I recently re-listened to Professor Brian Moriarty's 2011 talk, An Apology for Roger Ebert. The late film critic had waded into the discussion of whether video games can be art, receiving tremendous backlash. Moriarty makes a defense of Ebert, discussing whether video games can ever be "sublime art" or will always just be kitsch, emotional baiting, or cash cow entertainment. But something else caught my attention as I listened. In discussing a painting by James Northcote, he drops in a little aside:

In the early 18th century... there were generally two classes of people in Europe: the well-to-do and the near-starving. Get used to it. We’ll be there again soon.

24 years later that warning seems a little on the nose. We're now in a country where trucking, once a reliable job that could support a family, sees workers abandoning it because they're losing money going to work. A country where the top 1% have as much as the bottom 90%. And a world where buying products labeled "Fair Trade" means conceding only 20% of the content is fair trade as the supply chain is so dark and slavery so prevalent throughout they can't confirm it is 100% fair trade.

Looking at the bleak world around us, it is easy to sympathize with Clive Barker's retort to Ebert in defense of video games as a pass time:

I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time — to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control.

But then there is Ebert's response:

I do not have a need 'all the time' to take myself away from the oppressive facts of my life, however oppressive they may be, in order to go somewhere where I have control. I need to stay here and take control.

A Brief Story

I graduated from high school just a couple of years before September 11, 2001. One of my high school friends started working in restaurants. The culture was one where co-workers would yell and swear at each other a lot. It was pretty much expected.

At some point he started working in a restaurant in Southwest Michigan. One day he started laying into and cursing at his boss. It was just another day working in a restaurant for him. But his boss stormed out. His coworkers said they'd never seen their boss so furious.

When his boss returned, having calmed down, my friend still had his job. He realized in this job it was expected that everyone treat each other with respect and patience. And his boss didn't just expect that of his workers, but of himself too.

But then one day his boss didn't show up. They didn't know where he was. No one knew where he was. He just disappeared. Or rather, he was disappeared.

His boss, Ibrahim Parlak, had entered the US seeking asylum. But politics changed, and he had been taken into custody with aims to deport him.

That might have been the end of the story, but one of the patrons to Parlak's restaurant lifted his voice to draw attention to his case. That patron was Roger Ebert.

Entertainment and Life

In this world of war, injustice, and suffering it is easy to seek the comforting escape that entertainment provides. And the world is flooded with entertainment of all sorts in every type of medium. Its abundance does allow us to pull away from the oppressive facts of the world around us all the time.

Yet, the man most famous for consuming entertainment in my lifetime also finds a need to engage with the world around us, No matter how oppressive. Whatever we may gain from enjoying entertainment it consumes our time. Time that could be spent with family, re-connecting with old friends, engaging in the community. The more time we dedicate to it, the more time we lose for those around us.

When we escape from the wider world around us, it is still moving on. As we hide from the oppression it doesn't disappear but tends to grow. The world loses our voice and our strength. As the comforts of this world grow large darkness seems to ride in its wake. We need to make time to confront and challenge the oppressive facts of life.

We need to make time for the joys found in engaging with the world rather than escaping from it. Community building, strengthening family ties, and reaching out to those in need. Helping those who are falling into despair, anger, or hopelessness, and finding the joy of joining others in truly escaping the horrors of this life.