An attempt to see Metal Gear Solid 5 as a celebration of Homosexuality. A primary inspiration for this article is Aoife Wilson's article on eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-09-04-metal-gear-solid-5-quiet-kojima-ashamed
For those who don't know what queer reading is: Queer theory
A primary inspiration for this article is Aoife Wilson's article on eurogamer: So, Mr Kojima, do we feel "ashamed" over Quiet?
I want to say in advance that i haven't played any metal gear solid games except the first and ground zeroes/phantom pain so feel free to disregard my ideas based on Kojima's previous work.
It should go without saying there will be spoilers.
It is my assertion and my reading of Metal Gear Solid 5 that the game is about Hideo Kojima struggling to come to terms with his own Homosexuality.
Almost the first thing anyone talks about when they talk about Ground Zeroes is the scene at the end where Kojima blows up a Helicopter by exploding a bomb inside a woman's vagina. It's as crass as it sounds and to my mind at least is one of two things: either it's a statement of resent for woman's power over men (which seems to be a theme of the series from my understanding of it) or it's a statement about the complex issues of violence and sex and to what extent consensual sex can be violent. I & this article will assume it's the former, ymmv.
As far as i'm aware the Metal Gear Solid has never shown any aptitude or intention to wrangle complex and subtle issues it counts amoung it's themes - Child Soldiers, Nuclear Proliferation, Private Military Companies and Auteur Theory, not exactly working in the grey area. So it strikes me as unlikely it'd be capable of or willing to address the latter idea, leaving the former. As I've said before women's power over man does seem to be a recurring theme through the series - Aoife's article states about a character in Metal Gear Solid 3 (which I haven't played):
She was sexy, and she was playing Snake (and us - don't deny you hammered R1 every single time you were able).
So working under the predicate that it was a statement about women's power over men, ergo (in my opinion) a misogynistic statement, how does that mean MGSV is about struggling with sexuality? It doesn't, it strikes me that the statement might not be a resentment of women's power over him but women's power over other men, a weakness he doesn't feel he possess? This on it's own is pretty tenuous but I thought it's worth mentioning as background to my main points.
Now, to the meat of the argument. I'm sure there are a lot of people who sniggered at my title because Metal Gear Solid 5 is clearly a gay game, it can't be queer read because to queer read it is the only way to read it! It's Top Gun with a gay supercharger on it, the glorious 80's soundtrack, the gruff topless men hanging out on a pink oil rig. They love each other LIKE BROTHERS! This seems to me, obvious but there are people out there who believe top gun is about masculine competition and don't see the homoerotic subtext of the entire decade! Ordinarily I'd be inclined to believe Kojima isn't one of those people because MGSV is so outrageously and camp, it revels in it. It is surely impossible to not notice. However, mgsv's treatment of woman seems to imply otherwise, that Kojima thinks the game is about Hetero Sexuality.
Aoife's article is a great article and describes mgsv's problematic treatment of women better than I could, but something Aoife seems not to have picked up on is the homoeroticism. Aoife postulates at one point that none of the men in the game seem to notice that Quiet isn't wearing any clothes and attributes this to their heroic intents:
Even when Quiet strips down to just her ammo belt and dental-floss underwear (which would give you serious wedgie issues if you were to sit in her sniping positions, just FYI) and dances in the rain, he's always looking her right in the eye.
To me this is as clear a statement as any that every man "Snake" wins over and inspires is coming out the closet onto the big gay party rig utopia after the boring humdrum brutality of Afghanistan's war torn wasteland. As a side note she also seems to consider Big Boss as a hero:
He's the noble hero, saviour of men, women, wild animals and children and beloved by his soldiers.
But to me he was more like a villian, she has more knowledge of the series and character than I do but there are several indicators that he is not a hero, least subtly when he's covered in blood and with his horn he literally looks like the devil, this fits with the idea that Kojima is struggling with coming to terms with what it is Big Boss represents.
The camera's treatment of Quiet is a form of overcompensation only found in two groups of people. Teenage boys famously overcompensate for a lack of understanding about what makes them attracted to women and most people believe this is what Kojima is doing, that he is immature. I believe his overcompensation is the other kind - the man who doesn't find women attractive but wants to or wants to seem as though he does. To me the camera's fixation with Quiet is to stop us noticing Kojima's fixation with Snake.
It should go without saying that the game is not subtle, Child Soldiers are not subtle, the camera work is not subtle and the name of the characters are not subtle. The only female character in the game is called Quiet, aka A woman should be seen and not heard and Protagonist is called Snake, everyone in the game worships Snake.
The spoiler in Aoife's article about Quiet's attempted rape scene (sigh A-Fucking-Gain) seems to make an attempt at making Quiet's character about female exposure, about trying to tell women that they are unable to control being exposed and that they should turn this percieved weakness into a strength, yada, yada, yada. Kojima at his most patronising there. Or is it actually Kojima, again, talking about himself? It seems to me that a queer reading of this part of the story would seem to be talking about coming out. Coming out (for someone who is struggling with their identity) is exactly that, recognising that you can't control other people's perceptions and opinions of you and turning that perceived weakness into a strength.
I want to stress this is all 100% speculation, it's not my intention to offend anyone, Hideo Kojima included, with this article. I will absolutely take down or edit anything in it to preserve that intent. Please don't hesitate to let me know on twitter @Sombrero_Kid or via email. Mostly though I hope it inspires debate about what is to me an interesting theory about the themes of the fantastic gay anthem of games, MGSV.
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