Vivec and the Turn of the Century: An Essay on Real World Culture.

As a preface to my usual liberal feminist analysis of Vivec (which I will eventually complete), I want to take a look at the social context that gave rise to him. And I don’t mean Vvardenfell. I mean the Pale Blue Dot. I want to look at how Vivec came to be a video game character in 2002.

Word of warning here, I am talking about real world points of view, so if that is lore-breaking, boring or otherwise not your thing, consider yourself officially warned!

I turned 17 in the year 2000 and in 2002 when Morrowind came out I was in my second year of my undergraduate degree. I was on a very long hiatus from PC gaming at that point in my life, because of school and poverty, but I was steeped in the zeitgeist in which those stories were written. I will add now that this is not the sole interpretation of North American life at that epoch, but it is the historical lens through which I see not only Vivec, but any other pop culture reference between 1998 and 2008, when the recession hit.

They were strange days. Y2K hysteria, people thought it was the end of the world, climate change was coming onto the agenda, with stories of doom and gloom to come. Second wave feminism was giving way to a broader conversation about gender identity, self-determination and the language we use. It was also a time when radical Islam, evangelical Christianity and atheism were emerging on the world stage as drivers of social policy.

All those elements are still in play today, of course, because these movements have narratives that span generations, not mere decades. However, the turn of the century, the late 90s and those early “Aught” years were a turning point in our global culture. The internet was hitting a massive growth spurt in that period, with the first generation of social media platforms and peer to peer filesharing networks were coming out. Things we take for granted now were novel and even more unsettling a mere fifteen-ish years ago.

When the elements above are combined with Y2K hysteria and 9/11 afterwards, it creates a very tense atmosphere at every level. Trust in “the system” was shattered, people were angry and afraid. Everyone deals with their anger and fear differently, but for a certain demographic, truth was found in the airing of our social dirty laundry, confronting it, and mocking it, with very little regard for the feelings of others. That is where we had the emergence of Futurama, the Sopranos, the Wire, Family Guy, Arrested Development, South Park (they came out earlier yes, but arguably there was a huge jump in complexity around 1998 or 1999). You have characters in each of those shows that mistreat and unfavourably represent humanity in general.

This is not a coincidence. This the trend in exploring these sensitive and uncomfortable issues, by making light, by brutally and dramatically exposing, by pushing the boundaries and forcing people (including the writers themselves) to acknowledge the evils in the world around them. There were many people who consumed this media because it was a reflection of their own angst and their own struggle to make sense of a rapidly changing, increasingly globalised, world.

Zeroing in on video game culture in particular in this political and cultural context, let us look further at was would influence and inspire a game designer in the late 1990s and at the turn of the century. Outside of North America, where else are video games made and sold en masse? Oh yeah Japan. Japan, whose economy had been flatlining for a decade or more at that point; Japan with the second-highest suicide rate in the developed world; Japan that was reeling from a devastating cult subway attack in 1995; where self-determination and consent are very different concepts than in the West; the alternate-reality giant on whose shoulders the video game industry stands.

You take the wider global upheaval and blend that with an industry that has been driven by its own set of variables for several decades; and somehow we come to a lonesome, transcendental elf. He is an enigmatic figure, tightly woven of concepts and themes that bind him firmly to our world, and also anchor the Elder Scrolls universe as something different from other “high fantasy” franchises. Vivec is not the only character that does such a thing, but he is who I am talking about today, and I have a personal word limit.

Taking this point of view further, let us apply them to a few key concepts that surround Vivec, notably CHIM, abuse, identity and love.

Let us begin with CHIM; specifically the idea of retconning. The idea of manipulating a narrative has had social relevance for eons (see Orwell); but it gained renewed significance around the turn of the century. There was quite a bit of this in recent history of American presidents, from Watergate, to Reagan’s hidden Alzheimers, the Lewinsky Affair and subsequent impeachment, Bill Clinton’s pathetic lies about marijuana use, George W. Bush’s worse hypocrisies about his past drug use and actual personal values, and that is just Presidents and their personal machinations! There is also the Cold War and its endless ending, the complex and ever changing story of America’s relationship with Saddam Hussein, the Catholic Church doing away with Limbo and then Purgatory, covering up molestation scandals for centuries, the abuse of indigenous people; the turn of the century was a great time to reinvent ourselves and totally lie about everything that had ever happened.

Is it not suprising that we then encountered video game character with the power to rewrite history?

This brings us to the abuse: the abuse of power, the abuse of Authority, the PATRIOT Act, terrorism, water-boarding, martial law, genocide, ethnic cleansing, globalisation, blood for oil, and blood for diamonds. It’s an old wound now, but back then this was THE WOUND, it was a time when the powers of government all over the world were stepped up several notches, and the citizenry was often not pleased, but fear allowed them to allow it.

It is well established that Vivec was both the abused and the abuser. Given the state of American, and arguably world culture at the time, it would make sense for there to be elements of both helplessness, and a burning desire to degrade and harm.

With the rise of the volatile trifecta of radical Islam, fundamentalist Christianity and atheism, or at least awareness of these things, came a new dimension to gender politics. Using the lens of all three points of view highlighted the harm in the gender binary more than it have had been before, thanks to the explosive influence of the internet and the birth of mainstream social media around this time. Visions of female and non-binary oppression clashed with images of declining birthrates and the supposed disintegration of the nuclear family.

While the rights of women and the non-heteronormative were advancing at a decent enough tick in the developed world, so was the backlash against it. It has been a two-steps forward/one step back situation since.

As a community we have often struggled with Vivec’s role as both abused and abuser, what this represents and whether or not this is or should be offensive and to whom. Today I am not here to say he is not offensive, or to excuse how he is portrayed or portrays others. Today I am here to provide an explanation for the social context that gave rise to Vivec the Character, because I personally feel he fits in well with the zeitgeist of those turbulent years because...well, those were pretty offensive and abusive times.

Popular culture in the Aught years were rife with people who represented themselves, their cultures, genders and their creators, in offensive and derogatory ways: Jim McNulty, Walter White, the Griffins, the Simpsons, the Sopranos, the Bluths, to name a few off the top of my head. There are countless examples of abusive behaviour in each of those examples, encompassing a wide range of unacceptable emotional, sexual and physical violence. Vivec is in the same vein. These violent and abusive representations are not only of individuals and families, but of our institutions and social systems.

Vivec, occupying a wholly fictional world, is extra multi-faceted. He not only reflects the hypocritical and self-deceiving culture of Morrowind (they feel discriminated against outside of Morrowind, but can be just as xenophobic, and have a history of slavery and exploitation); but also the hypocritical and self-deceiving culture of America (who felt threatened by other countries, but can be just as xenophobic, and have a history of slavery and exploitation). He also provided excellent examples of how individuals treat each other poorly, the failures of family bonds and the loneliness and corruption wrought by great power and influence. He and his triune siblings demonstrated as well relationships between individuals and their “betters” in power, the good, the bad, and the horrible.

As for identity, Vivec does not fit into any clear definition. He is certainly not heteronormative/cissexual, but also not a good fit anywhere on the LGTTBQ spectrum. He’s more Ranma ½ than anything. He can be Vehk the Man, Vehk the God, Vehk the Bride, Vehk the Mother, Vehk the Son, there are lots of different Vehks. He is all of them but not usually all at once.

Gender politics aside, this is again a reflection of “Aught” year ambivalence. Countries and people were realigning themselves in a rapidly globalizing culture and economy. China was (and is) struggling to balance newfound prosperity with a desire to keep wages and their currency extremely low. Russia’s fledgeling democracy was just coming under Putin’s rule. Marriage equality was coming forward on many national agendas. The Catholic Church experienced devastating losses in attendance, while other Christian denominations saw attendance surge around the world.

Cultures and therefore people were being forced to define themselves against this inconstant background. Artistic media retained this ambivalence, diversity and upheaval. Socially inept characters who failed utterly at functional relationships prevailed in media because the old rules were no longer relevant, and the new rules were not clear.

Which brings me to the final concept, LOVE: apply capitalization where you personally see fit. Vivec seems to think a lot about love, redefines it for the reader, challenges the reader to look past their own presumedly narrow views on love. The truth is that the definition of love has changed over the course of human history, and different definitions have always coexisted in different parts of the world. Love was once the loyalty between families, and this was the foundation of the marriage. Love was once the duty owed by a wife to her husband, or children to their birth parents. Love was the animal desire to protect and nurture your genetic own. Love was an all-encompassing, compassionate bond between partners and children. Love was the offer of protection and succor. Love was sexual availability or exclusivity. Love was a reason to control. Love was a mutually beneficial series of transactions. Love was a justification for violence.

In the 36 Lessons of Vivec, we all know the line

> “The birth of God from the netchiman’s wife is the abortion of kindness from Love.”

Sure, fine, but that is just one way of looking at Love, and nowhere does it negate any other kind of love. Also, pretty sure Vivec is capable of pretty much every kind of love I listed above, not just the one he presented in that single verse. It could be that just his birth represented that kind of dark and unhappy Love, he just wrote it with a capital because all love is sacred in its own way. No matter how ugly love/Love is, it is what ties us all together.

And the definition of love was a hot topic of debate in those years surrounding Vivec’s conception. We have discussed the changing of the guard in the feminist movement, as well as the legitimization of non-hetero-normative love. In a newly globalised world, people had to confront different cultures’ understanding on love, and how communities were build on varying social contracts and degrees of affection. Love exists in rigid and abusive relationships. Love exists in the detached ecstasy of nirvana. Love exists in patriarchies, matriarchies, monarchies and anarchies.

Vivec, like many contemporaneous characters, gives us a sophisticated and pithy view into the creative, social and political climates of the ‘90s and the ‘00s. He is unique in many ways, but still very much a product of the pop culture of that generation. Through his powers of CHIM, and representation of violence, identity and love, he allows the reader to gain a broader understanding of the human condition at a very crucial point in modern human history and social evolution.