The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [77]
Rosenstein uses the terms “transparent,” “translucent,” and “opaque” to refer, basically, to how well the sensuous medium of a given artwork breaches the gap between the world in the work and the real world—how well the sensuous medium brings the world to us (the viewers).
To understand what it means for a work to “bring the world to the viewers,” consider the following example. In a van Gogh painting, the physicality of the paint is thick and raised, and this effectively brings the world of the painting to our attention in the real world. If we are willing to play by the rules—if we look at a van Gogh according to the rules of the van Gogh, and not as we would look at a Salvador Dali painting—we will be able to receive that world. The physical medium is neither too distracting (too sensuously present so that we cannot get beyond its physicality) nor irrelevant (too insignificant so that its presence and nature pass us by as if non-existent); the medium is “translucent.”
When the sensuous medium fails to successfully breach the gap between the world in the work and the real world, it is either “transparent” or “opaque.” A transparent work fails to create its own world because it is more message than anything else. Think about war propaganda. Even if such propaganda is poetic, by virtue of its intention to coerce, it is transparent; its message overrides the medium. An opaque work is at the other end of the continuum; it’s too much a part of the world to be separate from it and create its own. An example of this is Duchamp’s infamous Fountain—a disconnected urinal placed in a museum.51
By broadening Rosenstein’s idea of the “sensuous medium,” I think his ideas can be made to apply to Zelda. The sensuous medium can, in addition to referring to the physical medium of an artwork, also refer to the onscreen world of Hyrule. Thus, the balance between transparency and opacity takes on a wider scope, and translucence can be produced in a videogame.
Think about early videogames like Adventure. We can call this medium (the onscreen world) “transparent” since it seems to be nothing in itself but a vehicle for communicating a message. It’s only slightly removed from a written explanation of character movement.52 And we can call a game that is too lifelike “opaque” since it doesn’t separate itself from the real world.
We’re reminded here of Second Life, a virtual environment which allows users to engage in real-life activities like attending school lectures, dancing, or exercising. Is this opaque? Probably, but since many do not consider Second Life a game, and it’s videogames that we’re considering here, I will not come to any conclusions about its status as art. If the growing complexity of videogames causes them, at some point, to become indistinguishable from reality, then they aren’t going to produce the same sort of gaming experience. A game that is opaque behaves as though it is life. Friedrich Nietzsche, in fact, thought art was better than life.
The avatar—the little grey dot in the upper right of the screen—encounters one of the chicken-like enemies (Adventure, Atari, 1979).
Features of Hyrule
The previous section brings up an important question: what are the features of the onscreen world of Zelda ? Some of the more salient features of the Zelda games are the following: the avatar, the music, the exploratory terrain, the characters, the enemies, the bosses, and the story. A game’s translucence, seemingly, depends on these features. But what’s special about them? Why do certain features appeal to people? Well, why is a mountain more appealing than a cement driveway? And why would some people (admittedly a lesser number) say the opposite?
I’m not going to pretend I can list the objective qualities that make some features of the world “beautiful” or “appealing” and others not. Most significantly—though the features taken separately might also be appealing