Arcane in the Membrane
This isn’t going to be a Review. Not in any conventional sense. You can go to other places to hear people gush about the incredible animation, or how it performs a miracle in making League of Legends lore into something watchable. Instead, after watching this near-universally critically acclaimed show I want to ask a few questions to think more critically about it. Because I think there is an incredibly low bar for anything video game-related when it comes to narrative/complex ideas and that means shows like Arcane can get away with A LOT without it being questioned.
Q1) What allegorical work is happening with Shimmer?
I think the show gets away with a lot because it's cyberpunk/fantasy. Through Proper Nouns and RepresentationTM, it constructs a cognitive dissonance where we don’t critically engage with the ideas at play.
There are many things I could pull from but perhaps the most blatant of these is Shimmer. The chemical is extracted and reproduced from a rare mutation of a mad scientist’s pet creature and provides physical strengthening and possibly transmutation? At the same time, it also has vaguely defined uses in terms of prosthetics, medicine and recreational enjoyment.
While it’s a pastiche of drugs, I can’t help but see how it mirrors the influx of crack cocaine into deprived Black communities in the 80s and 90s, and some real specific parallels to the present issues of opioid addiction in deprived areas across the US today (I am being very deliberate not to use epidemic as a phrase because it’s shitty for many reasons). So when Arcane presents people addicted to Shimmer as creatures lurking in the dark who are at best pathetic and at worst conniving monsters - it is pretty clear what is being implied about real-life people with addictions who are usually poor and/or racialised.
This also ties into the broader issue where the writers are desperately trying to avoid racialisation but can’t escape it. While the people of the undercity are of multiple races, it is hard to see segregation + gangs + crack stand-in (Shimmer) and not see what’s happening. You even have parallels to various Black liberation efforts! Vander operates as a messianic MLK-type thing, the crime lords parallel gang leaders who are often interwoven in Black struggle (for better or worse depending on the context). Then the broader Nation of Zaun mirrors Black secession efforts like the Garveyites. Evidently, these reflections aren’t just for Black contexts, some would work for the Basque people in Western Europe or various indigenous struggles globally. The point is that Arcane tries (and fails) to weasel out of the political undercurrents of the allegories used, creating some very grim statements, especially around drug users.
Q2) What does life actually look like on the day-to-day for the people of the undercity/Zaun?
No-one knows. How do they get money to eat? Where do they sleep? What do they do with free time aside from go to the bar, casino or brothel? Are none of them employed by the city proper? What’s the favourite snack of the people of the undercity?
Aside from our protagonists the residents of the undercity exist on a victim/villain binary. Either they are a faceless beggar cowering in the darkness, or a thug brutalising Innocent people in the street. If anyone (like Silco) comes too close to being morally grey, they have to do something horrific and violent to remind us that the person and their (often revolutionary) ideas are Bad (or at least severely ‘misguided’).
With the shallow characterisations and lack of a sense of place, the Zaunites fail to be human. This is most clear when one of the Zaunite children dies during a raid on a Shimmer factory due to the actions of Jayce (one of the protagonists). The show is insistent on this being a pivotal emotional moment, because A CHILD HAS DIED. But it barely lands, no matter how much we pull in on the child’s face or see Jayce’s sorrow. Because the Zaunites have never really been framed as full people, so what does it matter if an anonymous member of the not-humans has passed away? His mother turns out to be a woman with a cool design, who has been on screen for all of five minutes, so again her cries ring hollow. Abstract victimisation is not enough to provide anything emotional beyond a cheap gut punch, much less an actual meaningful empathy which they are clearly trying to generate.
Q3) What is Arcane actually trying to say?
In many ways the redeeming feature is in conflict with its own ideas, existing as a proof of the Truffaut quote - “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film,” I don’t really agree with the quote in general - but I do think his point is applicable here. As much as Arcane wants to posture otherwise, the draw is “cool butch with big gauntlets goes POW” and “Harley Quinn girl* with big machine gun goes BOOM!” The messianic father figure character monologuing about the horrors of war doesn’t mean shit when the only memorable scenes are the needle drops leading into phenomenally styled and animated fight sequences.
More broadly they just pick up and drop a lot of very complex ideas without interrogating them. It keeps being reiterated that Piltover is built on progress (echoing the words of western colonisers and scientific racists) but that notion is never seriously interrogated. The issue of raising complex ideas and not following through is most blatant in relation to disability.
Shimmer is used by the people of the undercity to enable prosthetics. However as per the framing, Shimmer is nigh uncritically Evil and Bad™ because drugs are bad - and therefore the Shimmer-enabled prosthetics are bad? However, in the stylised sequences, the ‘camera’ frames these prosthetics as cool. But also it is repeatedly asserted that any attempt to modify the body is bad when Shimmer is involved - see how Viktor is narratively punished for his attempt at using Shimmer to help with his chronic illness. But the principle of pursuing a 'cure' to disability/illness is portrayed as honourable (even if doomed to fail), as seen with Victor and Jayce’s pursuit. However, any of the available means (Shimmer-powered tech) for the working-class people of the undercity to alleviate the strain of their disabilities (often caused by their material conditions) are Bad And Wrong.
So like….. What the fuck are you saying? I could read it as ungenerously as possible and say it's some weird eugenics-y Randian nonsense - but nothing here is coherent or deep (lol) enough to actually support that!
I think this is the consistent way that Arcane fails rather than just annoys me personally. It is one thing to take on these complex political, moral and social issues and come to conclusions that I don't like, it is another to bring these issues up and somehow have nothing to say about them while also keeping the aesthetics of The Political.
Q4) What does it say about our media and critical landscape (esp surrounding video game media) that we are willing to give near-universal critical acclaim to a show which is stylish but ultimately hollow**?
*as an aside, I wish that writers learnt how to portray trauma in women beyond Fridging/ Harley Quinn Craaaazy/The Way We Portray Male Trauma But Now With A Chick).
**hollow apart from the deeply pernicious ideas it holds within - esp re: drug users
As always you can hit me up @naijaprince21 on Twitter if you have any thoughts and feelings about this! Always appreciate your support whether that’s verbal, financial (ko-fi.com/tayowrites) or whatever else.
I’m less online lately, but whsiper on the winds and maybe you’ll fine me! Always appreciate your support whether that’s verbal, financial (ko-fi.com/tayowrites) or whatever else.