Irregular Verbs: A Critical Playthrough of Gabriel Massan’s ‘Third World’

Cratylically composed,[1] Jumpman preceded Super Mario as the player protagonist of Nintendo’s 1981 arcade classic Donkey Kong. Separated into syllables he divides to verb and noun, jump and man, and is quite literally defined by his primary ability. In subsequent adventures Shigeru Miyamoto would iteratively innovate his Italian everyman character, expanding the possible application of the verb and forming a philosophical position on game design. Double-jumps, triple-jumps, backward or side-somersaults, vaults, wall jumps, spin jumps, cap jumps… MarioWiki details 32 possibilities.[2] Nintendo games centre around a versatile verb.[3] From a phenomenological perspective Super Mario, or Jumpman, is what Bruno Latour would term a compound entity. Whilst the jump may seem to be integrated within Mario, it is in fact external, located in the A button located on the controller located in our hands. It is a separate technology which has become sufficiently transparent to be understood as an inherent property of Mario and to determine his, and the player’s, experience of the world. We understand the Mushroom Kingdom as a jumpable local by the virtue of the jump verb being our foremost means of interaction.[4] Latour’s writing on the subject was informed by Heidegger, who in turn drew influence from Husserl and Spinoza. The classic example the German gives is the hammer, which through use disappears leaving only the nail and the task. According to Heidegger it is only when the hammer breaks that it is revealed as the technology it is.[5] It is only when we miss the platform that Mario’s jump becomes apparent, we recognise it through our own split-second misapplication. <a href="https://offsiteproject.medium.com/irregular-verbs-a-critical-playthrough-of-gabriel-massans-third-world-8e627ac8d55c">Read More</a>