La La Land 5

La La Land is a series of surrealist platformers by TheAnemic, and La La Land 5 is probably the clearest expression in a series that was probably never meant to be clear. You play Biggt, who now looks like the bat-boy dressing up as David Lynch; you run around with the left and right, up to jump, and down to throw bibles. You see, you're a Bible Salesman(tm) and you're out hustling your wares on pink fish that go to sleep when you toss them long-bound tomes like axes from Castlevania. Did I mention how fucking genuis this is?

Go play it now, then come back and reflect with me. (Spoilers after the break.)

---------SPOILERZ---------

La La Land is basically the interactive equivilant of one of Bill Burrough's cut-ups. It uses repetition to break down the mind's capacity for turning chaos into an orderly system of patterns, a worldview. Since games do pattern-driven learning better than any other medium, it's good to play a game that actively teaches you not to learn shit. Except, then you do. In this case, your repetitive bible-shucking puts more and more of the fish to sleep, until your profits are grown thin, you've cannibalized your market, and the chummy 50s anthem seems more and more bitter. Just get it and do it again. That each loop is narrated as being "5 days ago", "4 days ago" and so on, gives you a sense that the loop will end, and that it's utterly inconsequential what you do because it has already happened. Then the thing breaks down and you're old and you slowly crawl to blink-out death in a highly mechanized wheelchair. Over this last sequence you hear another kitschy song about the theory of evolution being dehumanizing. One is left wondering which is more dehumanizing, to be compared to a wild animal or to an economic machine. And then the thing ends.