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| Swastika created out of construction materials inside Rust Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playrust/comments/1wsd4e/rust_never_fails_to_amaze_me_this_is_on_top_of/ |
The use of the swastika in the online game Rust cuts to the core of the relationship between symbols and narratives in our lives. The swastika may seem an unlikely symbol to help understand subjective reality, but works within a historical context.
This is the third post in a blog series comparing the online multiplayer
game Rust to physical reality. Firstly, we explored how power works within the game, then how the player interacts with it. Now we explore how players impose themselves
through symbolism.
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| The treachery of images (This is not a pipe) by Rene Magritte Image credit: https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene- magritte/the-treachery-of-images-this-is-not-a-pipe-1948 |
The field of Semiotics, founded by Ferdinand de Saussure, decrees that
language (meaning images, words, symbols, and icons) is a filter for all knowledge
of the world (Kuttainen, 2017). This concept is an expansion of the work of Jacques
Lacan, a psychoanalyst who suggested our notion of self begins from
misrecognition. When we look into a mirror it is not truly us who looks back,
but a backwards reflection, yet we understand this symbolic reflection to be ourselves.
This filtration of the real into symbols makes words and imagery inseparable in
our minds as illustrated by Magritte’s The treachery of images. In this case, the
image of a swastika ends up becoming synonymous with the word “swastika.”
The swastika symbol in the last century has also become associated
with the words: “Nazi symbol” (Fijalkowski, 2014) because of historical events.
In a similar way, the Mississippi River once had many names, but is now dominantly
titled on maps by the name colonisers gave it (Tuan, 1991). Symbols and words are tied to their cultural usage and history; they have narratives attached to them.
Those narratives can be maintained, manipulated or erased altogether (Farmer et
al., 2004).
The swastika has been around for thousands of years. It’s meaning for
many cultures is of good fortune and it is widely used as a sacred religious
symbol (Mosig, 2017). Thought to have originated from India, the swastika
retained its meaning when first brought to Europe and was even worn by United
States and British militaries in World War I. The symbol was then repurposed by
the Nazis in 1920 as an emblem of racial purity and has dominantly retained
that reading in the West since. The symbol is now banned in Germany and several
countries (Fijalkowski, 2014).
In Rust, every texture, colour and object in the game is a symbolic
reflection of something that exists in the physical world. Because it is an
online game, there is a memory limit on the number of symbols that can be used.
So, while symbols of a trees, rocks, and humans natively exist in the game, the
swastika is absent. Yet because of its strong meaning, players use materials in
unexpected and creative ways to recreate it. As the games audience is mostly
Western it is read with its “Nazi symbol” reading, either in seriousness, jest
or to scare other players.
Symbols and their associated narratives are powerful filters for how
see the world. In Rust, players deliberately create swastikas in a world where
they don’t natively exist. In this way, the power of symbols can traverse worlds,
but only with the associated context. A swastika can after all, be a symbol of
racial purity, good fortune, religion, or without context just a series of
meaningless lines.
References
Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current anthropology, 45(3), 305-325.
Fijalkowski, A. (2014). The criminalisation of symbols of the past: Expression, law and memory. International Journal of Law in Context, 10(3), 295. doi:10.1017/S1744552314000135
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 5: Stories of Place: Story Lines. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Mosig, A. M. (2017). Hate or civic pride? the speech of symbols in the United States, Germany and Japan. Suffolk Transnational Law Review, 40(1), 73.
Rene Magritte. (1948). The treachery of images (This is not a pipe) [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-treachery-of-images-this-is-not-a-pipe-1948
Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and
the making of place: A narrative-descriptive approach. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 81(4),
684-696. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1991.tb01715.x
Zarandona, J., Torres, C. (2017). From Charlottesville to Nazi Germany, sometimes monuments have to fall. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/from-charlottesville-to-nazi-germany-sometimes-monuments-have-to-fall-82643
Zarandona, J., Torres, C. (2017). From Charlottesville to Nazi Germany, sometimes monuments have to fall. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/from-charlottesville-to-nazi-germany-sometimes-monuments-have-to-fall-82643
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