Is Super Mario Brothers A Surrealist Masterpiece?

[@Angutut]

Dude he punches the blocks, his hand is a pixel above his head when jumping

[@pbsideachannel]

Oh right. I think I got this wrong 5 years ago too. Some people never learn. And by people I mean me.

[@robeeri]

I actually was gonna ask, what drove you to rehash this topic after 5 years? Is it related to the ending of Idea Channel and/or that this topic was the very first topic on the channel?

[@kythca]

also, it was announced in 2014 that Hello Kitty is not a cat, but a human girl.

[@pbsideachannel]

oh

[@andymesa3307]

I honestly thought it was a joke, because you *did* get this wrong before too.

[@AReaderOfHorror]

I'm gonna miss this so much. Your show has been a great part of my week for the last year when it popped into my recommendations. I wish you a lot of luck on your next series of ventures.

[@pbsideachannel]

Thanks, Hammad! Thanks for joining us and hopefully I'll see you on the other side. Of YT. That is.

[@XIDoStuffX]

It seems I'm out of the loop, is something happening to this channel?

[@Hockeyluke1042]

XIDoStuffX watch the vid from two weeks ago called Idea Channel is Ending

[@hlmgamer]

they are going to stop the channel, not delete but stop as in no more new videos for more info check Q&A they uploaded

[@XIDoStuffX]

Oh... Wow. Thanks for the heads up.

[@verdatum]

"While the collected Mario universe doesn't traffic in the bleak, crowded commercialism of dank cyberpunk landscapes..." *quietly sneaks in footage of the Super Mario Bros film.* I...I don't know how I am going to get by without this channel. Who does this? Who else does subtle well on KZbin?

[@Mrich775]

I showed this to my 87 year old father who never heard of Mario, he was fascinated! It was interesting to hear from the point of view you describe in the very beginning, the rare person with no idea who mario is at all.

[@pbsideachannel]

Whaaaat! Amazing!

[@Mrich775]

Holy cow, Ive been here since the beginning, never commented, first time ever and i get a reply! That's a good record haha!

[@pbsideachannel]

Now you're 2 for 2! Hot dang! :D

[@Mrich775]

In all seriousness, this show is a huge part of my life and thank you, this inspired me coming out of the army to return to school, and I am now in my masters program slogging towards a phd in philosophy with hopes to teach others. Without your constant inspiration I would not be where I am today

[@robinbowman1926]

It's people like you and channels like PBS Idea Channel that give my hope for humanity. Colin Richard, thanks for hanging out.

[@QuijanoPhD]

A few years ago in a conference I made the argument that Journey and Flower were poetry, specifically romantic poetry in the tradition of William Wordsworth's nature poetry. Compared to my suggestion that a primarily visual and interactive medium is an extension of a linguistic medium, your proposal that a visual and interactive medium is an extension of a visual movement is nothing but sensible.

[@forrestmitchell1805]

Are you talking about Journey and Flower made by Thatgamecompany? If so, I 100% agree

[@QuijanoPhD]

@@forrestmitchell1805 Yep. One of the two books I'm currently working on (Games as Lit) includes an expanded version of that conference paper, as well as some analysis of works like Witcher 3, Bioshock, Dante's Inferno, etc. Maybe it'll come out sometime 2022-23 (after my more urgent volume on Final Fantasy).

[@forrestmitchell1805]

@@QuijanoPhD wow, that sounds awesome! Keep up the great work!

[@brennonbrunet6330]

This channel remains a source of ideas that manage to re-center me during turbulent times. Bring this back!

[@aaronborok8398]

Taking your very first episode and redoing it to a deeper context to further illustrate just how far Idea Channel has come? Now you're just trying to make me cry.

[@KoenvMeijel]

This was a very interesting theory, I loved it! The only thing I can contribute to this theory is the following: in contrast to the surrealist art, Mario has consistency. In almost every game, the same "surreal" elements appear, so as a result, it is not as random and unexpected as the artform.

[@xtxpxhx]

Koen v. Meijel +

[@KevinCow]

One thing that I think differentiates Mario games greatly from the surrealist art that you compare them to is that, as an interactive medium, many (possibly most) of the design decisions were more practical than aesthetic. They created an enemy that was functionally fun and interesting, then they figured out a visual design that would communicate that functionality to the player most effectively. So whereas Dali probably went in thinking, "I'm going to draw melting clocks," Miyamoto and co. didn't go in thinking, "We're going to make a game about a plumber who fights living mushrooms, various types of turtles, and carnivorous plants," but rather went in thinking, "We need an enemy that is clearly vulnerable to being jumped on, and enemy that can be stunned by being jumped on, an enemy that moves and hurts you if you jump on it, an enemy that's stationary and grows out of pipes and hurts you if you jump on it..." and so on. That's not to say there was no aesthetic thought put into the design, or that it necessarily had to be as surreal as it turned out. I just think it's interesting to consider the impact functionality had on the design.

[@Xidnaf]

:D I love how at the end he ties it in with the whole mission statement of Idea Channel

[@hq4287]

Hope you are doing ok 🙂 you are among my favourite KZbinrs. 💕

[@napdogs]

This channel has left a hole no where else on the internet has been able to fill. I miss it so much.

[@DreamcastGuy]

I've heard of a Mario. Nice guy. Great taste in shrooms.

[@pkfatstephen1319]

One other thing to keep in mind w/ Super Mario's inception was the need to make the game palpable to a western audience. One of the most interesting things about SMB was Koji Kondo's composition of the music, which combined both western & eastern compositional structures. At the time this was a game changer in music as it was commonly believed that you could only do one or the other w/ any amalgamation being viewed as an audio abomination. Kinda funny to think the NES at the time was viewed merely as a children's toy but would be one of the biggest game changers in music theory of the century.

[@crushermach3263]

That's not an accident, at least not in North America. You may have heard of something called "the North American video game crash of 1983". In an effort to market the NES more effectively Nintendo advertised it mainly as a toy. I'm not old enough to remember it personally, but I think it's important to realize that videogames started out as a curiosity, like many technologies, and that set norms for who could or couldn't use them hadn't developed yet. Then Atari shot themselves in the foot and now we're all paying for it.

[@pkfatstephen1319]

well, it's important to remember video games were considered back then a children's toy. An expensive children's toy. Advertisements for NES games for old Kmart ads price The Legend of Zelda at its release at 50$, which according to the CPI inflation calculator that would be the equivalent of paying 112$ for a game today. So, it was important for a video game to be a few things: - Be punishing enough (by today's video game standards) to keep a kid playing for a substantial amount of time, thus justifying the cost of the game to parents. Considering each game was such a high price, it was important to keep parents in the know that this game would give more than just a week's worth of entertainment for Jimmy - be interesting, varied, & playable to be considered an investment. A big part of the video game market crash of '83 was blamed on ET in big part to this. If ET were released today we would probably just sigh and consider it shovelware. However, pre-crash of '83, it was common for new games to cost 60$ at toy stores, or around 135$ in today's money, and ET had a hype-train due to the promises of Atari the same year as the blockbuster movie's release. It seemed like money in the bag, but when the gameplay was frustrating enough Jimmy refused to play it, parents raised hell and wanted a refund on the 135$ flop & at that point that wasn't anything new. Game developers had been struggling to find new and interesting ways to make games, but back then it was still uncharted territory. Atari wanted to put products on the shelf, but it was either a barely playable concept like ET or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or it was another arcade-hit clone. Occasionally they would release a solid game w/ a new concept like Adventure. Nintendo had a ton of hardware reasons why they were able to make games more advance when the system came out, but even it was limited by devs who weren't sure how to make a game. Most conventions we're used to in games today - tutorials; exposition; a sense of choice in what to do to complete the game; standardised controls - didn't start to take root until the 16-bit era. - (from Nintendo at least) be able to market internationally, particularly in the US, as there was a rising market between the Japanese & States and mutual interest in each other's pop culture. This is why the music from Mario was so important as Nintendo didn't want to alienate possible western audiences.

[@crushermach3263]

I'm kinda curious what the actual demographics were for the Atari consoles. Did the kiddy perception really start at Atari or was it Nintendo trying to buy back trust like I thought?

[@Theraot]

Miyamoto has expressed that he designs mechanics first and a̶p̶p̶a̶r̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ appearance later

[@Theraot]

... And Jump Man was meant to be a solution to not have to desing new characters for every game

[@Sly_Maverick_31]

*appearance

[@krp8154]

*apparients

[@GilTheDragon]

The idea that chaotic art is a response to the overwhelming order of fascism is interesting though. Fascism depends on strictly ordered and coherent symbols and narratives. Eclectic symbol bashing is a sort of resistance; and fairytale logic (ie dream logic) does sorta reflect that sort of nonsense just becauseness...and Mario is, very much structured like a fairy tale.

[@MoonwalkerWorshiper]

Mario is dressed up as a communist and many asians (koreans, chinese, japanese) are involved with leftist movements such as fascism or communism. And the reason it seems to be structured like a fairy tale is because Miyamoto likes Disney. And as we all know, it's a lie that Mario is like a fairy tale, it only occasionally looks like one. It's actually structured like a video game, sorry to tell. Super Mario games are shock full of symbols aswell.

[@TheTophat22]

THE NOODLE SHOT!!! HE USED THE SUPER BUNNYHOP NOODLE SHOT!!

[@brunodantasm]

oh shit mike+george collab confirmed

[@marlonyo]

i thin that this point the noodle shot might have outgrown super bunny hop. it is now just the noodle shot and it will soon out grown everything else when alien think of earth culture they will think of the noodle shot

[@dryb0nes-gmd]

so will both genders be noodle shot? will humans be noodle shots? will the earth eventually turn into a noodle shot? am i already a noodle shot?

[@TheTophat22]

The heart may wane, But the noodles are forever~

[@WednesdaysSerial]

saw that too...

[@Em905]

Mario Brothers is not a surrealist masterpiece… but it could have been. The pixelated resolution of early Mario Brothers games doesn’t satisfy Surrealism’s need for photorealism and therefore uncanniness. Surrealist art is unsettling because it is uncanny, it makes the strange or the impossible look real. Mario didn’t look real, and now that graphics have improved, we are too familiar with Mario to see him as strange. If Mario Brothers was released for the first time today, with modern graphics, it could have been a surrealist masterpiece. That being said, the video game medium is definitely the next logical step for surrealism as an artistic movement. Breton would have gone crazy for it, especially for VR (because of its dreamlike qualities). VR has it all, photorealism, automatism, uncanniness, strangeness, and there are some cool people doing really awesome things with surrealism and VR (see Justin Roiland’s “Accounting”)

[@almightytreegod]

Em905 relevant: goo.gl/images/UiFvrR

[@Kithara1117]

based on this statements, you maybe aren't aware of the growing discomfort with Mario characters as uncanny, now that their individual hairs and pores are visible. I've heard (prior to this video and not in the context of surrealism as art) numerous folks complain of Mario's (Mario's and Waluigi's, in particular) uncanny appearance increasingly since I think Galaxy 2.

[@Stephen-Fox]

@MeiaLua - You mean stuff like the discovery of a single grey hair in some of the promotional images released for Odyssey?

[@peardude8979]

I feel like this is what's going on with the next Mario game, Super Mario Odyssey. Placing Mario in a world with real people with the ability to possess things with Mario's hat (or is Mario the hat?) is far more surrealist than other Mario games have strived to be.

[@Kithara1117]

That's definitely one of the most recent, but not the first. That, coupled with the fact that in the upcoming game he also inhabits a city with normally proportioned people, is getting increasingly uncanny.

[@notnowliberty]

I will miss this channel...

[@AREAlhero]

If you think the concepts in Mario can be connected to surrealism already, you should read the manual to Super Mario Bros! From my recollection, and its been a few years, the blocks that Mario punches to get coins and power-ups from are actually the denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom, turned into that form by Bowser's Koopa magic (I don't remember if they were also transformed into the contents of the blocks or just made the blocks themselves, if anyone knows for sure please let me know). The blocks that don't hold power-ups break if Mario is large and breaks them (otherwise they just lose their contents and remain floating in the air for the rest of time). This detail only exists in the manual, and has never been directly referenced by any game as far as I can recall and have played, but in some interpretations it can definitely add to the surrealistic nature of Mario. Is Bowser's curse on the Mushroom Kingdom representative of Breton's belief that, by turning the Kingdom into coins, they are themselves trapped to be implements of materialism? Most likely not but man is it fun to think of it as such!

[@torabisurandomT]

+

[@Breshvic]

Oh neat, they used my art piece at 9:40

[@Smilee126]

That's so cool artwork

[@alicepow593]

"I open at the close." I'm such a sucker for things that come full circle. I'm still not over the fact that this is ending. I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop thanking you because I'm just so glad to have been able to be a part of the community of people who enjoy these videos. Thank you so much. As far as the surrealism thing, I think something else to think about is the culture which has led modern 'internet humor' to be so surreal. Can we find some analogous elements in the contexts that gave way to surrealism, the aspects of Japanese society you described, and like most of the internet? Is it just because we grew up on stuff like Mario, or is there more to it?

[@zerikaz55]

Wow, fantastic episode and the foil to the first episode got me extremely emotional. Thanks Mike and everyone involved in making this beautiful artistic expression (refrains from yelling CONTENT in a pirate voice)

[@fitandhappy42]

I'm really glad to see you take a look back at this topic as I personally found that original video to be very reductive, that said I'd be interested to hear your own reasons for wanting to go back to that episode. This one was wonderfully done btw. :)

[@TAEYYO]

Thanks for making this transition as soft as possible--we needed this!

[@shannonp888]

i'm so sad that idea channel is ending, your videos have never failed to blow my mind and make me think outside the box. wish you guys the best and thanks for everything!

[@TheMansterTruck]

Wait didnt we do this one before

[@TheMansterTruck]

Okay good yeah im not going crazy

[@DabIMON]

THANK YOU!

[@drankydrank1]

Same words literally just came out of my mouth. I appreciate the sanity check.

[@3dpprofessor]

Someone must have deleted their response, because I was wondering why the intro and outro looked old Idea Channel.

[@thomasbradleyh]

3D Printing Professor The first episode ever was on this topic ;_;

[@honeybeaniehoneybeanie]

Woah. We're wearing the same shirt right now.

[@pbsideachannel]

We must both have very good taste.

[@techniclepanther7538]

Or very bad taste. Kappa

[@pbsideachannel]

delta? or lambda? I'm lost.

[@massimilianotron7880]

Where can I get that t-shirt *question mark exclamation mark*

[@Floedekage]

Massimiliano, sure you don't mean *interrobang?*

[@madelyn3245]

I miss this show. It was lovely and educational, and reminds me of those theory channels with less jumping to conclusions. 😉 Cool discussion, I learned a lot.

[@gigglysamentz2021]

I thought the link was quite far fetched when it was present, but it's still a good excuse to talk about the origins of surrealism and Japanese culture ^^

[@Toque92]

Mike! You've grown so much! Not only has your presentation skills increased but even the substance. The nuance in your analysis brings a tear to my eye. :)

[@CheddarBayBaby]

So glad you guys tackled this issue. Even having had experience of early Mario games, i distinctly remember seeing screens of Mario 64 back in the 90's as surreal. I have to imagine that it wasn't just the systems limitations, but the combination of the polygons, bright colors and textures just lent a kind of unreality to it all. Any given frame I might catch a glimpse of in Nintendo Power didn't reveal as much about the game as say a screen of Banjo Kazooie, a game with a more internally coherent aesthetic. I can only imagine that to many kids who have not grown up with Mario as much as my generation did, Mario Odyssey will likely appear equally surreal, probably more so.

[@tylerfriesen_2]

I'd like to thank you for the work you've done on Idea Channel. It's taught me to look at the world more critically and has changed how I view it. I often find myself thinking of pop culture and how some of the conclusions I arrive at would make interesting Idea Channel videos. Once again thank you for the great work you've done and good luck in all your future endeavours

[@carlabamesberger1864]

Very sad that the idea channel is ending! Thanks for all of the great ideas and well put together videos! Good luck in your next endeavors.

[@dlivingstonmcpherson]

Loved the ending, man. 10:58 WHAT A TWIST! Idea Channel is the real surrealist masterpiece; unexpectedly juxtaposing the intellectual and abstract with the commercial and commonplace.. all with the hopes of progressing our view of the everyday.

[@fLUTT3RS]

I'm studying art history in college, and I was wondering how you would feel about this idea being the basis for a possible thesis? I don't want to hijack your idea but I also find this kind of comparison extremely fascinating and as I'm pretty much sold on my emphasis being the medium of video games I can't think of many better subjects to tackle...

[@samwisel88]

Wow, I did not expect to choke up when you mentioned the first of the final 3 Idea Channel episodes.

[@franzanth]

Nice tribute to your first episode, Mike. I will miss Idea Channel but can't wait to see what you come up with in the future.

[@moonprincess90]

I'm going to miss this show! Thanks for all the fun and knowledge!

[@Craft2299]

Thanks for introducing me to Andre Breton, his quotes were pretty striking for me. Anyway, you pretty much answered the question for me saying its not entirely surrealism, but also post-maternity. The gamy nature of video games and the language it provides/requires for being understood is directly linked to the art style of most or any games. Its like picking up a happy green mushroom for a 1up, or blood around your screen to show that you are hurting. If you want to look at a game that makes less sense surrealistically than mario, just look up lovely planet, OR The Void. And even those games have gamy like artistic elements for you to tell what is what. While surreal art flies deeper. *I think in short, Mario wants to be surreal, but it also does not want to be alien.*

[@DustinRodriguez1_0]

Fantastic video, it stokes my grief for the coming loss... but one point. You mention a view that Japan skipped modernity straight into post-modernity which is close to true. They were mostly not even an Industrialized nation going into WWII... but it seems improper to skip over the long period during which Japan played a role similar to Chinas currently in the manufacturing sector - namely producing junk and garbage. Yes they produce some of the highest quality goods in the world today, but for quite awhile they struggled, producing low quality goods. It is more like they experienced progression through modernity at hyper speed rather than skipping over it completely. They caught up remarkably quickly, and now sit in the same boat with the rest of the industrialized world, hamstrung by all of the structures, social, economic, and cultural, created to serve assembly-line manufacturing in a world where mental work is the dominant force. If Idea Channel were sticking around, I would outright beg for a video talking about why and how our society came to accept surrealism as the appropriate content for children who are "too young" to grasp realism. 'They think the things on the screen are reality!' 'OK, so let's show them the weirdest, most aggressively unreal things we can manage to come up with' has really always thrown me. If any human being were to accept childrens programming as reality, they would be flatly non-functional and utterly incapable of any sort of existence in our society.

[@projectmalus]

I thought your comment on the problem of the industrialized world nailed it quite succinctly. The children's programming could be seen as developing the part of the mind that perceives the gestalt of systems, in an Emergentism kind of way, something that cannot be deduced from looking at the parts separately thus appearing mysterious.

[@ideamissing]

I am glad that Idea Channel exists. I know it's lame to mention this when you're wrapping up, but even when I didn't agree with the premise of a post, I always enjoyed watching and the thoughts that the discussions provoked. So thank you, everyone who worked on this channel. Also, congratulations to Mike and Molly.

[@Houdini111]

Before I even start the video, I just want to comment and say that seeing this in my subscription box made me tear up. Ending the show by going back to it's beginning. What a way to send it off.

[@BlackShardStudio]

Damn it, why does this channel have to go away? This is the BEST STUFF on KZbin.

[@NerdsmithTV]

Gonna miss this show so much. Thanks for all you've done!

[@Kujakuseki01]

This was an exceptionally well-edited episode. I love it.

[@Avboden]

Seriously! I really hope PBS finds these editor(s) work when this show ends. They are fantastic.

[@StepBackHistory]

This is so much more compelling than the, frankly orientalist readings of Mario as some sort of Shinto parable.

[@ELIOTKEMPER]

I love the parallels here. Reminds me of the Magic the Jazzering episode. Thanks for the insightful look at this global cultural cornerstone before sailing away.

[@TheMaplestrip]

This "random" aspect of _Mario_ is very common in Japanese games in general, from its Famicom contemporaries like _Wonderboy_ and _Bonk_ to RPGs like _StarTropics_, _Earthbound_, and _Persona_, to even more consistent modern universes like _Dark Souls._ This is a good way to approach game design, because traditional narrative techniques don't always keep you engrossed as well in video games. Surrealism is an excellent tool for creating great games that will feel internally consistent.

[@kirstenhupertz1085]

it's actually postmodernism. Super Mario bros is aware of it's state of Beeing as a game. and it doesn't try to hide this fact. actually it plays with it. there are many more reasons why it fits more in the postmodernism than surrealism but there are similarities. I am sorry for my crappy englisch i am not a native speaker. for more explanations read the book from John higgs about the 20 th century.

[@22nickmclean]

There's a great fan theory that all the characters in Mario are actually actors aware they are in a video game. Explains the curtain opening in Super Mario 3 and why Mario plays as the knight in shining overalls in most games but can ham it up with bowzer to play tennis or go-karting.

[@almightytreegod]

Idea Channel just proved you can "overthink" something you already "overthought." And I'm really going to miss that.

[@Lexyvil]

Awesome and ironic that you uploaded this, as I was recently playing Super Mario Bros 3 with a friend earlier. Even today it's amazingly addicting.

[@2442MTS]

Challenging some regime, indeed. It’s interesting that you took an old video idea and went above and beyond it. You repurposed it to respond to a new context, to try to start a different conversation. It shows that it is never the idea itself, but how we approach it and what meaning we can make of it. An idea evolves over time.

[@jeffnicholas6342]

"Embiggening mushrooms" I hope Webster and the OED count this as usage and will eventually canonize 'embiggen' into our lexicon

[@Maxxthegreat111]

Yo, shout outs to Brian Nils Johnson and Ben Cheek. Idea channel is made by how good its editing is.

[@davidmfra]

production quality is over the top!

[@BatteryExhausted]

Just found your channel. 10 seconds into this video and I subbed. You had me at surrealist art. No wait. At Mario.

[@gigiduru125]

This channel was for a time the best thing on yt, didn't even notice it dissapeared

[@ellentheeducator]

I hadn't really noticed before, and I suppose it's a bit late, but my auditory processing issues were acting up, and I was wondering how much work it would be to set up the CC for these videos. The auto-generated ones do a bit, but have issues with names

[@pbsideachannel]

We get CC for most videos, it just takes a couple days after publish. I know it isn't ideal, but it's ended up being the system that works the best for us.

[@ellentheeducator]

That's probably why I hadn't noticed before. Thanks

[@lauren081087]

I love that you weren't back to the idea where it all began 🖤🖤🖤

[@doughboydevito4529]

3:27-3:36 Hope nobody opened up that window when you said that sentence.

[@jaketeen1987]

I love everything about this! How do you think that the tension between hyper-modernity/futurism and the traditionalist/conservative movement that's been picking up over the last decade or so (notably in the form of the very conservative Prime Minister Abe, but also in more extreme groups like the Japan First Party) fits into Azuma's theoretical framework?

[@mjoshkirby]

Well look at that wedding ring.

[@hlmgamer]

yes u has seen his Instagram

[@brockmckelvey7327]

Why this video, of all the Idea Channel videos? Was the original too short? Are there any other Idea Channel videos you'd want a newer look at?

[@wafflezorz1]

'Smashing your head against bricks for coins' all I could think was: capitalism!

[@myrec8883]

Mario originally break blocks with hand.

[@joegrimes9232]

HIS HAND....TOOL OF THE PROLEAREAT? MARIO IS.....A COMMUN....oh wait we had this one already with gametheory.

[@TheLetterbomber]

Seeing this video in my notifications made me laugh :) This is one of my favourite original episodes

[@CrazyAl1991]

You should have mentioned a very curious coincidence of Mario with Alice in Wonderland (an absurdist genre novel, very similar to surrealist art), namely: that both use mushrooms (hallucinogens? We do not know) to grow in size or dwarf. If the creator of Mario did not come up with that idea copying Alice world that would be hard to believe for me.

[@Ceronocero]

Now we need a video about Luigi

[@OGNoNameNobody]

The Mythos of Mario does seem surrealist out of context, but I point to Captain SNES, fan-made continuation of the popular late '80s SMC that, in a sequence involving Magus from Crono Trigger questing in Super Mario World's Dinosaur Islands, we discover Magus's observations of how Mario's world functions on a system level. The author did a pretty nice job, IMO.

[@mullac1992]

=DESCRIBING SURREALIST ART WHILE USING IMAGES OF DADA= This art student is well and truly miffed

[@Michirin9801]

The very first sentence of the video already earned it a Like

[@MrEGod]

Oh, yeah. Thanks for reminding me to like.

[@BigDaddyWes]

Historical context can be quite hard to see as it's happening sometimes. That's both fascinating and terrifying.

[@GilTheDragon]

Gonna miss this show a ton but: Japan did go through an "in between" period, between the "traditional" and "post modern" the Meiji and War eras are very classically modern. Sure it is only a century or so but a very defining century of growth, technological revolution, and social shifts

[@terrenceblack9782]

I liked this. Good premise, story and editing!

[@gentlydirking4912]

Thank you Mike for one of the best series I've ever watched on youtube. Usually I lose interest after some time, but this is the first time the channel has actively departed. Ps when's reasonably sound back? anyone know?

[@terykprince-hughes1371]

Back in the regular space! I will miss the records on the wall after the show ends :(

[@VirtualMarmalade]

There's one element of surrealism that I would argue is conspicuous by its absence in both Mario and the larger post-modern Japanese culture: surrealist works often seek to make the audience uncomfortable, challenging them directly and giving them a feeling of disquietude to shake them out of their comfort zone. By contrast, Mario and his cultural contemporaries seek to inspire positive feelings* like awe and wonderment to lift up their audience and let them forget the harsh real world by offering something that has similar elements arranged in a more pleasing (if less "sensible") way. So a similar technique to surrealism for sure, but used to a different effect, and I think that's enough to make them quite distinct from one another. *Of course, they can and have also done just the opposite in other genres like Japanese horror for example, but I feel like surrealist works seek the discomfort of the audience with so much more consistency that I think the point still stands.

[@feronanthus9756]

Well... I haven't thought about "Pon Pon Pon" for six years. Thanks for that little throwaway image of it.

[@DylanFergusC]

I swear this episode came out already. Like, I saw the thumbnail yesterday, and I assumed that there had been a copyright take down and re-upload. All the the elements have the familiarity of having seen this exact point being made in a much earlier video of yours. But the the end credits start and you are talking about the actual last episode and I am so confused. Am I in a time loop? Help!

[@peardude8979]

I feel like Super Mario as a series is very familiar. I mean he is probably one of, if not the most iconic video game character in the world.

[@JIYkp]

Luigi was sad when you chose to say 'cousins' instead of 'brothers'.

[@TheOnyomiMaster]

1:14 IT'S RAINING MEN HALLELUJAH

[@AirborneSurfer]

This is how you bookend a series. Well done, Idea Channel!

[@Stephen-Fox]

I honestly wonder if the design of the creatures in Mario might be too... Not realistic, but strictly logical - function defines form - to be considered surrealism. In most cases you can tell exactly how you jumping on an enemy will interact with the enemy just from visual cues - Spiked shell? Take damage. Shell? Recoil into shell which can then be kicked. (Or expelled from shell, depending on game) No shell? Die. Wings? Creature has some kind of jump or hover ability above it's non-winged version. Even the weirder elements come from a very rigid logic - Eat mushroom and grow? Easy way of communicating and letting the player know instantly if they currently have one hit or two before dying, similar to armor vs underwear of Ghosts and Goblins, but with an added twist of the more vulnerable state also giving you more maneuverability. The results may create an overall visual aesthetic that resembles surrealist artwork, but I'm not sure that the building blocks are sufficiently dream-logic - It's not conceptual links, but... Direct communication of affordances. The same design logic that states that you put a handle on a door if it's pull, and a metal plate if it's push - Quick shorthand to communicate how you can interact with it.

[@petartsankov8655]

2:15 you said content, but it somehow is not the same without the pirate voice

[@Edoardocan]

This is a really interesting idea. I wrote my dissertation this year on Surrealism on film and what I found was just how narrow the definition of Surrealism can sometimes be. You touched on the elements of anti-fascism, but I think the Freudian aspect is of equal importance. You see, Surrealism is not about being random, randomness is a feature of Dadaism (Breton's previous passion). Surrealism is a lot more about "The Uncanny" and making psychological, dream-like connections. For example, one could argue that Mario banging his head on a brick cube for coins is a reflection of wage slavery but that might be a stretch, and unlikely intentional. I think Mario is too random and lacks symbolic meaning to be true Surrealism, but this video is nonetheless super interesting and really made me think. I'll miss this channel!

[@Luiz27M]

Will the online merch store remain open once PBS IC ends?

[@Observerofworlds]

Can you do a supercut of deleted scenes/ mistakes?

[@TheSam1902]

Just FYI, at 6:14, the manifesto says "Manifesto of Super Mario, soluble fish"

[@headbangingonfolk]

Mario has become the comfort that we seek, but Surrealism has become that comfort as well. Take for example the works of Vladimir Kush, which you use in the video and whom I love. These works have a figurative basis, which a lot of people still view as "real art", as opposed to the abstract art that came before and after it. Surrealism is modern, but not too modern. The art uses subjects and symbols we recognize, and we have gotten so used to seeing those things being randomly mixed and matched, that it doesn't faze us in the same way it did. I fascinates us, but it doesn't shock any more. It's materials and methods are ingrained in our culture, so it has become comfortable.

[@Rookiewill]

A lot of the elements in the Mario games are actually inspired a lot from Japanese mythology and Japanese culture. To a western society like ours that dont have the same familiarity to these, its bound to look odd and surreal

[@grendelicious]

Somebody was pretty cheeky sneaking an Atari logo in there ;)

[@torabisurandomT]

Also in addition, albeit it a random note, I think of [Braid] as a game where perhaps with its mechanics and design having a surrealist-est intention behind it which hints at the alternative universe wherein the [Mario] franchise fully embraces 'surrealist design' along with its surrealist aesthetic. Because notably, as fellow commenters pointed out that Mario relies on its own continuity, to extent normalcy over originality, and always with the aim of fostering fun instead of a willingness to challenging and exploring our ideas. Though this evokes the question of how we frame {Mario}, do we look at each iteration as a painting or instead consider it more serial where pieces comprising the whole? With the first this enforces a normalcy throughout his games from its own expectations and designs built up over time- you can always jump on goombas as Mario, as Mario you're goal often is to save the Princess, etc.. But combined with the later, we have a spectrum to reconsider how they may or can interrelate, highlighting emergent themes. And then, considering how Mario games are always about striving to innovate and create progress; Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers (which invented the mechanic of jumping on enemies to defeat them), Mario 64, Mario Sunshine (about how oil painting being analogous to oil pollution), Mario Galaxy, Mario Odyssey and onward; expands our ideas of what's possible in game-design to even our lives from water powered jetpacks to human expression. Hence perhaps this is why Mario is a surrealist masterpiece- because as a work it itself challenges surrealism. Because of having the aim of fun and inclusivity paired with dream-like existentialism &/or surprise and non sequitur, Mario questions how surrealist art often may seek violent confrontation of ideas in juxtaposition as a tool to expand the possibility space of art and ideology; whereas in his games, Mario is welcoming your control over him, an invitation and encouragement to explore these ideas while engaging with those juxtapositions, discovering all their ramifications- wait... is it actually that you the player have power and influence in Mario's world through his hat! Have we been possessing Mario all this time! Tx for reading btw! : )

[@andrzejjamesstepien]

The remark about the creative process of Mario involving 'restriction, inspiration, iteration and whim' brought to mind Breton's Nadja, which he published a couple of years after the Surrealist Manifesto. The titular character is portrayed by Breton as driven entirely by an interplay between her whim and the restrictions of the space in which she inhabits: in this case, the city. When Breton meets her, she has no intellectual conception of Surrealism, but is, to Breton, living the Surrealist dream, her drawings littered with symbols of which she has no conscious understanding. I think it's important therefore to note that, to Breton, the ideal surrealist is not *consciously* a surrealist. So we really don't need to prove intent to argue that Mario is a surrealist masterpiece. One might even argue that Mario is Surrealist in a way that Breton could only have dreamed of his work being. Freud would surely argue that seeing a New York plumber in a handful of pixels is an expression of the subconscious, after all!

[@SuzakuX]

It's definitely surreal, but I don't think the design intent was ever to be surreal. If you look at the earliest appearances of Mario (originally "Jumpman" or "Mr. Video") he was depicted as a carpenter in Donkey Kong because its setting is a construction site, and in the original Mario Bros. he was depicted as a plumber because it's set in a NYC sewer, where he was fighting turtles. In Super Mario Bros., if you look at the history of development, the size-changing came about as a result of them originally designing the game around a smaller Mario with the intent of making his sprite bigger later, then deciding to make the large form a power-up instead. That powerup became the mushroom, inspired by folktales like Alice in Wonderland, which also resulted in the idea of him being transported to the Mushroom Kingdom setting, where the previous turtle enemies became an army of turtle-type creatures led by a turtle-dragon, fighting the native mushroom-people inhabitants. From there, most of the design choices can be attributed to its overall cartoony aesthetic (bright and colorful, anthropomorphized inanimate objects like clouds and stars, etc.), as well as the necessities of level design and hardware limitations. Floating platforms and cartoony animal/monster enemies are hardly unusual when it comes to video games of the time.

[@allisonfleskes7818]

Red Sparrow Channeling Alice in Wonderland is pretty surreal. I mean the sequels to the series leans so heavily into the surreal it's hard not to notice and Designer miyamoto was a college graduate of the arts (I doubt he wasn't aware of surrealism). For example: Mario 2 takes place in a dream, features things like Birdo. Mario 3: the little big world, flying ships, evil desert sun. Mario world: Capes that allow flight, charging chucks (why are football players stopping a plumber in a dinosaur kingdom). I could keep going on and on about the sequels. That's what seems to justify a good Mario sequel: the juxtaposition of crazy images that have never been associated with Mario yet, hence a good reason why people hate of the "new" series so much. It rehashes. Whether intentional or not, this wild abandonment of reason has given us unique experiences and it is the quintessential essence of Mario.

[@mustbeaweful2504]

Deja vu.

[@pbsideachannel]

A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop where time becomes a loop where time becomes a loop where time becomes a loop where time bec

[@heliguerrero1320]

PBS Idea Channel Borgean.

[@swashbucklr]

I thought that was the theory of the Mobius.

[@Houdini111]

Does this mean that we get 5 years of remakes?

[@Sly_Maverick_31]

PBS Idea Channel We should definitely talk about Parallel Universes next...

[@MowseChao]

I can definitely see the surreal feeling that comes from Mario's setting and story, but I would also go as far as to say the gameplay itself can also be seen as surreal, given the definition of surreal that you've outlined. You described at 2:30 how people lost their imagination, and it reminds me very much of the goal-oriented, achievement driven nature of many games coming out today. Mario games don't really ask a lot of you. You are given a land to explore, and you can just kinda go with it. Yes, objectives are there, but I've always found the act of running and jumping and exploring to be the reward derived from this game. Rarely do we think about the kidnapped princess, but moreso we're focused on the interesting sights in front of us and interacting with the world. Furthermore, Mario Bros is not a particularly competitive game. There's no numbered grading system that we would feel compelled to complete in order to compare ourselves to our peers. Rather, we all just enjoy it for what it is. I guess what I'm trying to get at is Super Mario Bros "rescues" us from overly complex reward systems seen in modern game design. It's just... a game. You play it. The journey is more important than the destination. The same could be said about a lot of other game I suppose, but Mario is particularly good at this.

[@torabisurandomT]

+

[@IdeaOfTheDayCom]

Never though of it before, but it's completely true. I can't even think of a more abstract mixture of images and events in the gaming world.

[@porgy29]

One of the influences for Mario that I have heard is Alice in Wonderland, in particular the Mushrooms that make you bigger. Since both that and surrealism tend to play with the imagery and logic of dreams it makes sense their would be similarities. That said I'm not sure if Mario is weird enough for surrealism. While yes it is about a plummer eating mushrooms to save a princes from turtles each of those components are depicted mostly as what they are. A lot of surrealism are things being used or depicted in ways that break from our expectations from reality. But the turtles behave like turtles, the princess acts like a princess, and the fact that Mario is a plummer is both clearly cannon but also almost never mentioned. Also a lot of the weirder parts also have outside influences that explain them. Growing a raccoon tail in order to fly seems strange to westerners, but we don't have folk tails about Tanooki. The Kuppa's are also, I believe, supposed to be based on the "kappa" from Japanese lore.

[@kelvindavis172]

I always thought Mario was pretty surreal. I mean, after all, he's an Italian-American plumber who can grow by eating mushrooms and shooting fire out of his hands to save a foreign princess and her mushroom-capped subjects from a dragon-turtle (whom he sometimes goes kart-racing and partying with, by the way). This was a very interesting video; I ended up learning some new things about surrealism.

[@WednesdaysSerial]

My main point of contention is that treating any Mario like it was soley created by Miatmoto belies other efforts/influences that went in. I think that split vision accounts for a watering down of personal polotics and a more workman like attitude twoards creation.