Quick Notes on Super Mario Odyssey
What is going on in the latest version of Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch? I had the privilege of spending my birthday today playing the entire game with my son. The game is a mix of nostalgia, repackaged and reconfigured, and there are a number of formal properties of the game that I would love to analyze but I am going to forego that to focus purely on the content, that is, the story. I want to note a difference in the ending of this game as compared with the ending of the classic Super Mario games.
In the classic version of the game Princess Peach is held hostage by Bowser. She wants to be saved. Mario keeps trying to rescue her, but each time he gets close, she disappears again, until, finally, at the very end, he is with her. The traditional Mario games played on the traditional Lacanian understanding of desire and fantasy. Mario, of course, desires Peach and chases her, traverses all of the obstacles that have made her impossible to capture. The ending is pure propaganda: he has her, and they live happily ever after.
In Super Mario Odyssey things are a bit different. The princess has her own desire on display for the first time — as far as I can tell. Whereas the classic Super Mario games had a power monster that prohibited access to the Princess, in this new version, it is clear that the power monster, Bowser, is somebody that Mario himself has to become. This is made most clear in the ending when Mario tosses his hat onto Bowser and uses him to his advantage. He hoists Peach onto his shoulders and takes her back to the moon, the place where Bowser and Peach were originally set to be married (against Peach’s wishes).
But, again, it is Peach’s desire that is foregrounded: after this act of heroism, Peach herself puts Mario into the friend-zone. Mario, after making the impossible happen, is basically rejected by Peach. Bowser and Mario stand side-by-side holding flowers and offering them to Peach. Peach wants neither of them, or else, in some way, she is considering them both equally. Does this not express something important about the culture we are living in today? On the one hand, the authoritarian figure of Bowser — the old paternal or patriarchal society — is seen as an option that one endlessly wants to reject, but, in some way, one’s desire is still attached to it. On the other hand, the hero, Mario, is not so much desired after he has saved Peach. Mario is perhaps too soft. This is the double bind of our current situation.
And what is the final scene? Peach walks away without choosing either of them. She is perfectly satisfied in her solitude. As the ship begins to take off from the moon, she finally waves at Mario. This is the only place from which she can once again ignite a desire: from the distance of the ship quickly pulling away, and Mario immediately jumps to chase her again, and then the credits for the game are shown. The end. What is it that has really ended though? It is the paradigm of the Other. This ending suits the time of the #MeToo movement because it demonstrates the violence of the over-proximity of the Other. As Slavoj Zizek once put it about the #MeToo Movement: “the implicit rule is to keep the other at a distance. Whatever you do [say, for example, saving a woman or giving her flowers]— it is experienced as an aggression.”
