*Spoilers follow for Arcane episodes 4-6*
Arcane continues to raise the bar for video game adaptations with Act 2 this week, which jumps forward several years to show us how the discovery of Hextech and the death of Vander have accelerated the conflict between Piltover and Zaun. As tensions rise between the two leading to what we can only assume will be all-out war in Act 3, I have to wonder why the powers that be haven’t considered simply using their vast wealth and technology to address the actual problems. Class warfare is at the center of Arcane’s story, but the way the characters engage with that conflict makes it seem like this rigid caste system is somehow endemic to society. By treating rich and poor as a simple fact of life, Arcane takes for granted how classism propagates and why wealth disparity i🉐s so difficult to resolve.
A quick history lesson on Piltover and Zaun: Centuries ago, Zaun was a wealthy trading port that facilitated transportation of goods between two seas. Eventually, the merchant tribes that ruled over🏅 Zaun decided it would be far more profitable, efficient, and l🐎ess labor-intensive to simply carve a canal through Zaun so that ships could freely move back and forth between the two cities - and pay them obscene taxes and fees, of course.
The project proved to be disastrous for Zaun. The explosives they used to form the canal triggered an earthquake that flooded the cꦑity and turned into a toxic swamp. When work was finally completed, the wealthy citizens of Zaun moved across the canal and created Piltover, leaving those leꩲss fortunate to suffer sickness and starvation in Zaun.
Around 200 years later, Piltover had developed into a shining beacon of wealth and progress to the rest of the world, 🐟while Zaun fell to lawlessness and gang violence. Piltover’s wealthiest merchant families eventually came to be known as the noble clans and formed a council that controls all aspects of the city, as we see in Arcane.
It’s a great setup for class-based conflict even if the whole undercity thing is pretty on the nos🦹e, but as a metaphor for capitalism it fails to acknowledge the ways in which power structures are perpetuated. Piltover was constructed on the suffering of Zaun, it’s true, but Zaun no longer functions as a part of Piltover’s power structure. It doesn’t generate wealth for Piltover through productivity, but rather exists solely as a threat to Piltover. The peopꦺle of Zaun are not the working poor whose labor props up the Piltover elite. The council has no economic reason to keep Zaun destitute, an in fact, Piltover would almost certainly benefit from rehabilitating Zaun into a functioning society that can produce surplus value for them. The fact that Zaun only exists as an antagonist for Piltover is a misrepresentation of the actual mechanics of capitalism and serves to vilify the underclass.
The council are shown to be a selfish and short-sighted group. When Jace motions to have the Hexgates shut down so that their technology does not escape Piltover, the rest of the council refuses for fear that they’ll lose trade opportunities - not realizing that losing proprietary control of Hextech will make them irrelevant as a port city. It’s not surprising then that the Council wouldn’t entertain the idea of lifting Zaun out of the rubble in an effort to preserve their own way of life and create a broader work force - the problem is no one in the entire universe even presents the idea. It’s as if the very concept of social services doesn’t exist in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Runeterra.
Heimerdinger is positioned as the voice of reason, who is banished from the council for suggesting that greed and jealousy have led them astray from their duties as leaders. But H🅠eimerdinger is actually the most reprehensible of all. His plea isn’t made in an effort to sort relations with Zaun - whose unrest threatens to spill over into the streets of Piltover any day - but rather to convince them to put a hold on advancements in Hextech. Heimerdinger’s conservative, reactionary ideology is just as misguided as the rest of the council, and the fact that he was instrumental in the formation of Piltover - and the abandonment of Zaun - is never even remotely addressed.
There’s three more episodes of Arcane next week, so the story is far from over. Hope rests, as always, with the next generation. Knowing what we know about League of Legends lore doesn’t lead me to expect that the show will responsibly grapple with class dynamics though. Caitlyn’s adventure with Vi in the undercity is likely the first time a topsider has had any meaningful contact with Zaun in generations, which could mean that her eventual turn as Sheriff of Piltover could at least improve relations somewhat. Progress doesn’t happen overnight, and I certainly don’t expect Arcane to dramatically stray away from established League lore, but I h🤪ad hoped the redistribution of wealth would at least have been brought to the table. I know socialism is a dirty word, but you don’t have to pretend like it doesn’t exist.