Postmodernism was not a concept that I was entirely comfortable with until sometime last year. I'd had high school teachers briefly touch on the subject, but it was never truly made clear until I played a video game called Metal Gear Solid 3.

While there are certainly some that would argue the relevance of video games as an art form, that is another topic for another day. What cannot be denied, however are the postmodern influences present in MGS3. The Metal Gear Solid franchise is a curious one. They are games in which you watch cutscenes (pre-scripted action or dialogue-focused scenes similar to a scene from a movie) almost as much as you play the game. One of the more obvious postmodern elements present is the sometimes self-referential, fourth wall breaking humor found in the series. For instance, there is a single moment in the third game where the protagonist (codename Naked Snake) looks directly at the "camera" and prompts the player to take action with a subtle head nod and wink. Also, even though the third game is a prequel to MGS1 and MGS2, Naked Snake (whose two clones eventually become the protagonist and antagonist of MGS1) meets a character who bears an uncanny resemblance to a character that Naked's clone befriends 30 years later. The two have an odd moment together, both almost recognizing the other, while simultaneously acknowledging that they have never met. What is interesting is that these events are at once a parody of the genre (spy fiction) and part of a veritable epic. I found the Yiddish copy of Chandler's novel on Meyer's desk to be very much analogous to the type of postmodern humor found in the Metal Gear Solid series.

While the fourth wall breaking humor may be one of the more obvious postmodern elements found in the series, MGS3 contains a slightly altered version of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the events that followed. Reading "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" and picking up on its subtle references to things like Manchuria instantly reminded me of this game. In the game, President's Kennedy's negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev to remove the US's Jupiter and Thor missiles from Turkey was simply a story to tell the American people. In this reality, those missiles were obsolete anyway. The Russians really wanted a recent defector, a weapons designer named Sokolov, back in the USSR to finish development on a weapon called the "Shagohod", which is a nuclear equipped tank capable of launching from almost any terrain. If it sounds strange, you don't know the half of it, as the story soon complicates when Brezhnev's forces engage in a power struggle with Khrushchev's crumbling regime. Although I am greatly selling the game short, I feel I must stop here. As my girlfriend and friends know, I can wax philosophic about Metal Gear for hours straight, but I'll save you the hassle. I will say this however; whoever doubts that videogames can be a meaningful, moving, and utterly breathtaking medium simply needs to play MGS3. I have a strong feeling that they'll understand.

This video clip should explain things a little better than I am able to: