swamp opera: a criticism of capitalism

HI GUYS I FOUND THIS ESSAY ABOUT THE GAME WHICH ISN'T WRITTEN BY ME OFC *coughs coighs* SO PLEASE SEE WHY IT IS A MASTERPIECE THX XOXO

swamp opera, alongside Marx’s Das Kapital, is a criticism of capitalism and, through its groundbreaking narrative, encourages the revolt of the working class. I am offering here a short analysis of these themes, as my brain is too small to fully understand this game.

The initial setting of this game is New York. The Big Apple, one would say. Apple like what? Exactly, Apple like the demonic brand which normalised selling phones at the shocking price of $1,000. The protagonist initially belongs to a capitalist world.

However, the protagonist is then hit by a bike. How could one ignore the reference to the critically-acclaimed masterpiece Fifty Shades of Grey? However, in the said novel, Anastasia, the heroine, is saved from the bike by a sexy billionaire. This is not the case of Ebony Darkness, who gets isekai’d into the eponymous swamp. The protagonist is metaphorically oppressed by capitalism. This economic system necessarily creates a division between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; but the vicious part is that people can achieve wealth only by oppressing others. If some have to shine, then it means others have to be covered in dirt.

The grotesque aspect of this moment is also worth commenting on. As Victor Hugo wrote in his preface to Cromwell: “In the idea of men of modern times, however, the grotesque plays an enormous part. It is found everywhere; on the one hand it creates the abnormal and the horrible, on the other the comic and the burlesque.” The writer manifestly creates a situation so trivial only to denounce the abnormality and absurd aspects of capitalism.

The protagonist, however, is not isekai’d in any places, but in a swamp, ending up literally covered in dirt: Ebony Darkness is part of the oppressed working class, doomed to wallow in mud because of an exclusionary capitalist society. In particular, a swamp is a place where no companies exist because they would drown: this is a neutral place, and the theatre of the introspection and character growth Ebony Darkness will go through.

The protagonist indeed goes through both a literal and metaphorical transformation. The writer takes time to underline how progressive it is: Ebony first notices his hands turned to paws, then his shoes turned to bigger shoes, before finally staring at his reflection in the swamp. How could one not be reminded of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis! Both transformations are meant to provoke disgust: Gregor turns into a monstrous insect, and Ebony finds out about their transformation in the dirty water of the swamp.

This highlights how Ebony perceives himself now that he has been excluded from his capitalist society: as a disgusting individual, living on the fringes of society, made to be hidden. His distress is evident: even the narrator quotes “Agony” from Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Once again, the choice is interesting: this song is performed by two prince characters, complaining about their lack of luck in love. This clearly reflects the views the middle or privileged classes of society has on poor people. The fear of poverty leads people to feel disgusted by poor people, rather than to question the rich’s privileges, and this is what is denounced by the creator of this game here.

Factually, Ebony turned into a parody of Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic video games. In the lore of the blue hedgehog, Shadow is a creation of the antagonist, Dr. Eggman, an alienation of natural hedgehogs like Sonic. However, Shadow stops serving his creator, breaking free from the chains of servitude. This is rather prophetic, as it suggests Ebony’s future character development as he breaks free from his previous life in New York, cradle of capitalism.

We recognise Marx’s theory of alienation: at his creation, Ebony is alienated by the Big Apple. Only thanks to his adventures in the swamp can he find freedom and find his true self again (the Shrok-loving one). “The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being” Karl Marx wrote, and this proves to be quite true here: Ebony’s time in the swamp appears to be an initiating rite, a quest at the end of which he needs to find who he is, far from New York.

When Shrok appears, he engages into an interesting dialogue with Ebony: both want to own the swamp they are in. However, the sound effect which plays, “SWAMP SWAMP SWAMP”, factually repeats the word “swamp” three times. This lets the player know about the real fate of the swamp: it does not belong to only Shrok or Ebony, but is instead meant to be shared between the three main characters, Shrok, Ebony and Flara. This, of course, evokes communism, painted as an ideal. In particular, the first and last lines Shrok tells Ebony are strikingly opposite: “What are you doing in my swamp?” vs “This, my love, is our swamp.” Capitalism is painted as cold and heartless, and only communism can create love and friendship.

The choice of Shrok as a communist mentor for Ebony is the author’s stroke of genius. Shrok is a parody of Shrek, whose film is a parody of Disney films. And what company embodies capitalism more than the Walt Disney Animation Studios? Walt Disney himself said: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” These views are deeply rooted in the illusion of meritocracy, myth constructed only to pretend inequalities do not matter in society, and allow the privileged class to incestuously create nepo-babies to renew itself.

The first seeds of union between the two romantic leads of the game appear when Shrok opens up and reveals his toxic relationship with his ex (who, we’ll see it later, is an allegory of capitalism). The swamp is a metaphor for a communist society, and Shrok emerges as its leader by defending it. In addition to that, him breaking free from his toxic relationship with Flara mirrors Shadow’s journey to rejecting New York and capitalism altogether. The music that plays during this heart wrenching scene supports the theme, since it ends on the narrator begging the developer to pay him. This is an explicit representation of the exploitation of the working class: the narrator alienates himself further – since it is the same narrator who narrated My Dream Date with a Yandere Serial Killer, an emotional criticism of Hawaiian pizza from the same writer –, only for a goal he will never achieve: because the goal of capitalism has never been the money, but the exploitation.

That is when the horse intervenes to suggest Ebony could be a replacement for Shrok’s ex: this is the end of the journey for our protagonist, who has completely embraced communism after Shrok metaphorically explained the woes of capitalism. He completely embraces his true nature: the New York cover-up was the alienation, the hedgehog is his real identity.

That is when the evil Flara intervenes, gaslighting Shrok and criticising him. An obvious metaphor of the Cold War, which consisted in the USA and the USSR reciprocally gaslighting each other. However, Shrok proves himself to be more virtuous than a totalitarian space, by refusing to play Flara’s game, for communism has an independent existence, unlike capitalism which shatters the moment the French go on a strike. Flara even pretends to have improved during her time without Shrok: without the seeds of communism in a society, the rights of the labourers are violated. That is why she is beaming.

The ending of the game is masterfully bittersweet: Flara pushes Ebony into a suitcase, before being forced to fly away, certainly back to New York. This is Flara desperately attempting to keep Shrok, and by extension the swamp, to her. This is a metaphor for the dystopian country named the USA, in which labour law visibly does not exist.

However, it is worth noting that Ebony went through character development and has become a communist: the writer suggests he will be able to make the world his swamp and won’t be alienated again.

Who did not cry at the conclusion of the game? Chimériquement highlights with finesse that this “TV show” the game was is cancelled. This is the way the game chooses to criticise the submission of art to the laws of capitalism: creativity is meant to die when money controls it. The artists have to pay their bills and their water and therefore find themselves alienated as artists: the point of art is not to create anymore, but to survive instead. The “grotesque” aspect of the game also supports this point: the Hugolian approach of grotesque is to create contrast and therefore elevate what he calls “the sublime.” Grotesque is not the point: the final point is to make beauty even more striking. swamp opera refuses beauty: a grim way to denounce the death of art meticulously orchestrated by capitalism. To conclude, swamp opera is certainly the most influential criticism of capitalism that has ever been created ever since Marx’s Das Kapital. It is even better: thanks to its nuanced and deep characters, its interesting setting and its heartbreaking narrative, the game highlights the distress of the people in a capitalist society, and how communism can lead them to healing.