mechanics do not the player to become more actively engaged, as there are many cut-scenes and flashbacks. Each conversation that reveals covert intimacy and vulnerability between the men occurs during car drives between investigation sites, a part of the game that some players might miss if they were playing the game for its obvious thrills. The car, however, functions as a digital version old car models, eliciting nostalgia from the player, while also presenting itself as the site of inner struggle against hypermasculinity.
Although LA Noire builds upon the film noir genre in its use of Los Angeles as a site of beauty and crime, use of male partner as split hero, femme fatale—a trope that is not discussed in this article yet useful in articulating the game’s use of her character as a test in Cole’s morals—its format as a game distinguishes the film noire aspects from film or novel format. Firstly, as Torban Grodal (2003) distinguishes from the player from the viewer, games elicit different emotional experiences due to the player’s responsibility to bring about a particular outcome. Furthermore, an experienced player who has already played the game may react differently than a neophyte player who becomes emotionally invested in all the outcomes of the different cases. The player might experience a fight or flight sensation when seeing the effects of their embodiment of Cole’s actions (150-151). Although one may argue that LA Noire’s emphasis on narrative is precisely what makes it a passive game a player still has the choice to be more passive and let the partner drive, set the game to a more difficult level to enhance the game-play experience and skip the cut-scenes.
The player perceives the different narrative techniques that accompany the unpacking of the covert intimacy, while simultaneously engaging in the game’s commentary on the differences between different aspects of masculinity. The controlling and macho police department functions as exemplary of hard masculinity, and the use of the car as a symbol of freedom and vitality is an attempt to assert this type of masculinity. Yet, different instances of covert intimacy and its representation within a car—as a symbol that suppresses its original meaning—affirm that masculinity, as a form of gender expression, is more on a continuum than a rigid and fixed category. Further extending beyond this trope in film, the player’s active participation—even in the times when the player opts for a respite from the shooting and interrogating—allows for the opportunity for the player to experience Cole’s sacrifice in life as the final triumph over the corruption. As a form of an extended metaphor, the process of experiencing different stages of acceptance of the police corruption through the different partners shows that the game is more of a tale of brotherhood rather than just a game about shooting and interrogating suspects. Through in-depth investigation of the minor details that unpack this narrative about brotherhood, a player partakes in an experience that uses homosocial covert intimacy to overthrow the corruption planted by the LA police department. Rather than function as a game with one overt political message, however, LA Noire is a game whose nostalgic factor unveils itself much like that letter hidden within plain sight: much like Dupin’s retrieval of the letter and Cole Phelps’ examination of clues, the critical player looks for the evident yet unexpected effect from the combination of aesthetics and dialogue.
Endnotes
[1] This side quest involves getting an achievement after driving 99 different cars from that time.
[2] Lacan further explains the former as one’s primary narcissistic identification in establishing the ideal ego during Mirror Stage and the latter as a secondary narcissistic identification that involves a subject’s identification through interaction with a similar person.
3 I acknowledge that Butler repudiates the norm of a male sex to a masculine gender performance, as well as the idea that a homosexual man’s gender performance as strictly feminine. For purposes of brevity and the connection of gender performance to the representation of the straight male in the 1940s, I adhere to the explanation above. Just to clarify, even in Butler’s essay, “Melancholy Gender,” she indicates that she is simplifying her argument to continue her discussion.
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Bio: Lisa Yamasaki is an Independent scholar who recently graduated from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her dissertation was on themes of sublimation and the death drive in the Portal video games series. Her research interests are cultural studies, gender and sexuality, and critical theory.