Bioshock infinite - oooh heaven ain't a place on earth

This is one of those cases where I don't have to make a tenuous connection here.  When you're looking at the absolute masterpiece that is Bioshock Infinite, you don't have to make a massive logical leap to pull in a reference to baptism.  I don't have to, because the game does it itself.  This is the only video game that I've ever played that both begins and ends with a baptism.  I've never seen a game do that before.

For those of you who don't know, the game mainly takes place in the floating sky city of Columbia, set apart from the city of Rapture from the first game by virtue of being in the sky, vs far far under the sea.  But both games have the element of being trapped in the city until the mission is complete.  But in Bioshock Infinite, some of the best parts of the game happen before you pull the trigger a single time, which for a first person shooter, is quite an amazing feat.  The game starts with a black screen, with a pair of voice overs.  A woman asking 'Booker, are you afraid of God?' and a man replying back 'No, but I'm afraid of you.'

That conversation between Elizabeth and Booker sets up the game, because this game is all about Baptism.  From beginning to end, the game itself is about baptism, and what baptism means.  Booker starts the game already heavily in debt.  His isn't a noble quest to do the right thing, he isn't guided by passion, by a sense of honor, or duty, he is following a voice which proclaims to him loudly 'Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt!'  This refers to two things, first of all bringing the girl Elizabeth back so that his gambling debts might be erased by a wealthy benefactor.  But the second meaning to this sentence is the one in which Booker's moral debt might be erased by him doing something good.

Booker's moral debt was built up by his time at wounded knee, where he massacred native Americans by burning them to death in their teepees, and scalping the dead, keeping the trophies.  After his time at wounded knee, he fell into a deep depression, drinking and gambling, and having a hard time dealing with his past.  When the events of the game start, and Booker is dropped off at the lighthouse by the Lutece

twins, and he walks into the main door of the lighthouse.  As he walks through the door, he comes across a cross-stitched pattern that says 'OF THY SINS SHALL I WASH THEE' to which Booker replies 'good luck with that, pal.'

Booker's past is so big, so harmful, that he is seriously in doubt that he can ever be rid of the effects of it.  The things that he did out at Wounded Knee haunted him so much that the well of alcohol of gambling that he sunk into continued to ruin his life so much that he had to sell his own daughter to keep out of debt.  And this combination, the war crimes plus the selling of his daughter, lead Booker to the city of Columbia, to the city in the clouds where the new baptism would be found.

The city in the sky of Columbia is promised to the 'pilgrims' as the 'New Eden,' as an Ark for a new age.  The first of the white robed potential candidates for baptism that Booker talks to tells him that it's 'heaven.  Or as close as we'll get this side of judgment day.'  The city in the sky that Booker goes to, Columbia, is a place that is as close to

Heaven as people can imagine.  It's in the clouds, beautifully decorated, the crime is almost non-existant, goods are sold on the honor system, and people up there are astonishingly racist, but very polite to whites.  And this world that Booker goes to is the one in which he has a chance to start again, start totally fresh.  Nobody knows him, nobody has any idea as to his past, he can melt right in as a normal person, with no debts, no extra baggage hanging onto him, nothing that is dogging him from his past.  Nobody knows about Wounded Knee, nobody is counting his gambling debts, nothing at all.  He has the chance to start again.  And when it comes time for his baptism (and the baptism is unavoidable.  You either get baptized, or turn the game off and start again), you are baptized into the prophet, the founders, and our Lord.  A very strange Trinitarian baptism.  And this baptism, is like the baptism at the end of the game too, where Booker looks at it and says 'Might as well get it over with.'

It's so strange to be playing a video game, a video game rated M for Mature, where it says in big letters on the screen 'PRESS X TO ACCEPT BAPTISM.  I've never seen that before, and I'll likely never see it again.  But the baptism that Booker is offered in Columbia isn't a baptism like we would recognize.  Why is that?  Because of what you're being baptized into.

You're not being baptized into anything resembling forgiveness of sins.  You're being baptized into the magnificence of mankind, of the strength and work and majesty of humanity.  Baptized into the prophet, baptized into the founders, and baptized into the Lord.

The majesty of humanity, American exceptionalism, it's something that is built into the city of Columbia, the world of Bioshock Infinite.  The way the story gets going is, as mentioned above, to leave the 'sodom below,' and ascend into the sky where people have made a heaven for themselves.  It's a reveal similar to the reveal at the beginning of the first Bioshock game, where you see massive whales floating by a city beneath the sea, but it's different.  It's in the clouds.  It talks about ascension.  When you look out of your capsule, you see clouds, you see fireworks, you see children playing, and a massive statue of an angel occupying the centre of the floating city. For all intents and purposes, you are being baptized into a heaven, but a heaven of man's own making.  Something with all the trappings of faith, baptism, white robes, ritual, etc, but with all the content focused on the people who made it.

And this Heaven that Father Comstock has made is racist, it's way over the top, but it tells the story of a world that we could imagine being very much like one of us would make for ourselves.  What's all over the city?  Stained glass of Comstock everywhere,

statues of Comstock, statuary of the founders of the United States, a secret society dedicated to John Wilkes Booth, of all people.  If you had a heaven to make, who would be at the centre of it?

In Bioshock Infinite, the sky is devoted to man's service to self.  And as you see, the deeper you get into it, that was a bad trade-off.  It's racist, corrupt, racist, and more than a little behind the times.  It's got a wonderful veneer, but beneath it, it's all horrible and grotesque, with a struggle between the leaders and the subordinates, and the slaves.  But even the slaves are awful too, when their time for freedom comes, and they begin murdering indiscriminately.  In other words, people are fairly rotten most of the time.  If you take away the limitations on us, if you take away the limits of death, of resources, of social structures, of the rules of the nation we're living in, what do we turn into?  Who are we?  Who are we really?  Well, that's the game's big reveal is that you are both the hero and the villain of this story, just like you are in the story of your life.  Bioshock Inifinite is one of my favourite types of games, really, because it's not like Mario or like Donkey Kong, where you are virtuous by definition, and everyone who gets in your way is bad, mainly because they're not you.  But here, in Columbia, eveyone, including, gosh, especially you, is a bit of a basket case.  No matter who you help, whether it be yourself, the Columbians, the Vox Populi, they're all varying degrees of rotten.  They're all no good.  There is none righteous, as the Bible says, no not one.  For all have sinned, and fallen short not just of the glory of God, but even of your own standards.  But all the people of Columbia are racist, violent, backstabbing, frightening horrible people, that, when the surface is scratched, will show you exactly what they're all about.  And they're about looking out for themselves.

So, in many ways, the floating sky-city of Columbia ends up being less of Heaven as the Christians would conceive of it, and more of a mount Olympus from Greek mythology.  What's Mount Olympus all about?  It's a place where the Greek pantheon has set themselves up in a place to be as unrestricted, voilent, capricious, and wanton as they want.  And it works for them, but it serves to show what a paradise would look like if it was made by men in their own image.  It would be full of all the worst parts of the human expeience, not peace and love but wrath and rage.  Not charity and grace, but fiery passion and death.  It's a world where all the rules of the sodom below are gone, and the new ark of Columbia is free to remake the world, but to do it properly this time.  And what do they do? They go and make a world that is even worse than the one they left. Given the clean slate of a new world, populated by the people of a new ark, the first thing they do is to subjugate those different from themselves, and seek to rain down fire on the rest of the world.

So how do we, who are imperfect, who could easily fall into this same trap, go to a place that is actually good?  Not just made in our own image, but actually, truly, legitimately good?

We'll get into that next time.