Escape Artists
Many play Magic: the Gathering as a form of escapism – a way to completely separate from their life for a little while. For these players, anything that breaks their immersion and harkens back to the real world or their real lives decreases their enjoyment of the game and of their time they have designated to playing it. This extends not only to conversations had during gameplay, but to the themes and art in the game, the characters, the lore, and even the makeup of the community of people who play the game.
For some, what is perceived as “real-world politics” being injected into Magic: the Gathering themes, lore, art or community is part of this break in immersion. It is a brick wall on the increasingly-fragile road to escapism bliss.
Then Again, What Are “Real-World Politics”?
The first obstacle on the Magic-as-political-escapism path is that practitioners are increasing what they consider “real-world politics” with extreme rapidity. While some would have rightly balked at a Magic card called “Weapon of Mass Destruction” printed around 2002, there are some who act in varying degrees of faith that consider the decreasing density of scantily-dressed Angels on their cardboard, the banning of culturally offensive cards or writing non-binary, LGBT or Black characters into the lore to be examples of injecting real-world politics into their escape.
“Keep politics out of my game!” they say.
But it’s not their game. It’s everyone’s game.
What Are You Escaping From?
If Magic: The Gathering is going to be a form of escapism, it needs to work for everyone that wants to use it that way.
So, what are some things from the real world that people would want to escape from?
When someone looks to a game to escape from a world where they face individual or systemic racism, they don’t want to be reminded of that while playing. If Magic-as-escapism is the goal, these reminders of the real world must be removed from the game, right?
If someone is living in a real world where they are underrepresented and feel ignored or powerless, they don’t want to step into a fantasy world where they are equally underrepresented and feel ignored or powerless. If Magic-as-escapism is the goal, no player should feel as underrepresented or alienated as they are in the real world, right?
“This battle between competing ideas of escapism, and the resulting balance, is politics at its very core.”
So what is Wizards of the Coast to do when they have a group of players whose obstacle to escapism is the game’s direct recreation of the worse parts of their reality and another group of players whose obstacle to escapism is…hearing about it?
“Keep politics out of Magic” might seem like an easy choice for WOTC to make, but the choice to “keep politics out of Magic” is a political choice in itself. It is choosing to appeal to the latter group of players rather than the former. It creates winners and losers. This battle between competing ideas of escapism, and the resulting balance, is politics at its very core.
The people who call for Magic: The Gathering to be free from politics don’t actually want that. They simply want their version of escapism to win this political struggle and then nobody ever revisit it.
The Great Creators
Like any fantasy universe, the Magic: the Gathering cinematic universe is created by humans (for now). While it certainly didn’t start this way, the humans responsible for creating the art, lore and themes in Magic: The Gathering come from diverse cultural backgrounds, are diverse in gender identity, race, and sexuality.
“I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.”
– E.B White
Since the beginning of recorded history, people have written and created art based on their personal experiences as a human. Even the most abstract fantasy work is rooted deeply in the personal experience and identity of the person or people creating it. Magic: The Gathering is no different, and it would suffer tremendously if it were.
The artists and lorescribes of the MTG multiverse will insert their own histories, ancestries, cultures, experiences, struggles and identities into the work they are creating, and we, as players, should be extremely thankful for that. Some of this peek behind the curtain into an artist or author’s personal experiences might break the immersion of a Magic-as-a-political-escape purist, but again: to demand the exclusion of these experiences is not a removal of politics from the game, but a continuation of political struggle that creates winners and losers.
What Is To Be Done?
So if banning culturally offensive cards is politics bleeding into the game, and pushing back against those bans is also political, and inserting personal experiences into the art and story is political but so is demanding that the artists and authors leave that stuff at the door, how are we supposed to keep dang politics out of our Magic: The Gathering?
We’re not.
Magic: The Gathering is a community as much as it is a card game. A community without politics is not a community – it is a cult. This struggle between competing ideas of escapism and expression of identity will continue, and, like all politics, there will be winners and losers.
I, for one, would cast my vote for the side that makes sure Magic is an escapist space for those seeking representation at the inconvenience of those who are tired of hearing about it, and maintains a diverse community of artists and authors who create immersive works by drawing from personal identity at the inconvenience of those that would rather not see it.
“Keep politics out of Magic” is the battle cry of the winning side – like calling for an end to the war while controlling all the land. Hopefully, in a few years, I will be saying it instead.
