Zero Parades For Dead Spies – Part 1-2
Things aren’t looking good for us at the moment. Our contact has been zeroed out, and we have no idea what our actual assignment.
But we’re a spy for the People’s Republics, and we aren’t just going to give up that easily.
Streamed on my Twitch.
You can find Andre on his Twitch channel.
Though the founders of ZA/UM have long since left, things like the Bootleg Bazaar are indicative of the Estonian roots of the studio. It’s analogous to the way knock-offs and pirated media are commonplace in eastern European countries. It’s a concept that wouldn’t find a natural home in the mind of an American like myself. As Andre aptly noted, La Luz, and they way it spreads techno-fascism through consumerist culture, is a closer analogy to the way America spreads its soft power and influence through IP.
I’ve been reading a book on a similar subject by Vicky Osterweil, The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World. Though the book, as the title implies, focuses mostly on the Disney Corporation, it used that as a window to discuss the broader capture of culture through the lens of IP law and dominance, and why that’s alluring both to corporations and governments.
We see some of that here in Zero Parades. Even if all of this is bootleg merchandise, just having Luzian culture readily available is serving the country’s interests, ingratiating the young people of Portofiro into thinking about them positively. (And this is ignoring the fact that, as we’ll see later, La Luz is also providing some of this ‘bootleg’ merchandise.)
That they can still make these observations shows that the Disco is still in ZA/UM.
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