Super Mario Brothers: A Freudian Hellscape

Who doesn't love Super Mario? Since 1983, the Mario brothers have been the face of the video gaming industry. No matter how violent, mature, or artistic games get, Mario will always be the smiling face we think of when we hear the phrase "video game".

But what the hell is Super Mario about? Why is a plumber murdering turtles and dragons in a land of castles and princesses in the first place?

What if the whole thing is about.....sex?

Not just sex, though...Some of the most twisted, repressed sexual frustrations ever presented in popular culture. The dark subconscious of the adolescent mind. The Freudian hellscape of the dream world.

To begin this exploration into the darkness of the plumber's subconscious, let's first examine our protagonist.

Mario

Just who IS Mario? Let's take a good look:



This is Mario, pre-mushroom. He is small in stature, almost like a child. He wears overalls and a baseball cap, not terribly unlike the average pre-pubescent child of the 1980s. But he is not quite a child; the pubic moustache embracing his upper lip shows signs of a desire to mature-to move past the infant reliance on the mother. What we see in Mario is the trappings of pre-pubescence, with an awareness of one's own sexuality; someone who is arrested in a child-like state of repression, but with a buried need to mature sexually.



But then comes the mushroom. When Mario takes the mushroom, he becomes Super Mario (named after the super-ego). He is realized as a functioning adult, but he is still defenseless. Physically, he has matured, but emotionally he is still fragile, and the slightest bit of damage can cause him to revert to his child-like state. He is abducted by adolescence; forced to grow before he is prepared. He is the repressed individual.



With the fire plant, Mario finally finds release. He has grown physically, but is unafraid to release the orgasmic fire that threatens to consume him from within (most likely through masturbation, or possibly nighttime ejaculation). He is the fully realized sexual being; conquering all of the obstacles in his path with confidence. However, a strong enough force can still revert him to his child-like state.

But just what is it that could cause our repressed adolescent to shrink into his impotent state of repression?

The Enemies, Or: The Freudian Nightmares

Okay, I know what you're thinking. This is all pretty much elementary school level stuff, right? There's nothing REALLY sexual going on in Mario; it's all just a bunch of 12-year olds snickering about Mario getting "bigger" when he takes "shrooms".

You think that's where this crazy sexual subconscious stuff stops? Well, with the bad guys, things start getting pretty fucked up. If you found the last section to be uncomfortable and titillating, you should probably stop reading right now.

Now hand me that chapstick and pull down your brain-pants, because I am about to blow your mind.


The Goomba is the most overtly sexual of Mario's enemies. It's design is based off of the shiitake mushroom, yes, but it's flesh-colored center and slightly darker tip imply something more akin to a very angry phallus. Furthermore, in dream analysis, mushrooms generally signify unhealthy pleasures. Why do these walking phalluses threaten the repressed Mario? I think the most likely explanation is that they represent other males as competition; Mario fears the competition of larger penises in his quest for sexual satisfaction. They are the confident, sexually active, but mentally inferior males who threaten to separate Mario from possible sexual conquests. But more disturbingly, they are temptation for the repressed Mario to give up his chaste ways. If this is Mario's dream land, than maybe they represent the jocks from his high school years, or a sexy gang of rival plumbers.



The Koopa is an oddity among Mario's enemies. At first glance, he seems non-threatening, almost frightened and confused, as though uncertain as to why he is being sent out into the kingdom to murder a hyperactive plumber. However, if we look at the Koopa as a symbol, and not a character, the mystery fades. Look at the phallic nature of the Koopa. Really drink it in. He is even more blatantly phallic than the Goomba. Even more frustratingly, he cannot be truly killed (except by a fireball, which-remember-represents orgasmic release), signifying that he is somehow a part of Mario's psyche, and not simply an external disturbance. The turtle in dream analysis represents "self-protection, hiding, withdrawing, fear of social interaction or showing one's true self". Koopa represents Mario's own fear of social interaction, which in turn serves as an obstacle in his sexual quest. Alternately, at the very least, Koopa is some sort of stimulus that causes Mario's withdrawal from society, perhaps a bad memory. The phallic imagery might demonstrate that that bad memory is an incident of molestation or sexual abuse from an older male. Is Mario's past more dark and troubled than we ever imagined?


This is the most disturbing sexual symbol in the entire gang, and if you don't believe me, just compare it's appearance to any other enemy in the game. The piranha plant is an eyeless monstrosity, desperately gnashing at an escape route from the phallus it is trapped in-a phallus trapping a phallus. The darkness and depravity on display here is mind-boggling. The design of the piranha plant is similar to that of H.R Giger's alien.

What was the imagery being implied in Giger's alien? That of homosexual oral rape. The phallus being consumed by something that is both an orifice and a phallus. This evokes painful emotion because it represents to us the betrayal of a father figure. Remember when I said that the Koopa implied an instance of sexual abuse in Mario's past? Well, the piranha plant shows us a little more clearly what the circumstances surrounding that abuse were.

The horror.

And finally, there's Bowser. With him, we get the answers we've been seeking. Bowser is the ultimate proof of Mario's Oedipal complex. He is the full realization of the Koopa; the cause of Mario's social insecurity. He is the father figure, depriving Mario of the loving sexual relationship with the mother figure (Princess Toadstool) with his own advances. It is the goal of Mario's sexual quest to destroy the father figure through the use of fire (symbolizing the phoenix-like total destruction of the father to make way for the new male figure) and an axe (symbolizing the castration of the father, allowing Mario exclusive access to the mother).

But why is Bowser-the father figure-so closely associated with the Koopa? Because there is some sort of memory linked with him that causes Mario to shrivel. He is the demonic phallus, a sort of masculine form of vagina dentata. What does this mean?

Mario was raped by his father.

More to come.

The Album; Is it Dying?

A cliche title for an equally cliche topic: the changing landscape of the music industry. However, I'm gonna try to bring something new-ish to the table. Are itunes and amazon killing the album as an art form unto itself?

I bring it up for a reason. While discussing music with some friends the other day, I was struck when somebody remarked that they preferred Beatles covers to actual Beatles-performed songs. They cited as an example how much they enjoyed music from "Across the Universe" compared to the same songs done by the Beatles.

Outrage at this rather blasphemous opinion notwithstanding, I can see his point. Think about it. Which of the following would you most want to listen to?

(a) "A Day in the Life" done by the Beatles, as an individual track
(b) Jeff Beck's fantastic cover of "A Day in the Life" as an individual track
(c) "A Day in the Life" as the denoument to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

If I listed these in order of what I would want to listen to, from most to least, it would go C, B, A. The reason is, I just don't think the average Beatles song goes down well on its own (with exceptions, such as "In My Life", "Hard Day's Night", "Let it Be", and a few others). "Across the Universe" tracks and other covers stand better on their own, because so much emotion and craftsmanship is packed into the one performance of an incredibly well-written tune that you feel as though you have had a complete artistic experience by the end of the track.

As a whole, however, the "Across the Universe" album does not hold up to a Beatles album. Why? Because nobody wants to have their senses assaulted by climactic tune after climactic tune, and that's all "Across the Universe" is. Every song is performed as though it were the finale to a rock concert. There's a reason the average Broadway musical only has one or two "show stopping numbers"; if all you show an audience is a "show stopping number", the law of diminishing returns demands that by the end the audience is sick of the main course and would like to get some dessert or appetitezers for god's sake.

A Beatles album, on the other hand, is a piece of art as a whole-not just in terms of individual tracks. Would I listen to "Mean Mr. Mustard" as an individual track? No, it's not a great song. But coming in between "Sun King" and "Polythene Pam", it becomes a fun, pace-changing little bridge. Did Joe Cocker do a better "With a Little Help from my Friends" than the Beatles? Yes, but it's hard to imagine "Sgt. Pepper" without it. The Beatles weren't about writing hit singles; they were about the album.

This love of the album is drowning in the age of napster. Why buy a whole album when you can just buy the most famous song and put it on repeat? Not to say that this is an entirely bad thing. The benefits to the mp3 system are immense. I don't want to own the soundtrack to "Rent", but "Without You" is a pretty beautiful song, so buying that individual track from itunes is considerably less wasteful than buying the whole thing. There are plenty of CDs that are essentially just compilations of catchy tunes, and breaking those CDs up into little tiny mp3 pieces hardly compromises their artistic merit.

But consider this; if "Dark Side of the Moon" had been released today, would it still be the cultural milestone that it is, or would everybody just buy "Money" and ignore the rest of the album? "The lunatic is on the grass" would not be an instantly recognizable phrase, that weird triangle with the rainbow shining through would not be a staple t-shirt for stoned hipsters, and nobody would know about that crazy thing you do with "The Wizard of Oz". Basically, as a country, we would be fucked.

Watching "Freaks and Geeks" makes me long for the days when it was totally cool to just lie on your floor with a pair of headphones and listen to the greatest rock albums in the world. I missed that age by being born in '88, and now that the album has essentially been downgraded from art form to ipod fuel, I'm pretty sure we're not going to get it back anytime soon.