I have this belief that only two things work when it comes to pop culture. You either make something that packs in myth-making subtext – something people are so wrapped up in following that they are bound to be invested, or you create something so problematic that people have to either partake in the hate train or be a follower by calling themselves “unconventional.”
From where I see it, Running With Scissors founders Vince “Desi” Desiderio and partner Mike Jaret-Schachter would agree that their Postal game series would comfortably take a seat in the train that speaks controversy. Although if you allow them to be the judge, jury, and executioner, they’d say that since “Going Postal: The Legacy Fortold” exists, they might be in the myth-making business.
Directed by Tad Sallee and Jason Sikorsky, “Going Postal: The Legacy Foretold” borrows the title from the phrase that featured heavily on the 1997 game Postal. In this top-down shooter video game, a character named “The Postal Dude” goes on a killing rampage because he has had a bad day at the post office. Imagine if Michael Douglous’ character in “Falling Down” had a video game counterpart who, as the Gen-Z would term it, literally ‘goes mental.’
I mean, at least that character had some gravitas to it.“The Postal Dude,” on the other hand, was just devised as a killing machine to satiate the thirst of an average American who loved sitting in front of a PC channeling their angst into it. There’s nothing wrong if you don’t bring your morality into the equation, but that very idea of mindless violence is what caused Postal to come under the microscope.
For starters, the game offended the American Postal Service and Game Critics in the same breath. So much so that the offloaded and grotesque violence, coupled with the storyline’s dark humor, led to bans in many countries. Postal was taken off shelfs and was put onto the back-burner, despite numerous other games like GTA, enjoying worldwide acclaim. However, like most things that have a resurgence of sorts, the game found a niche, cult-like audience that, to this day, stands by it.
As a documentary, “Going Postal: The Legacy Foretold” is fairly conventional. It uses a chapter-like structure and offers a quick rundown that charts the rise of Running with Scissors – the similarly unapologetic studio that stayed put and behind their creation, which was somehow born out of the minds of Vince “Desi” Desiderio. It looks carefully at Desi’s earlier life and how he came to build up RWS from the ground. It’s an inspiring story, told with the similarly self-aware and funny flair that you would see in a video game.
In some way, the game, with all its odd underpinnings, is a personal journey for its creator. Something that a person who truly understands art could get behind. However, the doc also doesn’t shy away from showing what kind of impact that game must have had on the generation that took it at its face value. Remember, the first game comes from a time when school mass shootings had just surfaced throughout America. It’s not hard to draw parallels between those mindless shootings to the ones that we see in games like Postal.
Additionally, like all of art itself, which builds and rebuilds onto itself, the legacy of Postal cannot be talked about without talking about the many things it spawned – the numerous sequels and their journeys are as interesting as the controversy that surrounds them. However, one of the biggest of them all would be the Uwe Boll movie that was based on the game. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s okay, you don’t have to. Like the literal critic-bashing filmmaker, it is a feather in his oeuvre of movies that only a certain niche would worship – which somehow serves perfectly for the game’s legacy.
As far as the documentary is concerned, beyond the basic talking heads format, Tad Sallee and Jason Sikorsky do a good job of encompassing as much pop culture subtext and impact the games had. It’s not one of the finest telling you would see about computer games, but it’s certainly one that presents an unbiased look at something that would forever be etched in the underground alleys of video game devotion.
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