Paintings of Political Spectrums and Internal Discord
Disco Elysium
Days I've spent puzzled on how to approach Disco Elysium in an interesting, universal, and fresh manner. Simply explaining the complicated game would not be doing it justice. Reviewing it can be considered rotten, as to how many positive reviews had been written. Dissecting the themes might seem snobby and smart but it would be boring and a cliche. To be fair, the game itself is heavy and abstract. So it can be considered a lie of the century to think this will be easy to convey. But what is underwhelmingly discussed in video game essays is about the art within video games — an important and sadly often overlooked aspect of a video game that made them visually amazing and distinct them from other creations in the industry. So I decided to approach Disco Elysium by interpreting its artwork and the hidden meanings behind it, begging to be unraveled.
For the uninitiated, Disco Elysium is considered to be revolutionary in the CRPG genre because of how unorthodox they plated their game. ZA/UM studios served the game as a mixture of a witty novel and visually as a dynamic watercolor painting while chooses Realism and Expressionism as their go-to art style, which I personally worship.
The crumbling world of Disco Elysium is packed with colorful and memorable characters, skills, and ideas (Yes, skills and ideas). Starting from the infamous alcoholic protagonist Harrier Du Bois, trashcan-for-a-mouth kid Cuno with his lady counterpart Cunoesse, the fake gardener turned Union Party Lawyer Elizabeth Beaufort and my personal favorite, the young, salty, and constantly annoyed ala aristocrat hostel manager, Garte.
What separates Disco Elysium from the other greats of CRPGs is how they portray the skill tree system. Not only the skill tree consists of mundane traits such as Conceptualization, Pain Threshold, Empathy, and Composure but these skills have personality and agency thus constantly debating and ever-effecting Harrier Du Bois's choices — and often, the exchange between skills are comical.
Lastly, Disco Elysium introduces The Thought Cabinet, a simulation of how the mind processes abstract thoughts such as a personality, a concept, and/or an ideology that determines and internalizes the protagonist's ideals. For example, to research and contemplate “Bankruptcy Sequence” it will find a silver lining in bankruptcy as the ramification of ultraliberalism and capitalism. “Homosexual Underground” will question Harry’s own sexuality, and the “Inexplicable Feminist Agenda” will shape Harry into a revolutionary figure of the Feminist Movement.
Luckily, to fully immerse ourselves within the life of West Revachol, Aleksander Rostov, the art director of Disco Elysium introduced each of the zany characters, skills, and thoughts with equally beautiful and abstract painting and portraits to stay on par with the captivating writing. And yes, everyone is excused to admire the game with awe.
“I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist, or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics.“ — Pablo Picasso
Character Portraits
Do take a gentle minute to observe the portraits. As you can see each character’s portraits varies from one another but some hold similarities such as backgrounds, different shade of colors, patterns, and/or painting techniques that made it easier to interpret and connect the hidden meanings.
The bespectacled and orange jacketed man is Kim Kitsuragi, the dry-humored crime-fighting partner of Harrier Du Bois. He is painted with a brown base and white disc as his background. Interestingly, the influence of Japanese culture and history plays a heavy part in his lore and portrait design. Although Kim Kitsuragi is born and raised in Revachol, his physical features do not translate to the traditional Europian-like Revacholian and rather Asian-like Seolist. The fact that Disco Elysium is set in a parallel universe, the connection is not surprisingly staggering. The white disc-shaped and brown base is a parallel towards Japan’s red disc and the white base national flag. Seol is known for its isolationist policies and a pioneer in advanced microtechnology. Japan is also famous for its isolationist policies in the Edo Period (1600–1868) and in terms of technology, Japan is known for its invention in the ’80s. Because of the connection, the overshadowed themes of racism and minorities are reflecting the real world of how refugees and minorities are treated differently by majority races as such what happened when Kim is confronted by a racist lorry driver in the story.
The use of the white and red stripes is the mark of West Revachol’s Union Party that is being led by Evrart Claire, legally protected by Elizabeth Beaufort, physically protected by Measurehead and The Hardie Boys. The complexity of the ideology and characters blooms various types of backgrounds. Starting from a simpler type I call The Classic where the background only consists of plain and clear white and red stripes. This symbolizes the openness and proudness of one's identity and in this case, people who use The Classic background are very proud of their political stance and have no intentions of sealing it away — an icon or a publicity stunt for the Worker Union Party.
The Hidden is a variation that only being possessed by one character, the aforementioned Elizabeth Beaufort. Elizabeth's background is a brush of the color beige and maroon which both correspondingly are the effects of mixing the color brown with white and brown with red. This shows how she is hiding her true colors by “repainting” herself as a gardener to hide her true identity of being the lawyer-esque fixer for the Union Party.
The supremacist monolith is Measurehead, tasked to protect the Union-Party-invested-harbor. This character uses The Compromise, a variation where the background’s color seems scattered chaotically across the painting to represent violence as well as his loudness and vanity in extreme political stance as a far-right. This compromise translates to Measurehead’s decision to aid the leftist, in hopes to support his ideal race theory in West Revachol.
The Flip variation belongs to Evrart Claire, the representative for the Union of Harbour Workers. Unlike his associates, his background is not white and red rather it’s flipped — red and white, much like the Indonesian flag. I theorize flipping the background is a symbol of his deception as a true leftist. Although he does represents and benefited the Union, but his intention is not pure but in fact, is an opportunist and a master manipulator. Or I could be wrong. Maybe the color red just doesn't fit on the bottom row due to his physical posture.
Skill Portraits
Alexander Rostov and ZA/UM did not leave skills in the dust. Disco Elysium meticulously designed the skills to be your overarching personalities that live in a black void inside your mind — the reason why it has black backgrounds — by giving each of the skills zany personalities, persuasive dialogues, and their own abstract humanlike portraits as an illusion that they are actually real thus giving them agency. The representation of skills that is constantly conversing and debating is a play on our moral and ethical debates — an arbitrary competition in our arbitrary mental palace. Given the influence on our decision-making, it made sense for these skills to be represented by giving them their own personal portraits.
Inland Empire is being described as our gut feelings teaming up with our imaginations trying to usurp logic and reality.
The name Inland Empire can be reiterated as “An Empire inside your own land”. It is represented to have an oversized head to rival the immense volume of our own imagination and the “abstract and formless things” in its head wanting to escape and manifest into... something.
Conceptualization is being described as a skill to understand creativity, art, and concepts. Conceptualization’s portrait is an abstract face with a set of eyes pillared by a single arm as if the abstract jaw is sitting on it. While a seemingly misplaced, lonely white dotted rectangle is pulling everything inside the frame acting like a cosmic black hole.
The swirled face is representing something abstract and chaotic, albeit it’s an art or a concept. The white dot is pulling the abstracts into the white rectangle as the rectangle is a representation of something concrete.
A bloody x-ray portrait of an armless body rests upon you. A set of white roots crawling out in its skull from the core of its body. An ominous ray is piercing through as if having roots inside you is not bad enough.
That is how Shivers is drawn by the artists as a manifestation of the character’s supernatural skills to converse with the city. The over branching roots are a representation of how the character is connected with the city, everything that is happening in — and to the city will be connected to you because of how deep are the roots being planted down inside of you. The dark alleyways, raindrops on each apartment’s roof, and the boats that are sailing into the city are the information shivers will whisper to you. You are West Revachol, a “city whisperer“ if you will.
A yellow silhouette of an expressionless man is leaning against a black and yellow wall. Composure is your mystery man, a representation of a calm and collected poker-faced individual. The poker face he makes is his wall — his protection against others reading his true emotions, while the wall’s behind him, that he is leaning against — is where his true emotion lives.
Thoughts
The aforementioned The Thought Cabinet are the natural habitats of the deep, personal, and radical thoughts that Harry Du Bois. Different from Skills and Characters, Thoughts are not drawn in a singular humanoid portrait but in a large painting filled with more absurd characters and objects and being broken down into singular paintings to represent each thought. Fitting, I suppose, for a thought to generate such a large painting to also represent how we perceive various and opposing thoughts in our head.
Caustic Echo is a piece of memory that Harry begs to forget — by the means of alcohol and drugs — but in the end, he always remembers. He successfully has forgotten the shape of her face as it is described in the painting’s disintegrating figure but the feeling of sadness and loss still lingers, like a corrosive ghost, like its mentally abusive counterpart; depression.
This thought is Harry’s hard-fought process of acceptance that the love of his life, the only piece that made him felt complete as a person is truly gone forever.
“He speaks of the *sickening* longing, the unwell emotion. Even in the darkness, he’s grasping for it, still trying to hold on to the great sorrows slipping in the water, slimy.” — Limbic System.
Mazovian Socio-Economics is Communism. Kras Masov is Karl Marx and Mazovianism is Marxism. This embodiment of thought is Harry's internalization of communism. The lonely muscular monstrosity of a figure is holding a war hammer as a sign of the power of the people to ‘rebuild’ the almost mythical idea of communism. Or can be translated to use the power of the people and the war hammer to topple down the differences between the evil bourgeoisie and the oppressed proletariats. There is also a waving red flag that largely signifies the rise and color of the revolutionary movement.
Torque Dork is one of many funny and absurd thoughts that can be internalized. This thought is about being a major geek wearing black leather jackets in ‘torques’ or simply cars and other automotive– a jab at car enthusiasts and mechanics jerking off each other while talking about T-Bone, engines, and rim jobs.
The painting is about an engine-like blob angel holding a child’s hand, another jab about how, when a person talks about machines, he is also part machine and may pass that zeal to their children. The wings, however, I can’t make sense of it, but if I may theorize is an automotive term for car spoilers.
This concludes our abstract journey of the equally abstract work of Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium brings humor in the dark reality of love, depression, and loss while also makes fun of the political entanglement of the socio-economic world.
There was some art that I decided not to choose due to myself not understanding it enough to give an interpretation but also due to simply not choosing it as normal eyes can interpret such meaning.
There are many more meanings and interpretations that could be absorbed from their art that, of course, I have missed or I’m not sensitive, smart, and not observing enough to see.
A video game is more than its writing, world-building, fighting mechanics, and bugs. With its rich depth of meaning inside of the watercolor paintings, I hope we are more aware of the beauty of a video game.
