All Should Be Lost

"Just a moment of peace

The white spot in the black"

 

Ellen Allien & Apparat - Leave Me Alone

 

 

It says a bit about the current state of our culture that I found myself wondering "when's the last time I saw some piece of self-proclaimed entertainment that didn't just bash straight white men... oh yeah, 2013!" And even then simply because it only had the one character.

Anyone summarizing All Is Lost will inevitably shrug it down to "there's this guy on a boat" and then struggle to convince you that yes, you should definitely watch a hundred minutes of this guy on a boat... with its ten lines of monologue and extended spackling interlude. So yeah, there's this guy on a boat, and he plays with plastic bottles and you should definitely see it. As deservedly as one-man plays are usually mocked as the facetious posturing of stultified narcissists, the Sundance Kid's reaction shots more than make up for the lack of other reactants. Still, remembering Redford mime and grunt and occasionally curse against the wind and waves makes me wonder why we don't see more of this in various media. Robinsonesque adventures upon closer inspection tend to fake you out: the protagonist just thinks he's alone until Friday shows up, or some pirates, or a love interest or space aliens or whatever. Pure PvE stories are rare indeed. Into the Wild was largely poisoned by being twisted into a prosocial moral. And while movies will occasionally toy with the idea (Tom Hanks got quite a few late night comedy appearances out of' Cast Away) such an attempt will still invariably be discussed as a freakshow, as The Movie That Should Not Be.

 

There is of course some cause for this, as people who see no reason for social interaction tend also not to bother creating fiction, implicitly a method of communication. But if this logically limits supply, it does not necessarily limit demand. Modern entertainment is a vast and wonderous market, and after the 500th zombie movie for the summer, can't we get at least one about some random schmoe struggling to build a lean-to out of a bear skin or a hydroponic farm out of computer cases?

In video games of course we do have the survival horror genre, and survival-themed spins on other genres like Frostpunk. Still, even when limited to the player protagonist with no direct social interactions, the survival theme will be gratuitously pinned to some meta-plot about finding a plague cure or solving two brothers' mysterious conflict or your father's mad science or some other external motivation. While I stand by my criticism of Don't Starve's gameplay, thematically I did like it simply hand-waving the question of why your character would be on that haunted desert island to let you focus on the survival/exploration/basebuilding themes for their own sake.

 

After all, the only motivation you should need to be alone is "the hell with all y'alls, I'm out!" and the main problem with that idea is that your boat would eventually get rammed by a shipping container.