I will preface this post with a SPOILER WARNING for BioShock Infinite.

I wanted to share my interpretation of BioShock Infinite for my blog post this week. It’s one of my top 5 favorite games, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it (I even have tattoos from the game!) Very briefly in class we touched upon the representation of race or minority classes in the game and how the creators may have negatively portrayed them. I wanted to argue that I don’t think the decision to demonize the minority group in the game was meant as a slight on minority groups nor was it out of line with the over-arching story.

As mentioned in the readings, the game takes place in a religious, white supremacists idealized version of 20^th century America. You play as Booker DeWitt, hired to rescue a girl named Elizabeth from the floating city of Columbia. You quickly learn that what seems to be an enlightened utopia has many of the same problems that the real America back down on the ground has. Mainstream society is very whitewashed, while minority groups live in poverty and squalor. A resistance group forms in the game as move throughout the floating city with Elizabeth called the Vox Populi. The group is led by an African American woman named Daisy Fitzroy. At first, the group’s rallying cry for equality sounds appealing and like something many players would root for in the game. However, as things between the Vox Populi and the privileged members of Columbian society get more and more heated, you quickly see an ugly side to the group. They become violent and overzealous, arguably “just as bad” as the oppressors they’re working so hard to overthrow. It ultimately culminates in a destructive all-out civil war in the streets of Columbia.

At face value, this could be seen as belittling the efforts of the real-life equality movements that the Vox Populi are clearly emulating. However, I would argue that this is less about the invalidation of minority struggles and more about Booker’s struggle with his own personal demons. There are clues strewn throughout the game that Booker has been struggling to process events from his past. During the baptism scene in the beginning, he has a strange dream about being in a room with someone hammering on the door and shouting at Booker that he is required to repay a mysterious debt. Throughout the game, he revisits this dream often, with more details emerging as you continue to play.

There are also various mentions of the battle of Wounded Knee throughout the game, including an extremely racist interactive diorama depicting the battle that Booker and Elizabeth are forced to walk through on their journey to escape Columbia. In this depiction of the battle, you see a lot of the same demonization of a minority group (in this case American Indians) that is currently going on with the Vox Populi. At the beginning of the scene as well you hear Slate, one of the game’s villains, explaining to Elizabeth that her “companion,” Booker, “wrapped himself in glory on December 29^th, 1890.” Elizabeth asks Booker what Sate means, and Booker replies, “You don’t want to know.” This interaction implies that Booker is trying to keep his past a secret from Elizabeth and one can be left to assume that it’s because it’s not something he’s proud of.

It’s not until the end of the game that it becomes clear that Booker is suffering from extreme guilt and PTSD from his involvement in the slaughter at Wounded Knee. Since the game’s plot ends up relying heavily on time travel as an aspect of the story, you discover that Wounded Knee was a pivotal moment in Booker’s life. As the game progresses towards the finale, Booker and Elizabeth explore alternate timelines to try and repair damages that have been done in the present. Booker, and by proxy the player, soon realizes that from that titular moment in his life, any timeline that extends from the battle ends in chaos, destruction, and despair. In the end, Booker chooses to destroy all timelines by choosing death after the battle of Wounded Knee.

I believe that this game was really portraying a man struggling to rectify his past and failing to do so. There’s a sense throughout the game that no matter how hard he tries, the past will repeat itself. It turns out that the leader of Columbia, Father Comstock, is actually Booker in another timeline. Comstock is just as guilty of demonizing and working to annihilate a minority group as Booker was during Wounded Knee. In a certain timeline, you see how Booker’s hatred and bigotry get passed down to his daughter molding her into an image of himself, who chooses to wreak havoc on mainland America below. Wounded Knee haunts Booker to the point where he can’t imagine the possibility of himself redeemed.

Clearly, BioShock Infinite wanted to draw parallels to current issues with equality in real-life American society. However, instead of strictly being a commentary on racial struggles in our society, this seemed to be a more personal story of being unable to cope with PTSD. The guilt of the blood Booker shed was all consuming to him. Booker felt that no matter what he did, he was beyond redemption for his actions. He felt the entire universe was better off if he chose to die than to continue on living. He kept reliving his past and projecting his guilt onto the world around him. I believe Booker’s personal struggle is the overall message to be taken away from the game.