Interview: Clive Barker
- October 23, 2007 13:09 PM PST
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Page 1.) Clive talks about crafting Jericho, and what inspired him to make the game
Page 2.) Clive talks about the heroe's journey, video games as art, and Roger Ebert
Page 3.) Clive talks about culture and video games, and making a game with a gay lead character
Well it does concern me. I think as this vocabulary is discovered and realized what it will do is allow not only the creators of these games deeper inside them, but also allow the players to delve a little deeper inside of the work, to a place of real exploration because our culture is reflected inside of these games.
CB: I absolutely agree with you. For years now we've looked at our movies and known that they reflected who we were as a culture, and sometimes that's not a pretty picture. It would be stupid not to look at those things though video games. What you say is absolutely right. We should be looking at the cultural artifacts in games that are so central, particularly to the younger elements in our culture; because they are being shaped by the stories they are being told. It's a dance in which you have to have two parts. An artist can not dance alone. There are no solos for artists.
One of the reasons I made the decision to move to San Francisco was to be part of a writing community that supports and realizes me as a gay man writing and creating art to motivate and change a cultural identity. For someone like you who was lived and worked in so many artistic communities, how have issues of gender affected you in the game community?
I want to be part of a team that creates a game with a gay man or woman in the lead role where they are casually sexual, just as heterosexual characters are casually sexual in games.
CB: Well, trust me when I say I have plans. One of the characters in Jericho is a lesbian. It's very hard in a fist-person shooter to do things with the delicate issues of gender and to explore who she is when she puts the gun down. If you put the gun down some monster's going to eat you. One day I want to be part of a team that creates a game with a gay man or woman in the lead role where they are casually sexual, just as heterosexual characters are casually sexual in games, and have the public be perfectly comfortable with it. My belief is that audiences are perfectly comfortable with it already. I think it tends to be people in marketing departments that are most frightened by those types of ideas.
As a gay man I've been writing about gay men and women from the beginning, from my first three Books of Blood. A screen writer came to see me a few years back. As he was leaving I could tell he had something to say so I said, "you obviously have something on your mind, what is it?" and he said, "I don't know how to say this so I'll just come out with it. You wrote a story a few years back called 'In the Hills, the Cities' with two gay protagonists and there was a sex scene between the two of them. When I read it that was the first time that I realized there were other people out there like me, and I realized you must be one of them because you described the taste of sin, I tasted my own soul and I was 14 and I knew you must have tasted it too." He was crying when he was saying this.
"I've had bad judgments made against my work because people don't like the way I talk about religion but I've never had anybody complain about the blow jobs."
This is why I believe fantasy, and I'm not totally comfortable using that word, but it can sometimes, by leading you through a higher realism, lead you back into yourself, back into the mythic self, the deep self, the sexual self. Interestingly that story, both my agent who was gay, and my editor fought ferociously for me to not publish it because it was my first book and what was I doing identifying myself as a gay man. They thought I was killing my career right there. That story won several awards for best fantasy short story and that was the end of that. I've never knowingly had any bad judgment made against my work because of my sexuality.
I've had bad judgments made against my work because people don't like the way I talk about religion but I've never had anybody complain about the blow jobs. I think we're going to eventually get to the place we games will give us all these freedoms and all these intimacies of all the poetry in the world. We're not there yet, but we'll be there soon. The more voices like your's and mine that are heard will make this community better.
