A life after capitalism, after colonialism: Mutazione's small-town tragedies
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I’ve become obsessed with Olive Garden ads. In one from 2009, a mom and son visit the restaurant because dad’s working late and only a plate of grilled chicken crostada can fill that fatherly gap. In another from 1998, the host’s “big Italian family” pass a baby around the table and pour glasses of wine from dangerous angles. And of course, every ad ends with that familiar catchphrase, “when you’re here, you’re family.”
This phrase was laser etched onto my subconscious long before I ever even ate at an Olive Garden (we were a Fazoli’s family…yes, I had a difficult childhood). It is one of the earliest examples I was exposed to of brands trying to be my friend, masquerading as Italian caregivers whose lot in life was grating cheese and making sure the salad bowl was never empty. It’s absurd, yet the slogan’s wild success hints at how appealing this idealized, commercial nonsense vision of a family dinner must be to a certain class of people (broadly, suburban white folx).
Michael Mario Albrecht describes Olive Garden as a non-place holding pseudo-events that nonetheless “wants to be a ‘real’ place or a ‘real’ event.” It purports authenticity yet delivers a pastiche of foodstuffs widely deemed anything but. It exists on the corner yet aspires to be a doorway into an Italian kitchen. I think about Olive Garden a lot in regards to the increasing consolidation and commodification of all forms of culture - food, music, literature, video games. It is a place widely derided yet ubiquitous, an inescapable presence on every block. It masquerades and something authentic yet has been replicated brick by brick like so many McDonalds across the world. The food is fine and cheap, and there is so very, very much of it to go around.
As globalization and capitalism work to shrink all aspects of life into interchangeable items on a dollar menu it has become increasingly difficult to articulate what local culture and community even look like anymore. Is it something of a place, simple geographical distance? Is it grown, a tradition and style evolving through generations? Is it any number of people sharing a space, physically, digitally, intellectually? And if it is any or all of these, can they exist apart from the economic and climatic forces pushing ever in on them?
Mutazione (Die Gute Fabrik, 2019) is “a mutant soap opera where small-town gossip meets the supernatural.” It takes place on an island that was forgotten by the mainland after a meteor destroyed the town and evolved mutant humanoids who now call it home, with only the occasional trading of goods and a phone line tying it to the rest of society. Despite its small population and isolation, the town has spawned a great deal of life - music, a bar, local cuisine. When your character, Kai, first arrives, Mutazione appears cozy and quaint. Perhaps a bit insular, but these people have found a way to sustain themselves and develop a form of life within the boundaries of the island.
Quickly, though, it is clear that the environment is failing and interpersonal drama is brewing between the dozen or so people who call the island home. Mutazione is still wrestling with the after-effects of colonialism and its inherent trauma, and the impact of which is felt by both the island and everyone who lives on it. With so little distance between one another, everyone inevitably is in each other’s business, the idyllic picture of a small town giving way to petty fights and lingering pain.
I grew up in a small town and went to a small college for undergrad. I have known the characters of Mutazione, seen these same challenges emerge between friends and family, and had to live in the aftermath of turmoil both small and large. There is something about being in a small place that creates a lot of subconscious imperatives. Each friendship, each relationship has to be eternal because there are only so many people around you. Projects need to succeed as failure will ricochet out onto every aspect of life. When everyone knows everything about you the pressure to be exceptional is suffocating.
These problems boil over halfway through Mutazione as characters recognize the impossibility of living in a small town with secrets and animosity. And people get hurt. What felt like a good idea at the time cascades into other aspects of life and now everyone is on eggshells waiting for things to calm down. It’s an uncomfortable position to stay in. Kai would walk in on conversations she shouldn’t have heard and stumble into discussions characters were not ready to have, becoming both centered and outside the drama as the only third party in miles.
It’s hard to write interpersonal drama in a way that isn’t at least a bit schadenfreude and voyeuristic, but Mutazione works hard to empathize with everyone in its cast. Everyone is carrying some form of trauma, many having lost family members, and that comes out in the different ways people try to resolve a pain that can’t ever fully go away. No one is evil, they’re just people who make mistakes and have to live with that any way they can.
In the end, the big-picture issues are resolved, a sort of peace is achieved between everyone in the town, and Kai promises to remain a part of the island even as she returns to shore. It is a happy ending for a game intensely about the lingering impact of trauma and the challenges of living in a small town and left me feeling strangely melancholy as I look out at my town, so broken and toxic by comparison.
Mutazione is about small-town life, but it’s a small town as couldn’t be known in the US. It exists post and outside the reach of capitalism, climate change, and bigotry. The biome can be fixed; relationships can be mended. The broad institutional issues which have decimated small towns across the US can’t reach Mutazione (in fact, the outer world makes a point not to even try). It has been forgotten by the colonialist scientists who once sought to harvest its resources, by industrialism which now exists only as an abandoned shopping mall. Life on Mutazione isn’t perfect, but it feels fixable.
When I look at my small town all I see are Olive Gardens. I see people acting out community but being unable or unwilling to fix structural issues. I see insularity rather than warmth, selfishness in place of solidarity. I am just one person in one town but the forces which created this place - imperialism, colonialism, murder, money - remain alive and stretch across this entire country.
That isn’t to say nothing is happening here. The work of mutual aid groups, especially in the wake of Covid-19 and the ongoing protests, has been remarkable and is incredibly important. But as they stand these are stop-gap efforts to survive under a government that would prefer we die quietly. Supplies will run out. We’ll lose our energy. Autonomous zones will be consumed back into the national hegemony. This model of community is unsustainable because the infrastructure around it is unsustainable, and I don’t know how to dismantle that infrastructure when it’s also the only thing keeping me housed and fed.
So when I look at the photo taken at the end of Mutazione - every character in the game squeezing into the frame, their disagreements resolved, the environment restored - I see a version of life that feels unattainable. I can go on YouTube and see every Olive Garden ad that’s ever run but I can’t bring back the trees use to build its restaurants. I can take my white family out for dinner, but I can’t restore the gentrified community that was pushed out to build more suburbs.
Mutazione imagines a beautiful and complex life founded on a small, self-sustaining community and a respect for the natural world. It is charming and warm but also plain about the challenges of sustaining a community like this. It reckons with the contradictions of colonialist greed and asks if things couldn’t be rebuilt without hierarchies and violence. I have been wondering that a lot as I’ve watched the US destroy itself over the last few months/years. I wish I was as sure as Kai about the answer.
Mutazione is available now for Windows, Mac, Linux, Playstation 4, and iOS. I played it to completion on PC.
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