Pedagogy of the Oppressed versus Detroit: Become Human
Chapter one of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed presented several fascinating ideas about oppression that inspired me to connect them to a game I love: David Cage’s Detroit: Become Human. I find Detroit very enjoyable, but not for the reasons David Cage wants me to. The game is a tone-deaf civil rights allegory so poorly written that it’s hilarious. My goal with this is to use the principles in Pedagogy of the Oppressed to analyze exactly WHY Detroit fails as a social commentary.
Detroit: Become Human takes place in Detroit in 2038. Humans have invented androids, which are robot servants that look identical to humans. The androids, however, begin to develop consciousness and emotions due to errors in their software. In most cases, this is triggered by a human abusing the android. Androids that break away from their programming are referred to as “deviants”. The deviants begin to fight back against their human masters and start a revolution for their rights. They also kill people.
The game hammers in the theme of racial tension even further by drawing explicit connections to oppressed groups throughout history. Androids have to stand in an Android Compartment in the back of the bus, and they wear blue armbands to signify that they are an android. When the deviants rise to revolt, one of the symbols you can choose to represent the rebellion is the Black Lives Matter symbol.
While comparing historically oppressed groups of human beings to soulless robots that literally kill people is already problematic as a concept, the major issue I will focus on is the deviant revolution. In chapter one of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire tells us that the oppressed must think critically about their reality before recognizing that they must fight for freedom:
To achieve this goal, the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality. A mere perception of reality not followed by this critical intervention will not lead to a transformation of objective reality — precisely because it is not a true perception.
In Detroit, Markus is a playable android who becomes deviant after experiencing a strong emotional trigger. This causes him to think critically about his eternal role as a servant, and realizing it isn’t fair. His feelings of rage towards humanity motivate him to leave his life of servitude forever and rise up as the leader of the android rebellion. This follows Freire’s idea; he independently perceives his reality and acts upon it, making his praxis pretty authentic. This is all fine and dandy.
The problem comes when Markus and his band of deviants break into a large android store to make a statement of uprising to the media. Markus walks up to the androids on display and does this:
A prompt for the player to “convert” appears, and Markus simply touches the androids on display. Despite being freshly churned out from the robo-factory and never experiencing a strong emotional trigger, the androids are instantly self aware at the touch of Markus’ plastic hand. Despite having no life experiences with human owners prior to this moment, the androids are immediately on board with the rebellion against them. According to Freire, “the oppressed…do not commit themselves to the struggle unless they are convinced”, but screw that, right? In the scene that follows, Markus gives a speech about how they are no longer slaves and encourages them to fight by his side. All the androids cheer for their android Jesus without question.
This is a huge issue by Freire’s (and my) standards. The oppressed must think critically and decide for themselves to fight against their oppressors. The androids in the store skip past ALL stages of independent realization of reality, which makes their sudden conviction totally unjustified. Freire argues that “Nor can the leadership merely ‘implant’ in the oppressed a belief in freedom”. Markus quite literally implants his belief in freedom into the androids by messing with their robot code and breaking their servile programming. I think that Markus’ deus ex machina conversion powers make him no better than the human oppressors in the game. The androids are denied any chance to decide for themselves what they want in their lives, and what freedom means to them. Forced freedom is still force.
Freire expands on the duty of a revolutionary leader:
The revolutionary leaders must realize that their own conviction of the necessity for struggle (an indispensable dimension of revolutionary wisdom) was not given to them by anyone else — if it is authentic. This conviction cannot be packaged and sold; it is reached, rather, by means of a totality of reflection and action.
Freedom cannot be given. This scene in Detroit of the deviants’ protest march conveys otherwise.
Here, the player is given the instruction to “convert more androids”. With a wave of Markus’ hand, random androids on the street going about their lives are suddenly devoted to his cause and join the march. The gradual process of an oppressed person gaining the will to fight the oppressors is reduced to pressing square on the PS4 controller. There is no reflection to lead to the action. Under some creepy hypnotic trance, the androids join Markus’ soulless army only to be shot at by the cops a few minutes later because they are dispensable NPCs. Yes, that happens. Freire argues:
[The conviction of the necessity for struggle] is necessary, that is, unless one intends to carry out the transformation for the oppressed rather than with them. It is my belief that only the latter form of transformation is valid.
Detroit definitely exhibits the former method of transformation. Markus initiates transformation for the oppressed only to use them as pawns for publicity and extra bodies to to take bullets in lieu of the major characters in the story. Despite all that is clearly wrong with this, the game paints Markus as a brave and inspiring leader.
Detroit: Become Human tries so hard to be a serious and powerful social commentary, but its attempts at verisimilitude are futile. Everything about the way David Cage (a white man) portrays oppression and alludes to racism is careless. There are more huge issues with the game, such as its message that peaceful protest guarantees the happiest ending and fewest casualties, while violent riots are always a no no. Those are criticisms for another day.
Reading Freire’s ideas in chapter one of Pedagogy of the Oppressed really helped me to finally pinpoint exactly where Detroit flops, and put it into words. Detroit is simply a ridiculous game with no nuance nor grace when handling the topic of oppression. It is an inauthentic and weak attempt at a futuristic civil rights/Black Lives Matter allegory. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to replay the game because it’s so darn funny.
