The Polish Wound: An Essay on Bloober Team’s The Medium
The Passive Subject
When I glanced the Most Anticipated Games of 2021, The Medium wasn’t on my radar. Then I read the blurbs. Boasting fixed camera angles and promising a “return to old school survival horror,” The Medium immediately catapulted to the top of things I needed to play. It was being touted as the first big Series X exclusive. I have neither an Xbox Series X or a functioning PC, so my options for playing the game were grossly limited.
Also, it’s on Games Pass, so if you’re one of those people who scoff at paying full retail price for a game that’ll take a lazy weekend to get through, consider this yet another well justified reason to subscribe to Games Pass.
An admission: I didn’t play the game, ok? Sue me. I watched two edited play throughs on Youtube. The entire experienced lasted me around ten hours, which is only a little longer than spending your entire Wednesday binge-watching The Queen’s Gambit. (And admit it, some of you probably watched it twice).
Look. Some games don’t need to be played. Not most games. Some. As in, very little. Back in 1998, I was an awkward but energetic 11 year old who had recently discovered Resident Evil 2 in a friend’s basement. My brother, who was both ten years older than me and away at college, invited me, an awkward but energetic 11 year old, to his dorm room for a weekend typically reserved for Keystone Light and Sunday morning vomiting.
He and his adult age friends were blown away by the state of the art polygonal graphics and fixed cinematic camera angles. They leapt out of their beanbag chairs as they watched me run for my life through the first fixed screens as overwhelmed rookie cop Leon Kennedy. When zombies smashed through the glass of Gunshop Kendo and gruesomely devoured resident Raccoon City gun enthusiast Bob Kendo, Resident Evil 2 instilled within me the confidence to entertain 21 year olds for an entire weekend. When I asked my brother’s friend if he would like to play, he threw his hands up in the air like I was about to arrest him, and feverishly shook his head no. “No way man, you got this. I’m too scared.” He was invested, and yet he didn’t need to play the game.
Silent Hill released a year later. It was survival horror, but the game wasn’t campy, and it certainly wasn’t fun, certainly not in any conventional sense. Its sequel, Silent Hill 2, released two years later, and has rightly cemented itself as a classic. Cribbing the fixed camera aesthetic from Resident Evil, Silent Hill added a camera which followed the player character as he negotiated the world. It has aged like a fine wine setting for two decades, but when people talk about Silent Hill 2, the tangible experience of playing the game is hardly mentioned. That’s because the main character, James Sunderland, is an ordinary character in every sense of the word. Not only is he not a cop or super-soldier; he’s also a milquetoast White Man with very serious White Man problems. This was, believe it or not, an extraordinarily novel concept for a video game in 2001. Developers were suddenly inspired by David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick; gameplay was secondary to artistic autonomy and Serious Storytelling. Sure, James eventually acquired a gun and developed a robust artillery of weaponry and health kits as the game progressed, but people were more interested in his psychological plunge into the abyss and the town itself. Silent Hill 2 was terrifying. It tapped into a primordial fear, one in which the most horrific monsters are the ones we manifest in our own minds. It’s unbearable for James, because he doesn’t want to face it, and it’s uncomfortable for both the player and the passive observer, because we’re being brutally exposed to the painful wreckage of his life brought on by guilt and shame.
Now, what’s interesting about the Silent Hill franchise is the developer’s depiction of small town Americana, and the inevitable seediness that lurks underneath the surface. Watch any David Lynch movie and you’ll notice this isn’t new ground. But Team Silent, the devs responsible for the first four Silent Hill games, are Japanese. And while Silent Hill certainly has its moments of J-horror, it is a franchise that is far more interested in trying to reconcile small town American guilt via American influences, molded by the hands of people who are earnestly trying to understand the American experience.
So here’s the rub: after two play-throughs (or watch-throughs for technicality’s sake), I can say that The Medium’s DNA is undeniably Silent Hill 2’s in atmosphere, while the gameplay functions closer to the type of cinematic, hands-off experience most synonymous to the games of David Cage. Minus the quick time events. But if you get nothing else out of this, be aware that the most strong connective tissue between the Medium and Silent Hill is the composer Akira Yamaoka.
Dual Ambience
“For me, personally, horror is not just about using scary, startling sounds or quiet, unsettling sounds. But also using sounds that feel completely alien to that world and music that feels out of place to create startling and unsettling effects. Both are necessary.” -Akira Yamaoka
The true David Lynch aficionado will concede that his secret weapon has always been sound design, most notably present in the soundscapes composed in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti. The same could be said for Team Silent and Akira Yamaoka. Team Silent and their early Silent Hill classics wouldn’t be what they are without his influence. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Yamaoka-san understands this, too. He knows when to score something sparse and beautiful, yet haunting. He’s the millenial Brian Eno. His work brings a very specific anxiety not present in Eno’s ambient work. On the other side of the coin, Yamaoka unapologetically dons his Trent Reznor industrialist rock persona, like a schizho in a candy store who can’t decide which flavor to choose, so feeling the pressure of time, he chooses the ones on either extreme and bolts out of the store.
A ton of people dump on the Silent Hill HD Collection, but that opening menu screen is legit. On the left side, you’re presented with Silent Hill 2’s bombastically melancholic “Laura’s Theme,” complete with that wonderfully twangy, chromatic walk down. And on the right side, we have Silent Hill 3’s magnum opus “You’re Not Here,” three minutes of pop rock perfection which indicates Yamaoka was almost certainly listening to a LOT of early U2 while composing that soundtrack. Compare that with Silent Hill 1’s more minimal approach, complete with weird pipe clanging sounds and white noise, and you can see just how evolved Akira’s style went in just five short years.
But something was still missing. Bloober Team, the developers of the Medium, wanted their latest release to have a sound that was distinctly and unapologetically Polish. Enter Arkadiusz Reikowski, the Polish composer who brings the missing piece of the puzzle: something that was cryptically omnipotent and hushed like Silent Hill, but also something else that Japan was lacking.
I understand music is subjective, but The Medium’s score is one of the most impactful video game soundtracks I have ever heard. It’s sparse, it’s haunting, it’s alien, and most of all, it’s Soviet. Reikowski is a self proclaimed fan of the Chernobyl soundtrack, a recent HBO mini-series that documents the devastation and irresponsibility of those in charge after the events of the aforementioned tragedy. In many ways, it signaled the end of the Soviet Union, and thus, the brand of 20th century Communism that had defined the East for decades.
I doubt hardcore fans of the game industry are even aware of Reikowski, but I can’t imagine The Medium existing without his contributions, similar to Yamoaka-san’s undeniable fingerprints on Silent Hill.
I think it goes without saying at this point, but if you haven’t played (or experienced) the Medium yet, do so with headphones. As well written as the game is, it can’t exist without the efforts of the two composers, one a decades old veteran, the other getting his feet wet, but together, they are absolutely on the top of their game with The Medium.
The Wound
“A thousand years of history doesn’t just happen…it’s paid for”- Marianne Reckowicz
Trigger Warning: themes of pedophilia. Massive spoilers ahead, so it is highly recommended that you play through (or watch) The Medium before delving any further…
Once you reach the credits in The Medium, a message pops up from the game’s creators. It’s a simple yet brave admission of how personal this game was for Bloober Team to make as a studio. And it’s true. It’s painfully true. The Medium is a story about guilt, shame, and regret. We’re initially clued into this when Marianne encounters Richard’s monster, a ghastly entity which devours innocence.
This is not a conventional video game. We can safely count on one hand how many video games have earnestly tackled themes of pedophilia, Nazism, and the ghosts of Soviet Communism. Over the course of six brutal hours, we experience Marianne’s traumatic journey.
To properly contextualize the game’s historicism, it is essential to understand the state of Poland in the 20th Century. And to learn that, you also need to know what happened in Russia in 1917. Prior to that, Russia was an autocracy, very similar to the United Kingdom. The land was ruled by a King or Queen, a familial right to heir bestowed by God. The situation in Russia was becoming increasingly dire; the amount of poor, hungry, and desperate people proved too overwhelming for Czar Nicholas, a man was so in over his own head that the people he promised to protect (by God himself!) were constantly shot on site for protesting in the streets.
This all came to a head when Vladimir Lenin, with the help of a few of his intellectual cronies, violently overthrew the autocracy and assigned his own brand of Marxism that would eventually come to be known as Leninism-Marxism. Karl Marx was one of the most strangely misunderstood philosophers of the 19th century. The mainstream media mentions him in shamed whispers, with the same apprehension and caution as Adolf Hitler, as if the name itself is a Bad Word. Regardless of one’s political beliefs, the best way I can summarize the philosophy of Karl Marx is this: he saw the end result of Capitalism, and it wasn’t pretty. Under the free market system, there would only be two classes: the bourgeoise and the proletariat. The middle class doesn’t exist in this scenario. Politicians may lead you to believe otherwise, with the promises of new jobs, a secure pension, and enough comfort in your day to day life that you could never possibly consider whether or not you actually like doing what you’re doing for a living. But simply put, the bourgeoise own the means of production, while the proletariat are the means of production.
A quick example of Capitalism (A disclaimer: I don’t endorse or discredit either of these economic systems; I have strong opinions on them, and like everything else, they are subject to criticism. They both have their faults, their advantages, and wildly different interpretations, and thus I am simply laying bare the reality here). A cashier at Walmart is paid a wage that is determined by their employer. Two things immediately become monetized for the cashier: 1) Their efficiency. If they are too slow scanning items, or spend too much time talking to the customers, or adversely, notorious for exhibiting “bad attitude” towards customers, it is likely that either the cashier will be fired, demoted, or moved to another department, where they become someone else’s problem. 2) Their time. Consider this. A Walmart employee is paid a set wage for working a pre-determined shift, say 7 AM until 3:30 PM. How they get to work, whether by car, walking, train, bus, jet plane, none of that matters, but your working day starts well before 7 AM. You have to wake up. You have to get ready. You have to find proper transportation. Is any of this mental and physical preparation compensated by the employer? No. Do you receive more money by holding in your bladder, or worse, when you desperately need to use the restroom? How about how long your breaks and lunches take? Well, actually, that last part is monetized, based on how long you take to punch back in to your shift.
A more middle class example would be working an office job, say, working data entry or overseeing appraisals. These shifts are occasionally salaried, but in any case, this sort of work falls under the conventional 9–5 shift. 40 hour work weeks that over the years seem to have become more devoted to spending time on Facebook, scrolling through your Instagram and Twitter feeds, and enduring endless conference calls or meetings that always seem to be counterproductive, at least to the passive employee required to attend.
Prior to free market Capitalism, feudalism was the driving economic system. Serfs had a working relationship with their Lords, but the Lords never considered the idea of monetizing the serf’s time. In other words, serfs didn’t work a set 9–5 job five days a week. Their time, and all the range of emotions that encompasses time, were never monetized. Just their productivity.
The philosophical rant is almost over, you can make it!
Poland spent the vast majority of the 20th Century under the influence of Communism, and it was brutal. In the first episode of Danny O’Dwyer’s Noclip series on the Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red founder Marcin Iwinski recalls how gray everything in his home country of Poland was. He couldn’t believe the color in everything once he was exposed to the West, and then he realized it all stemmed from a very specific and obvious point of origin: the USSR
After being juggled around by various powers prior to the 20th century, the subjugated Polish entered World War I fighting on both sides, without an identity of their own. After Germany’s first defeat in 1918, Poland finally gained their autonomy. They miraculously staved off the working class Soviets in 1920, but their independence was tragically cut short after the wreckage of World War II. An estimated 20 percent of Polish citizens either died in combat or mass genocide. Those awful German death camps you’ve always heard about? Well, they were situated in Poland. Poland had always been a safe space for Jews, spanning centuries. And while Hitler and his brand of German Fascism was eventually overcome, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union seized control of the nation. Still with me? Maybe it’s time to actually get into this game.
The opening hour of The Medium is incredible. First, we get a glimpse of Marianne’s life before it’s changed forever. In the most heartwarming scene in a game crammed with the opposite, she sends off her foster father Jack, both in the material world and the spiritual world beyond. Marianne’s power is immediately established as both a gift and a curse, and she’s aware enough to acknowledge how grateful she is to have her ideal farewell with a dying parent.
Contrasting the beautifully tragic opening sequence is the most intimidating part of the game, and this is my personal opinion. After Marianne receives a call from a mysterious man named Thomas. She’s promised answers to the origins of her powers, and so she must navigate the lush Polish wilderness, similar to James’s excursion in Silent Hill 2, until she stumbles upon an abandoned parking lot. Looming at the forefront is a colossal superstructure, gray and decaying: the NIWA Hotel and Resort. While there are more horrific monsters and obstacles to overcome later, something about the magnitude of the NIWA Hotel, something of the spectral memories lingering inside, containing both past and future, will be something that will undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life. This is not an exaggeration.
Growing up in my own decaying suburb in the Midwest United States, there was a similar building nestled a block from where I once lived. It was a sickly pale and concrete color, and it was already dying by the time I was born. As of 2021. it has been abandoned for going on three years, but now, it has been given a coat of mahogany and brick for its new foundation. There’s assurance of it being traded from one superstore retail outlet into another, with the usual mundane bureaucracy halting its progress due to asbestos complaints and leasing disputes. My own mother worked there for more than half of her entire life. She’d come home late at night, fiercely unhappy but charged with the negative energy that was her day of customer service, and she’d unload her day onto anyone willing to listen. Usually, it was my dad. I’d eavesdrop, typically from the safety of my own bedroom, not knowing that I’d spend a decade of my own life about to do the same exact thing.
Now if I were to have actually been the one controlling Marianne, I probably would’ve spent an hour wandering the parking lot before venturing inside NIWA. Delaying the inevitable. And it wouldn’t be for nothing, because The Medium excels at environmental storytelling. There’s a parked car from the Soviet Age, which according to Marianne, “doubled as a spare bedroom.” Inside is a postcard with a note attached, of a man justifying his cumbersome workload as “honest and good.” Yes, the Medium forces you to read in order to appreciate the greater narrative. It’s better for it.
Once inside NIWA, we’re introduced to Sadness, a young girl trapped in the spirit world. Keen observers will recognize immediately that something is amiss with her, and it’s very likely she has a strong connection to Marianne. Like Silent Hill and the works of David Lynch, The Medium uses the theme of duality as one of its primary storytelling vehicles. The game literally splits in two at specific intervals. Its reveal trailer had people equally enticed and skeptical, the more negative bunch claiming its similarity to Dishonored 2 and Titanfall 2’s split dimensions. However, The Medium was in development for nine years, initially slated for a release on 360 and Playstation 3, with early concept art dating all the way back to 2012. So the jury’s out on innovation, but also, who cares?
Marianne’s material world is drab and desolate, while her spirit world is surreal and populated by monsters borne out of intense trauma. Like Silent Hill’s macabre nightmare world, the supernatural settings of the Medium are inspired by the work of Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. They are on their most prominent display as we enter the game’s middle act, and the most difficult part of the game to talk about.
Let’s Talk About Richard
“We’re not only making horror games to scare the shit out of people, but also to bring up or tackle a specific subject. And in terms of The Medium, the subject is different points of view”- Wokchiech Piejko, lead game designer for Bloober Team
There is no universal truth in The Medium. It is gradually revealed within the game’s second act that Richard was an older friend to Thomas, and the de facto caretaker of his daughter Lilianne, who also happens to be Sadness, the first character we meet in NIWA. Lilianne’s own split trauma is a result of Richard’s inability to control himself, and tragically, he molests her. I think this is the point where a good number of gamers will be turned off, and possibly no longer play the game, or venture forth with a bad taste in their mouths. Bloober is not interested in catering to anyone specific here; they’re here to tell a very personal, very heartbreaking story, and it’s rather admirable that they spend a good portion of the game offering an honest glimpse into Richard’s childhood. It’s also where we’re thrust out of Marianne’s story and into Thomas’s, who shares Marianne’s medium powers. He mind jacks into Richard like Raz from Psychonauts, and suddenly we’re inside his head, a sickly mind haunted by abandonment and indifference, unimaginable loss and suffering. His father isn’t present in his life. And then he loses his mother and dear friend, all at too young of an age. A man so devastated by this loss, that he can’t help but endure life as a monstrous devourer of purity and innocence.
I remember reading a review after finishing the game, and the critic lambasting Bloober for including pedophilia as a theme in the game. It’s dismissed as gross, as if a real affliction as horrible and evil as pedophilia is a thing better left unaddressed. At the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy realizes what she must do in order to vanquish the constant threat of Fred Kreuger. This time, as he inevitably rematerializes and pursues her, she turns her back to him, refusing to acknowledge his presence. But that doesn’t end the monster that manifests out of something deeper, inward, more primordial. Turning your back on centuries of subjugation and painful loss isn’t going to vanquish the Demon. For Nancy, ignoring the demon gave Freddy the energy to viciously tear her mother through her front door window and into a portal of hell.
Solidarity
“In 1981, I said to the gentleman who came to arrest me, ‘this is the moment of your defeat. These are the last nails in the coffin of Communism”- Lech Walesa, Solidarity Leader
“It all starts with a dead girl”-Marianne Reikowitz
Marianne and the player’s story begins with what we initially believe to be a dream, but turns out to be a premonition of the future. Marianne shoots Lilianne, who is revealed to be her long lost sister. They share the same psychic powers, along with her father Thomas, and with this revelation, the puzzle finally begins to fall into place.
The Medium is not an easy story to digest, both as a traumatic Thing and as a dense narrative. I had to watch it twice, because honestly, I had no idea what was happening my first go. I incorrectly predicted early on in my first Watch-thru (I’m going to make that a thing someday) that Lily and Marianne were the same person, and my stubbornness in sticking with that speculation closed my mind off to all other possibilities. Bloober Team isn’t interested in big, Shyamalan-esque plot twists. Their plot reveals happen organically, and more importantly, matter of factly. If you pay close attention, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
In the game’s final act, we encounter Henry, a Soviet agent who sells out and eventually sentences his own father to death. Like Richard, there’s a strong familial link, but unlike Richard, Henry’s love for his father has been displaced for his undying passion for his Motherland. We also discover that he and the Soviets, and prior to them the Nazis, were running experiments on Thomas, desperately trying to understand his condition for their own nationalistic purposes of domination.
Polish life under Communism was never pretty, but it hit perhaps its most brutal point by 1980. Food was increasingly sparse, leading to families waiting in queues, what Americans call “lines,” for hours upon hours, sometimes even ending up with nothing. As food became sparser and the price for it increased, so did Polish animosity. Thus, an illegal strike was formed. Yes that’s correct, an illegal strike. Going on strike in Communist Poland was against the law. With the aid of U.S. Trade Unions, and soon to be President Ronald Reagan, the Solidarity Movement was formed. It gained serious traction in short order. Reagan’s own self interest in eradicating the USSR inevitably factored into his motivations, but nonetheless, the Polish people were grateful, and rightfully so. Yet again, it all returns to Poland’s reluctant reliance on foreign aid. This time though, it would eventually lead to their salvation.
Solidarity became the first nationwide worker’s strike in Poland. Eighteen years later, in 1999, Poland would finally gain admittance into NATO, free to Westernize foreign policy. To quote Britain’s second most notorious Prime Minister Churchill, “the fate of Poland seems to be unending tragedy and we who went to war ill prepared on her behalf, watch with sorrow the strange outcome of our endeavors.”
The Medium ends as it starts, with Marianne’s dream of killing her sister and entrapping the Maw in the Spirit World for good. Lilianne was responsible for the NIWA massacre, and yet she is portrayed with warmth and compassion. Is she blameless? Her path of destruction begins with Richard, who himself has his own point of origin. The cycle of the Maw is endless, its guilt, shame and regret a seemingly infinite loop that Marianne hopes will eradicate with the squeeze of a trigger.
Conclusion:
Marianne’s own split occurs when she suffers the (apparent) loss of her sister in a fire when they were children, triggered by Henry. The Medium, and Marianne’s story, coindentally begins in 1999, the same year Poland joined NATO. Marianne’s experience is a bridge between two worlds: the Communist ghosts of her past, and the promise of Capitalism moving forward. The common consensus among Polish citizens is to embrace the fall of their foreign masters and an optimism for the new system in place. Russia struggled mightily in the 90s trying to get a foot into the modern world. Poland, after decades, no, centuries of subjugation, abuse, and lack of identity, had miraculously survived the fall of Communism and today boast one of the shining exceptions to Capitalism being done the right way.
So should you play The Medium? It’s ironic, because my gut can’t help but envision this as a movie or mini series. Bloober Team is a game developer, however. David Cage, Hideo Kojima, and the folks from Team Silent all understand how valuable video games can be as a “medium” (shut up) for storytelling. I already hear the counterargument forming against me as I typed that sentence. “But, dontcha know, video games are expensive.” Well, ok, The Medium costs less to play than having one month of Netflix or HBO Max. Not Hulu though, I believe you can still buy the barebones Hulu package for like $6.99 a month, complete commercials, but why would you do that to yourself?
The reason I didn’t play The Medium is because I don’t own an Xbox Series X or a high end PC, and that’s ok. It’s not Bloober Team’s fault. But I wouldn’t trade my experience with the game. If you own a Series X or a Gaming PC, and have an appreciation for survival horror, or the cinematic works of David Cage, or hell, even just want to learn something valuable about the human condition, you need to experience this game. Or if you do, and don’t own a Series X or PC, go on Youtube and find an edited 5 hour play-through of the game. (I watched Shirakko’s and MKIceandFire, and I preferred the MKIceandFire cut). It’s free, and you can gloat about watching a pretty decent mini series that wasn’t on Netflix or HBO Max.
EPILOGUE
The final thing I want to say, is how fucking timely The Medium seems to be. Here we are, smack dab in the middle of an unprecedented period in history. We see through the effort of Bloober Team the brutality of human nature, the desire for subjugation, and the unreconciliable level of pain that manifests as a result. Whether by fascism, communism, or capitalism, we’re all subject to our own subservience; our unabashed reliance on others, and Others.
My own country has handled the first year of the pandemic with gross incompetence, and has therefore had to rely on, for the first time in its history, mass government aid, based on some half measured brand of Socialism. But I also can’t help but think back to that indifferent grayness of that building a block from my childhood house, and how, even in 1991, at 4 years old, gazing at it in bewilderment, having no idea what was happening in the East, and yet somehow, at 4 years old, having an ancient sense of everything that was happening on the other side of the world. Almost like an empathy. My last name used to be Maciejewski, until our ancestors decided to change it to Machesky in the early 20th century. The kids were being made fun of because you could literally spell out J-E-W in the middle of my last name. I’m an American from the Midwest, first and foremost. I pronounce milk “malk.” I exclaim “oop!” involuntarily whenever I’m even the least bit excited or bump into people on the street. I love fast food and as much I hate it, I also can’t help but love Capitalism, as evil and necessary as it is, which in a lot of ways I’m sure my Polish brothers and sisters would agree. Guilt, shame, and regret. And like our main protagonist, we’re stuck living with with all three, and whether we want to or not, sometimes we’re going to have to kill someone or (some thing) we love in order to live for something potentially better.
