To do otherwise would be to call into question the entire economy of good guys vs. Although they know he is not really a villain, they continue to treat him like he is one even when they are off the clock. The familiar video game tropes would be inconceivable without a despised villain, so someone has to do the job, a parallel to the economic exploitation of the working class that’s a necessary component of capitalism. In the end, he is treated like a bad guy not because the middle class Nicelanders hate and fear him, but because the system requires it. Taken from this perspective, the film begins rather promisingly, by having Ralph make a radical critique that cuts to the heart of the social order he lives in. He leaves in frustration, determined to prove himself to the Nicelanders and win a medal.Įconomically disadvantaged and on the receiving end of social stigmas, it’s not hard to view this character as the embodiment of the working class, and his game Fix-It Felix, Jr. He shows up anyway and disrupts the celebration by asking questions about his position in the game: why is he always despised? why doesn’t he ever get the chance to be celebrated like Felix? why doesn’t he ever get a medal? why does he have to live in a garbage dump? The Nicelanders respond with withering scorn, one sarcastically responding that if he ever got a medal, he could live in the penthouse, but he’s nothing but a bad guy and always will be. Ralph seems to feel ambivalent about this advice, and his condition is made even more painfully apparent when the Nicelanders organize a party for the game’s 30-year anniversary and fail to invite him. They close with the Bad Guy Affirmation: “I am bad, and that’s good. “You can’t mess with the program, Ralph,” says one. They give him therapeutic advice on how to accommodate himself to the reality of his world, to accept what he cannot change. This is the background that motivates Ralph to reluctantly attend Bad-Anon, a “bad guy” support group modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous and attended by villains from other video games who face similar challenges. His hair is untamed and he dresses in overalls, evoking the stereotypical hillbilly in contrast to the polite, middle-class Nicelanders. When he’s not playing the game, he lives in a garbage dump with a tree stump as a pillow and covers himself with bricks when he goes to sleep. Notably, Ralph’s exclusion is economic as well as social. The innocence of this Big Other is assumed, and it must be maintained if the system is to function. “Children are in a way the basis for the belief of adults,” says De Certeau. For the Nicelanders, this Other is clearly the children who come into the arcade every day with their quarters. Or as Michel De Certeau puts it in his essay What We Do When We Believe, “it is a belief in the belief of the Other, or in what one makes believe that he believes”, a version of the Lacanian subject supposed to believe. They treat him as if he was a villain not because they believe he is, but because they suppose an Other who really believes. They know it is only a game, and although this is never really stated, logically we have to conclude that the Nicelanders know that Ralph is not really a bad guy. In a nice example of Žižek’s theory that ideology continues to function even when you don’t believe it, the Nicelanders adore Felix as a hero and despise Ralph even though they see through the game’s “official ideology”. They are able to leave their games and visit others by traveling through the machines’ electrical cords which are connected through a power strip.īut despite this knowledge of the real world, the staged antipathy between Wreck-It Ralph and the Nicelanders continues even once the lights in the arcade have been turned off. In Wreck-It Ralph as in Toy Story, during the night when the arcade is closed, the arcade game characters are conscious, living beings who are aware of their position in the world as game characters. Once Felix has succeeded, the apartment dwellers (the Nicelanders) come out to reward Felix with a medal and cast Ralph off the top of the building and into a mud puddle below. He’s followed by the cheerful, player-controlled handyman Felix, who must try to repair the damage while Ralph tries to hinder his progress by throwing objects at him. Each level of game begins with Ralph climbing up the side of an apartment building and smashing windows with his enormous hands. During the day, Ralph is the villain in Fix-it Felix Jr., a simple 80s-style arcade game reminiscent of Donkey Kong. Wreck-It Ralph is the story of an arcade game character and his dissatisfaction with the role that he was programmed to play.
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