Like many undergraduates in training to become a teacher, I read and reread and discussed and wrote about Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 article “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” It was a pivotal text in my cohort of mostly white students who aspired to be secondary English teachers. A few years and a master’s degree later, I thought I knew better than my past self and anyone who would bring it up as a relevant critique of the world as it was then. We had a Black president at the time! Hadn’t a lot changed in the U.S. with regard to race relations by 2009? I was colorblind, so everyone else must have been, too… right?
Man, being in your mid-twenties and living in your own apartment for the first time leads to some pretty foolish conclusions. As the saying goes, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” I even went so far as to proclaim the surely-we-have-moved-on argument on a message board for the local punk scene. I should have been ostracized immediately. We are all for the better that I have grown and matured since then. I have as much to pack as almost anyone—just about every privilege imaginable.
XXX
When our family bought our OLED Switch, my kid was unfamiliar with playing console games, but just the right age to be interested in them. I wanted to share the joy that games could bring, so I searched up lists of games that would be good for a young-ish child to play on the Switch. Literacy wasn’t an obstacle, but reaction time and challenge were. One of the lists I’d found mentioned the recently released Unpacking by Witch Beam as an option. The description of a “zen puzzle game” seemed like it would work for me even if it didn’t for my intended audience. There was no reason for me to have had any concern, though, as the controls are intuitive, the pace is chill, the music delightful, and the sound design exquisite. It’s a game with a low barrier to entry and a high level of polish.
Really, what could be easier than opening boxes and putting away one’s personal effects? There’s very little that needs to be explained in the game itself. The low amount of text is not just a positive aspect of the game’s accessibility, it allows for the narrative to proceed through what I’ve often heard called environmental storytelling. That is, when the programmer doesn’t use dialogue, voiceover, or vignettes to explain that “hey, something important has happened here,” or “this cause has many effects.” In a game where the action is the repetitively calming process of opening a box, assessing its contents, and placing them in a logical location, the storytelling happens through the objects themselves and the nature of the rooms and buildings the character occupies. Which objects will appear throughout the eight levels (representing 21 years of time) you spend unpacking? What does it mean if certain objects obtain wear-and-tear befitting their use? Why do certain objects get pride of place in some homes but not others? What does your character do for a living? What are her interests outside of work? Who is important to her? What happens if you try to put the toaster in the empty sink (just-for-a-second-I-swear-I’ll-put-it-somewhere-else-it’s-just-so-cramped-in-here)?
You’ll have time to ponder these questions as you meditatively open each box, select each item, and consider its placement. Although you begin in your childhood bedroom, you’ll soon have a larger place to inhabit, with roommates or significant others sharing the space. Most of the time, your packing job is logical: the boxes that appear in the bathroom mostly have toiletries. Not always. There will be times that you wonder why a book or a kitchen utensil is in with the soap and shampoo. Sometimes, the objects are difficult to identify. These moments are where the game can be most enjoyable. When I was faced with an unknown object, I would place it on different surfaces and listen closely to the sound it made. That’s right—the foley, the sound design in this game is beyond belief. A pair of nail clippers will make different sounds depending on whether you place them on the bathroom sink, the medicine cabinet, the bathmat, a couch, the stove, or the kitchen cabinet. These subtle sound clues are often enough to give a hint of the true identity of the object you’re placing. If not, then the game indicates when you’ve misplaced an item, but only when you have unpacked all of the boxes in the level. There are definitely some objects I still can’t identify, but I know to place them in the kitchen or the living room whenever they appear in my virtual hands.
In addition to playing as a woman whose minoritized faith and sexuality are revealed further into the game, Unpacking also stands against common video game features such as high scores, leveling up, and time trials. Attempting to speedrun this game would defeat its purpose entirely. (There are achievements to unlock but they aren’t the main point of the game; they’re fun little extras.) Carly Kocurek refers to these kinds of accomplishments as demonstrations of technomasculinity. In this construct, the only kind of gamer is young, intelligent, and white. Any mistakes a person like this makes are just forgivable whoopsies! These are the kind of people that are expected, allowed, to fail upward endlessly.
Although Unpacking has an end state, there is no way to dominate, conquer, or defeat it. You are tying together the threads of various narratives over time. In fact, there is arguably a point where a relationship with a technomasculine boyfriend (hello, XBOX) fails because he is too insecure for the character to display her college diploma on the wall and so she has to hide it under her bed. That’s as close as you’ll get to a final boss. All of it is said without words, but through clues and cues that imply something about the life the character is unpacking.
XXX
I wonder. Would someone who had access to the packing lists and boxes that I have used over the past 21 years also be able to trace the development that I think I’ve made in that time? Would they see my change from a wide-eyed undergrad who is eager to learn about and explore his privilege before needlessly hardening against the world in an attempt at maturity a few years later? When that shell of a second, stunted adolescence cracked, would they see a different person in 42-year-old me, or would I be just as twisted up as I was at the boundary of independent adulthood? I think I know the answer, but the truth lies somewhere in between my self-concept and the way others perceive how I’ve been able to unpack my invisible knapsack.
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