Sounds and Memories from Distant Worlds

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the topics of cultural memory, transnational flows of media artifacts, and Japan as experienced through popular culture. In particular, I take the case of a short ethnographic scene where the song “To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X is imposed over an Italian player’s dramatic performance in a Fabula Ultima campaign. Through this narrative, I explore the dissonance between my initial intention to analyze the scene in terms of cultural memory and transnational flows, and the actual circumstances of the players’ reactions to the event. I initially provide an account of the scene in terms of the Italian reception of games produced in Japan by considering the context of Fabula Ultima – a game produced in Italy marketed as a Table-Talk Japanese Role-Playing Game (TTJRPG) – and its organic interaction with “To Zanarkand” during gameplay. To do this, I refer to the notion of cultural memory, paired with considerations of the way in which pop media are produced and consumed. My analysis of the scene and interviews with the players reveal a more complex network of interactions between players, game, and song, which detach the song and the game from their context of production and resituate it as a part of a certain infrastructure of experience that is unique to each player’s history of interacting with the game. Ultimately, I argue not only that interrogating the space between the large-scale phenomena that provide the conditions for these individualized interactions, and the interactions themselves, is necessary, but also that the interaction between music, players, and gameplay opened up space for such an analysis in this case.