Oedipus Fox: Psychoanalyzing Star Fox 64

[Enjoy today’s guest post by Craig Spivack. Don’t forget to leave some feedback in the comments.]

Video games are an important part of culture, but are rarely psychoanalyzed in the same way that literature and film are. One famous video game that deals with Oedipal conflicts and phallic imagery is Star Fox 64. The story of the game encompasses many of Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas, and speaks to the game player.

The phallic imagery in Star Fox 64 is rampant. As Fox McCloud, the player pilots an Arwing, which can be likened to how ancient civilizations represented the penis as erect and winged. The lasers that one shoots from the Arwing represent semen, and Fox’s instinct to procreate. One must also look at Fox’s teammates and his relationships with them. Slippy Toad is usually the teammate that is in distress and is being attacked by enemy ships. Fox constantly saves him with his lasers, and this provides more evidence to the theory of a sexual relationship between Fox and Slippy.

Furthering the idea that Fox is homosexual is the exchange of dialogue between Fox and his old friend Bill after the Katina level. Bill says in a tone of voice suggesting that he could even be winking at Fox, “Catch ya later Fox!” Fox then says, almost wistfully, “You, too.…Bill.” Fox is longing for the memories of his first sexual relationship with Bill. The fact that his first sexual relationship was not with his mother, which would be in tune with his Oedipal complex, will be addressed later. Although it can be said here that although Peppy Hare and ROB 64 provide motherly advice to Fox, they are inadequate.

The most interesting of Fox’s teammates is Falco Lombardi. Fox and Falco always have a very tense relationship, with Falco being very competitive in destroying the most enemy ships and being ungrateful of help from Fox. Falco is acting out his insecurities over his fear of castration through bravado. This is revealed to be a shell when his lover Katt aids the Star Fox team on a couple of levels. While she is making advances at him and destroying enemies, he almost refuses to talk to her. He feels inadequate to Katt, and is unable to develop a successful relationship with her. The fact that Falco is a bird can explain this; Falco was mouth-fed as a child by his mother, and never grew out of his love for her. He did not sexually mature, and thus cannot have a functioning relationship with a woman.

Fox’s lack of a mother figure permeates the entire game, as he very often retreats to womb-like figures for protection. He collects rings for his health, and three golden rings can either increase his health bar or give him an extra life. The rings are obviously very representative of the womb, with their round shape. Fox also shows his love for a mother figure in the level Meteo, where after going through a series of rings, he is transported to a hallucinogenic area that can only be described as ecstasy for him. It is possible to hit a large number of enemies in this area, thus achieving a great deal of sexual fulfillment for Fox. When team members have their phallic Arwings too damaged to continue fighting, they dock into the womb-like hangar of the Great Fox for repairs. This mother-love is also found on the map in between missions as the phallic Arwing shoots from one planet to another, the round planets obviously representing the egg (ovum). Fox wishes to penetrate these planets, destroy enemy ships, and father as many children as possible.

One thing getting in the way of Fox’s domination of these planets is that they are already being dominated by Fox’s arch nemesis: Andross. Before the story of Star Fox 64 began, Andross killed Fox’s real father, James McCloud, thereby replacing him as Fox’s father figure. He is in control of all the planets of the Lylat system, and Fox must kill Andross to win them over and to complete the Oedipal relationship. The first mission in the game is at the home-planet Corneria; the earth-mother. For most of the game he is an intangible figure, only in the mind of the player. It is only at the end of the game, when Fox has finished destroying enemies and is done with his sexual development, that the player can meet and defeat Andross.

The two possible battles with Andross state different things about sex. While both require the player to go through a series of vaginal tunnels to find Andross, and to fire their semen-like lasers into the eyes of Andross to defeat him, there is a huge disparity between what lies underneath Andross’ shell of a face. In the first, easier to reach scenario, there is a robot that flies at the player’s Arwing. It is easily dispatched with, a sign of man’s triumph over the feeling of sexual inadequacy to machines.

The second is completely different. In the more difficult of the two scenarios, Andross is revealed to be a giant brain with two large, floating eyes. He sends the eyes to attack Fox, but they are quickly destroyed by Fox’s lasers, and Andross is robbed of sight by Fox’s sexual maturity. Fox then must destroy Andross’ brain stem; once done, the huge brain explodes, showing how even the most rational thinking is overpowered by a sufficiently strong libido. After the brain is destroyed, Fox must find his way through the vaginal tunnel system that he entered through. He is guided by the ghost of his father, James. This shows that even though Fox has indeed matured sexually, he learned everything about sex from his father, and that children do learn everything, including sexual relationships, from the interactions between their parents.

So why would the game producer, Shigeru Miyamoto, create such a game? Why would he create such a game that is marketed towards children, and was rated K-A (Kids to Adults)? The answer is that he wanted to express what most people already know and learn from their own parental figures. Using the interactive medium of a video game in of itself shows how he tried to immerse the player in his message, and the fact that everyone can relate to the relationships shown in Star Fox 64. Sex is everywhere, and the only way that Miyamoto could express his sexual feelings was through a video game about anthropomorphic animals in space.

[Is Star Fox 64 a Freudian text? Or is this one of those times where a Nova Bomb is just a Nova Bomb? Tell us in the comments!]