"The sky's blue and the sun is high. The prices here are so high, it'll make your face turn blue! That's Summers!" - Swimmer "Don't talk to me. My mind is completely blank." - Woman on the Beach "Only a tanning pro like me is able to get an actual suntan on the palms of his hands!" - Tanning Guy  The town of Summers is a upscale hot-spot frequented by the rich and beautiful. The architecture is extravagant and anything you can purchase appears at inflated costs. Towns in Earthbound generally try to take on one distinct personality (whether by climate, geography, cultural affiliation, or organization). Summers represents the ideal beach vacation for the young and old alike. Below are examples of stereotyped people; muscle-head beach head (in the museum oddly enough) and your classic overweight 1940's rich lady with her necklace of pearls "enjoying the beauty of the town" by sitting in the nicest hotel in the game. The only minority character in the entire town is working the food stand on the beach. There are so many stereotypes collaged together in this location it could perhaps be considered an conceptual or installation art in itself. I could imagine you could take this town out of the context of the game and put it on display for people to question the integrity of the designer's political correctness.  But within the town itself there is an instance of installation art: The Stoic Club.  The Stoic Club is a private club whose purpose is derived from a "magical" rock which is displayed on stage in the front of the room. Members of the club are told the rock has special powers therefore they are encouraged to associate themselves with it. The game designers/writers clearly had the intention of poking fun at upperclass society. Often times installation art or conceptual art is seen as being appreciated by aristocrat snobs who are more interested in the "image" of being at an art expo than the actual art itself. While this isn't necessarily true, Earthbound chooses to take this stereotype and play on it. The patrons of the Stoic Club "say a lot without really saying anything," like in the examples below: "Didactically speaking, seminal evidence seems to explicate the fact that your repudiation of entropy supports my theory of space-time synthesis. Of this, I am irrefutably confident." - Self-Proclaimed TheoristThe concept of Installation Art is used as a convention in which to base some of the more absurd developments in the story. In many ways the game's oddities are equally (if not more so) Conceptual. Basically Ness and his party are looking for a way to get across the sea and the sailor won't leave port without a piece of Magic Cake which is no longer for sale because the woman who baked is was consumed by the Stoic Club's lifestyle. A man in the club gives you a clue that the Magic Cake woman is by the door: "Fat Guy – You know, I really want to eat some Magic Cake. It’s a mysterious work of art…I can’t get that cake out of my mind. There’s only one woman who can make Magic Cake…She’s hanging out in this club…Yeah, she’s over there at the entrance. Anyway, the absolute irony and study of self identification is…Blah, blah, blah…I don’t know what to do!" Ness asks the woman about the cake as she is reaching "enlightenment" and quickly pulls her back to reality, where the game dictates she should most naturally be. This is her natural state because she is low/middle class (as her profession would imply). "I’ve finally awakened the inner me, the true self. The patrons of this club are able to stare into their soul hard enough to burn a hole in their psyche. I’m now comfortable enough to stare at the real me, the true self, and burn the impression into my super-ego. I want to be in this comfort zone at any time, all the time, or at no time. My id is telling me... What? What? Magic Cake? You came all this way just to eat my Magic cake?" She snaps out of it and "comes back down" and the game moves onto something not quite so strange: a completely magical land made up of Ness's dreams and nightmares.
Back To Main Page |
