All posts by Christine C.

General Media Theory

What Papers, Please tells us about governed bodies and inscription

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By: Christine Choi

When trying to make sense of the oppressive systems and structures in place, video games may not be the first to come to mind when it comes to examining the system in place. Yet, the video game Papers, Please, provides an interesting insight and commentary on what it means to put in a position of performing that status quo. The concepts in Grant Bollmer’s book Materialist Media Theory provided foundational groundwork with relevant ideas in this game. As a result, it brought attention to the following: what kind of context do video games provide for us when it comes to understanding the representation of bodies as well as the inscription of such bodies? As much as Papers, Please exaggerates and parodizes the border control and immigration systems, it simultaneously reveals the biases of the immigration system as well as the player themselves. 

Papers, Please, is an indie game where you play as an immigration inspector for the fictional country “Arstotzka.” Throughout the game, you make decisions to let them cross the border based on people’s “validity” of their documentation, which determines whether they are permitted to enter the country. The laws that determine what counts as a valid document continue to grow more and more convoluted as the game progresses, which makes detecting discrepancies even more difficult. Depending on if their documentations are all correct, their passports get stamped with “approved” or “denied” accordingly. The premise itself already highlights how we, as bodies living under the legal institutions that define us, have forced us into the inscription of legal documents that indicate our right to exist as well as our subscription to performing such practices.  

Inscription Using Documents

As the immigration inspector, you are already assigned to the act of inscribing into each entrant’s document via stamping in their passports. However, each body and the inscriptions that represent said body (i.e. the passports, entry permits, etc.) have much more than what is inscribed (or is not inscribed) in their documents. For whatever reason each entrant was unable to provide the correct details in their documents, they each had their own lives that brought them to the border—details which cannot be inscribed within their very legal documents. It makes Bollmer’s argument about analyzing the “margins,” a space in which we can find “traces of a history that this barbarism worked to exclude from existence,” all the more relevant in contextualizing their presence at the border (54). You, the player, can make the decision on whether you do perform that very duty that this authoritarian institution has tasked you with through the institutional practices of inscribing. Doing so, however, means that you have made the inherent decision to push these people into the “margins.”

Performativity in Papers, Please

The game’s mechanic of finding “discrepancies” in the information in the documentation also happens to be one of the ways that illustrates how “legible bodies”—bodies that are “produced by legal, medical, and psychological practices of writing and documentation”—are rendered illegible by the immigration system (Bollmer, 67). The game appears to task the player with a relatively simple task: to carry out, or rather, “perform,” the laws that govern our bodies. As a result, the bodies perform the act of being a legal entrant to Arstotzka by carrying and presenting with valid documentation—or at least attempt to. Failing to find the discrepancy results in citations for violating protocol—get three of these, and it will be deducted from your salary. Even with the presence of the repressive state apparatus—the agreement to obey the laws due to the “threat of police violence, or in this case, the government representatives—the game incites as well as punishes the player for acting against them (Bollmer, 27). Throughout the gameplay, there will be several characters that ask you to approve the entry of those who do not carry valid documents and deny the entry of those who do, citing reasons such as wanting to stay with their family or the fear for their safety if certain individuals are let in. This is how the game presents the player with the agency of whether they want to perform within the legal and governmental practices or perform outside of them, even if that results in a protocol violation.

Game-sensing Systemic Marginalization of Bodies

But why analyze the legibility of bodies and the inscription of documentation through a video game? When trying to understand the systemic challenges that arise from the documentation of our very being, one helpful framework to understand it is through the perspective of “game-sensing.” “Game-sensing” refers to how gamers “attune to a game system” which often takes form in navigating through the game’s mechanics and environments (Guillermo 156-157). Kawika Guillermo, in their book Of Floating Isles, described how video games are able to show the ways in which we game-sense the racialized systems that we co-exist in (157). The game-sensing of Papers, Please, as stated by Guillermo, “attunes us to the violences of nationalist othering by revealing the overlapping practices of border security with state-enforced racism” (162). Despite the seemingly immateriality of the bodies in digital video games, Papers, Please exemplified how studying these media objects through the media theoretical lens.

The notion that video games, as media that are viewed as inherently self-serving and pleasure-seeking, are unable to delve deeper into the real-world oppression that are inscribed within society, has been frequently countered with the recent emergence of indie games such as Papers, Please. It shows us how games can in fact materialize the immateriality of systemic marginalization of immigrants. In the game, the laws behind who gets to enter Arstotzka quickly change following a terrorist attack at the border. We see this parallel real-life events, such as the formation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as a response to the terrorist attack that occurred on September 11th, 2001 throughout the United States (“TSA History”). Games such as these can illuminate on how the TSA operates has been racialized by using the actions of extremist groups as reason to further marginalize racial groups. By contextualizing these games to the media theories that we continue to study, we can do more than just game-sense the systemic racialized injustices: we can challenge the existing hegemony in place and maybe eventually, see it lead to political change (Bollmer, 32). 

Works Cited

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction Grant Bollmer. Zed Books, 2021.

Guillermo, Kawika. Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025.

Papers, Please. Directed by Lucas Pope, 3909, 2013.

“TSA History | Transportation Security Administration.” Transportation Security Administration, www.tsa.gov/history. Accessed 3 Dec. 2025. 

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Memory is Soul:

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A Response to “Umberto Eco: A Library of the World” By Christine Choi and Aminata Chipembere

Introduction: 

In Davide Ferrario’s documentary Umberto Eco: A Library of the World, the viewers are given a tour of the inner workings of Umberto Eco’s mind. The audience has the chance to revisit many of his influential theories on materiality, memory, and knowledge. Early in the film, Eco asserts that “Memory is Soul,” setting up his reflections on the human need to preserve and seek out knowledge. Eco introduces an intersection between libraries and memory. For him, a library is more than just a collection of books; it is “mankind’s common memory”. It serves as a living embodiment and symbol of humanity’s collective effort to make sense of the world. 

The concept of the library being a vessel for memory connects to Eco’s broader reflections on archives and materiality. Eco’s attachment to physicality resonates with the knowledge introduced by Bill Brown in Materiality, which considers how physical objects reshape one’s lived experience. Eco’s theories warn about the dangers of the internet and overcomposition. These theories can be explored in relation to Annalee Newitz’s My Laptop, which describes how digital technologies have transformed our relationship with information. Eco’s work alongside these theories highlights the evolving relationship between memory, materiality, and media. Reminding audiences that the mediums in which we store knowledge reshape the way we remember and understand. 

Memory & Information: 

In the documentary, Umberto Eco introduces three types of memory: Organic, Vegetal, and Mineral. Organic memory resides in the brain, “made of flesh and bone” (Eco), and encompasses our ability to recall and forget. Vegetal memory refers to written media (books, papyrus) and represents memory in its physical form. Mineral memory, the newest form, is stored in silicon or digital technology. This form highlights technology’s ability to hold and collect knowledge. While each of these forms serves its own purpose and works to expand knowledge. Eco suggests that mineral memory introduces a paradox: an overload of information that could eventually overwhelm rather than benefit. 

Eco warns that human beings aren’t meant to know everything, stating that “if we knew all that is contained on the web, we’d go crazy.”(Eco). He points to the flood of digital content as the main reason behind what he calls information noise, the idea that so much information exists that it becomes impossible to distinguish meaning from distraction. He argues that the world is constantly overloaded with messages that often say nothing. He warns that this noise disrupts one of the core functions of memory: the ability to select, filter, and prioritize important information. In this era, dominated by mineral memory, this filtering process is breaking down. The internet, as Eco puts it, functions as “an encyclopedia where everything is potentially recorded, but without the tools to filter its content.” Eco highlights an important issue with the ability to filter information and organize its content; its usefulness diminishes. 

In discussing the overflow of digital content, Eco causes us to reconsider this dependence on mineral memory. Over time, humanity has become increasingly more reliant on technology and has slowly turned away from organic memory. This is evident in Annalee Newitz’s work, My Laptop, where she describes that she relies on digital tools to store and recall information. She writes, “It’s practically a brain prosthesis.”(Newitz 88), highlighting the extent to which her laptop has replaced her own cognitive abilities. This dependence serves as a real-world example of Eco’s fears coming true, that technology, instead of working alongside organic and vegetal memory, has begun to replace them entirely. As we continue to store our memories in technology, we risk weakening our own abilities to process and record information. This raises the question, what is the point of remembering, writing or archiving, if everything can be conserved online? The answer to this dilemma lies in Eco’s ideas on the importance of materiality. 

Memory & Materiality: 

It is no wonder, then, that Eco has a preference for physical books over digital files when it comes to reading, citing reasons such as how you are unable to underline passages, make dogears, nor smear the pages with a dirty thumb when reading on a digital interface. This, too, reveals a part of the memory that is held within the books themselves, giving them their own uniqueness and individuality. As Bill Brown quoted in the Materiality chapter of Critical Terms for Media Studies, “Information, delaminated from any specific material substrate, could circulate—could dematerialize and rematerialize—unchanged (55).” This unchanging and immaterial nature of digital media (or “new media”), would lead us to believe that it comes with immortality since it appears immune to the environmental changes and deterioration that physical media tend to be prone to—which is why we often see digitization of physical media as a form of preservation. However, Brown argues that “digital media are themselves subject to deterioration” since “they still require physical support”. This, too, highlights the threats that come with shifting towards depending on mineral memory more than vegetal memory as Brown also notes that “all media may eventually be homogenized within the hegemony of the digital” (53). 

Brown further asserts the threat that the digital landscape brings to materiality as more and more media get “dematerialized” (51). With the increase of communication occurring in our digital devices, it is also just as susceptible for it to vanish without the physical traces that take its form in our physical world, and with it, the memories of them would be forgotten to time. This sort of archaeological view of the media that we leave behind is, of course, great concern as media academics. As Eco stated, “we are beings living in time. Without memory, it’s impossible to build a future,” and without the vegetal memory that we can refer back to, it could end up compromising the very foundations and integrity that media studies is built upon. This is also the type of future that Brown is concerned with, as he states, “the homogenizing, dematerializing effects of digitization,” which would result in “the human body thus becom[ing] the source for “giv[ing] body to digital data” (58).” As a result, this affects the way we, as human subjects and media consumers, are mediated and facilitated by the information in our environment. 

Conclusion:

From Eco, Newitz, and Brown, we have seen how our modern-day society has a complicated dynamic when it comes to organic, vegetal, and mineral memory. We can also see why, then, libraries like Umberto Eco’s would be so significant in our current media landscape. From Eco’s teachings and theories brought attention to the pitfalls the over-reliance on technology and the mediation of mineral memory through them. This documentary serves as a reminder that too much information can ultimately cause harm rather than benefit us. It causes us to rethink the constant need to gain more knowledge, as we can easily drown in the noise rather than learn from it. We must distinguish what information is crucial for us to keep and what we can discard. As media theorists, it allows us to think more critically about the fallibilities that we have often overlooked as we continue to adapt and familiarize ourselves with mineral memory in favour of vegetal memory. Much like Eco continued to emphasize throughout the film, “sentimentally, you cannot replace books.”

Citations

Brown, Bill. “Materiality.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 49–63. 

Ferrario, Davide, director. Umberto Eco: A Library of the World. Film Commission Torino-Piemonte, 2023. 

Larsen, Martin Grüner. Umberto Eco in front of the bookshelf in his library which contains books he has written and translations. 9 May 2011. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mglarsen/5772998464/in/photolist-9N98jh-9N6bdM-9N69ti-9N95nS-9N93EQ-9N8SFU-9N8QWo-9N6g9a-9N8ZtJ-9N63Hg-9N62ya. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025. Newitz, Annalee. “MY LAPTOP.” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 86–91. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.14. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025.

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The Game Controller: Mediating Between Virtual and Physical Worlds

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Introduction

What do the buttons on a game console controller represent for you? Each button most likely has different functions which vary among each game’s unique game mechanics. Take for example, the “B” button. In Splatoon, pressing it results in your in-game avatar to jump, in Hades, it makes you dash forward, whereas in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, holding it down makes your avatar run. Our real-life act of pressing a button translates into another action occurring in-game, as depicted on the screen. One could even say that the buttons having diverse effects in each game’s unique mechanics, representing their own specific set of rules, relies on their own system of signs.  

Avatar in Splatoon 3 displaying “jump” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi
Character, Zagreus, in Hades displaying “dash” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi
Avatar in Animal Crossing: New Horizons displaying “run” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi

This fascination surrounding such concepts is precisely why I chose a game controller as my evocative object. Although there are so many different variations of a game controller, I am going to use the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller as an example as it is the controller I was mediated by the most and is also one of the more “standard” modern designs when it comes to game controllers (the existence of a joystick, four buttons with letters/symbols, L and R buttons, etc.). By analyzing the game controller, I will highlight the ways that it mediates between us, the player, and the virtual world that the game exists in. 

The Controller and the Player

As mentioned before, the game controller has the unique ability to mediate between us and the virtual world displayed within the hardware (whether that is the console or the PC). When it comes to “playing” a game via a controller, there is a unique set of feedback that is inputted and outputted mediating between our physical corporeal bodies and the incorporeal in-game virtual bodies. 

You would first take in the world through senses, like sight and hearing. Certain in-game index, symbols, and icons may evoke feelings of fear, especially if it had informed the player of it causing harm to the avatar in the past. Others may evoke curiosity, enticing the player to explore more of the game and the “rules” of this digital world. Once you have cognitively processed that, your instincts—shaped by in-game and real-world experiences—would inform you to react. You would react by pressing buttons or rolling the joystick to the direction you want it to. We know, or at the very least expect, that the controller has received input when we receive the tactile feedback of the button being pushed down then springing back as we release it from pressing down on it. Then you would see the fruition of your act of button-pressing/joystick pushing by seeing the pixels on-screen change to indicate movement/change within this virtual world. 

Feedback of input and output between virtual and physical worlds – Diagram drawn by Christine Choi

The feelings evoked from the virtual information would translate in the grip of our controller; dodging enemies evoking another emotion of relief and safety, the achievement leading to satiate more of our curiosity, all driving our progression of the game. Thus, the controller is the mediating object for the player’s input and the software (which would be the game). Without the game, there is nothing for it to control and without the player input, there is nothing being controlled. 

Exerting Control over in-game “bodies”

Much of what is being said about the “control” over avatars/characters is correlated to what is said about the “body” as a medium in Critical Terms for Media Studies. After all, the controller could be seen as an extension of our own body, which extends into what is being “embodied” in-game. Wegenstein, too, utilizes psychoanalytic theories of how video games allow us to play the role of the “other”, a virtual embodiment that differs from the embodiment of ourselves. She quotes Slavoj Zizek on “a figure capable of taking on, or projecting itself into, many simultaneous roles” (28). The concept of roles that we project onto is correspondent with how the controller that mediates and perpetuates this “ego” that we project onto, making the body of the playable character another medium. 

Thus far, I have only discussed characters and avatars that have an anthropomorphic body, which is easy to visualize as we easily project our human bodies onto these characters. But what about games with no “avatar” or humanistic representation of our own bodies? I would argue that there is still a “body” or “vessel” in which we, in our physical and corporeal forms, exert control over digitally. Take Tetris for example, the falling blocks would be the body that we project ourselves onto. As the blocks fall, we move with it left or right via the joystick or D-pad. 

Game Controller as a “Black Box”

Even the most avid gamers most likely do not know the internal computational and mechanical workings of what occurs in between the space and time in which we press the button and watch the game do its magic. The game controller generally works under the “black box” heuristics (a cybernetics theory coined by Norbert Wiener), in which the processes of the input from our button to the output in the game is shrouded in mystery for the average user (Wiener, page xi). However, I would argue that this knowledge we lack of our game controller’s internal workings is precisely the tool we use to immerse ourselves in the virtual space of a video game. What we do know as gamers is that eventually, its mechanics is burned into the memory of our bodies through “muscle memory” as the controls become second nature to us, thus “mediating” our physical bodies in the real world and the incorporeal bodies that exist in the virtual space of a video game.

Citations

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2010, pp. 19–34.

Wiener, Norbert, et al. Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, 2019.

Images and footage were all taken by Christine Choi