Kirby's Secret Psychodrama
Alexander B. Joy, Guest Contributor
With its profusion of strange rounded shapes, blunted edges, and adorable characters, the aesthetic of the Kirby’s Dream Land series suggests that everything in sight is as gentle as a dream. It’s an inviting message for a gentle platformer, promising that you’ll sooner awaken than feel pain. Yet the cute and cuddly framing of the Kirby games lays the groundwork for some profoundly unsettling moments. As if winding the mechanism of a trap, the games lull you into a state of comfort only to spring surprise horrors whose sudden emergence makes them far more disconcerting.
Kirby games often include hidden final stages, housing nightmarish entities that bleed and burst and shriek and disintegrate grotesquely when defeated. Possession and disfigurement are frequent themes; Kirby exorcises recurring frenemy King Dedede at the end of Dream Land 2 and Dream Land 3, but not before Dedede mutates into a David Cronenberg-worthy meat puppet whose stomach rips open to expose a leering eye or toothy maw. (The sight of the body forcibly reshaped after being violated from within terrified me as a kid.) To top it all off, the Kirby universe is canonically post-apocalyptic; Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards includes an Earth rendered uninhabitable by climate change or nuclear winter, whose original residents – presumably humankind – have fled or faced extinction.[1] (In this respect, Kirby was Adventure Time before Adventure Time, masking tragic subtext beneath technicolor whimsy.)
Dream Land’s horrors are explicitly dreamlike, obeying the surreal reasoning of a mind in sleep. Nightmares in real life seldom announce themselves at a dream’s outset. More often they infiltrate an otherwise nonthreatening nighttime vision, striking at unexpected moments. They seem “wrong” in the dream’s context – impossible, erroneous, hostile – irretrievably reshaping its entire aura. I’ve been ejected from more dreams than I can count thanks to some unwelcome presence souring the mood and turning it into a situation I want at all costs to escape. Kirby games follow a similar trajectory, tending not to change tone until their nightmarish interlopers reveal themselves.
Because the Kirby games are coded in the language of dreams and nightmares, they invite us to treat them accordingly. Dream Land asks to be parsed like the signals and symbols of the unconscious. In other words, the path to understanding Dream Land is through dream analysis.
Here I mean “dream analysis” in the psychoanalytic sense: the method of evaluating the hidden meanings of dreams that Sigmund Freud established over a century ago, which thinkers of all stripes have developed in the decades since. “The interpretation of dreams,” Freud writes in the work of the same name, “is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” Dreams can be fascinating in and of themselves, but from a psychoanalytic standpoint, they are more than curiosities. They disclose how the human mind works. Freud suspected that dreams dramatized the conflict between our deepest desires – sometimes unknown even to ourselves – and the obstacles in the waking world that prevent their realization. There’s plenty of nuance to Freud’s substantial body of writing, but for the sake of brevity, his theory of dreams hinges on three core ideas:
● Dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment. At their most fundamental level, dreams are a mechanism by which the mind appeases desires.
● Dreams attempt to fulfill the wishes that real life impedes. Life frequently denies people what they want. In most cases, this arises from a clash between the instinctive impulses that Freud calls the “id” (such as our base animal appetites for food and sex) and the social forces such as laws and cultural norms that thwart them (the “superego”). For example, it’s the id that wants chocolate cake at any hour of the day, but the superego that says no dessert before dinner. (In waking life, these conflicting forces create the “ego,” or the self – the mind’s agent for navigating their eternal tug-of-war.) Since the wants of the id never go away, dreams try to satisfy them by making good on the desires that life hinders.
● Dreams disguise their true meaning. After a lifetime of social upbringing, the superego’s prohibitions are so deeply ingrained that the mind tries to circumvent them by encoding its desires (a process called “sublimation”). But this defense mechanism crosses symbolic wires, causing latent desires to manifest within the dream as different events and entities entirely.
The project of dream analysis is to crack the mind’s oneiric code. In this regard, Freud’s royal road is a two-way street. All dreams cloak the unconscious mind’s machinery, which means the schematics of those unconscious mechanisms account for what occurs in any given dream.
What can this theory tell us about Dream Land? Plenty.
If you step back and describe Kirby, he begins to sound remarkably like an id. Start with his most iconic features: his voracious appetite and bottomless stomach. Kirby eats without end, never truly finding satisfaction. His consumption slows only if there’s nothing around for him to swallow. Otherwise, he’ll take it all – vegetables, desserts, construction materials, even other denizens of Dream Land. (There’s a justifiable suspicion that Kirby might be monstrous in any other context. He cameos as an enemy in the dream world of Link’s Awakening, and in the neo-noir Super Smash Bros. fan series There Will Be Brawl, he’s portrayed as a cannibalistic ghoul in the vein of Hannibal Lecter.) Kirby often gives the impression of underdevelopment in the manner of a young child, with floppy, flailing movements connoting a toddler’s unformed motor skills. Sometimes he even loses the ability to walk entirely, as in Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble. Furthermore, he’s typically pre- or non-linguistic; in games where he has a voice, and in the disappointing Kirby anime, his most complex utterance is “Hi!” This portrait hints that Kirby is a creature not yet stamped with society’s imprint, beholden not to rules and conventions but only to his own pleasures. He’s the id left uninhibited, a drive without the capacity for self-denial. There’s nothing it will say “no” to, because it only knows “yes.”
What could antagonize a beast like this? The opposite of Kirby isn’t another Kirby – another bottomless well of desires – but a source of resistance or denial. Enter King Dedede, the balancing force that holds Kirby in check. Nintendo has no shortage of adversarial monarchs, but Dedede at least has some claim to legitimacy of rule: whereas Bowser and King K. Rool are invaders and pretenders, Dedede remains on Dream Land’s throne game after game, neither deposed nor dispossessed. Dedede is a figure of law who wields a hammer in place of a scepter, symbolic not of building up but of striking down. His unaccountable governance boils down to the single commandment thou shalt not: thou shalt not eat (Kirby’s Dream Land); thou shalt not dream (Kirby’s Adventure); thou shalt not travel (Kirby’s Dream Land 2); thou shalt not stargaze (Kirby’s Dream Course); thou shalt not have (Kirby’s Dream Land 3). Where Kirby exists to desire, Dedede lives to deny – and in this way, he plays the superego to Kirby’s id.
By pitting Kirby against Dedede game after game, the Kirby’s Dream Land trilogy captures the Freudian concept of the dueling id and superego. Each game’s inciting incident is some new prohibitive decree of Dedede’s that Kirby sets out to smash. The first chapter sees Dedede hoarding Dream Land’s food supply by capturing its means of distribution. (But for all we know, he’s merely instating rations to avoid the famine that Kirby’s relentless eating threatens.) In the sequel, Dedede isolates the Rainbow Islands after absconding with their bridge network. And despite a misspelling on the US box dubbing him “Kind Dedede,” he’s still a jerk in the third game for being a Dark Matter superspreader. By the logic of dreams, the bare fact of id and superego being at odds in the Dream Land games signals that each game’s story is hiding its true meanings. What Kirby and Dedede fight over, how their clash is depicted, and the mechanics through which they unfold all provide cover for psychological subtext. Much in the same manner that the Bit.Trip series symbolizes a life’s passage from birth to death, the Dream Land games chart the evolution of desire from the indulgence of the senses to higher-order pleasures.
The original Kirby’s Dream Land, for starters, fixates on the mouth. The game is preoccupied with eating. Its plot is all about food; the core conflict questions who is allowed to eat, and when. The game mechanics, too, focus on eating. In this first game, Kirby hasn’t yet developed his now-iconic ability to copy the powers of those he consumes. Instead, he simply stuffs enemies down his capacious gullet. Kirby’s mouth is his main method of interacting with the world. He devours enemies, spits fire after ingesting plates of spicy curry, expels air bullets after downing mint leaves or sweet potatoes, and screeches into microphones to wipe the screen of baddies. In his inhale/exhale animations, Kirby’s muzzle is so prominent that he often appears more mouth than body.
The mouth holds particular significance in psychoanalysis. For Freud, it’s the first organ of desire. He dubbed the earliest phase of human development the “oral stage,” for in the first few months of life, all pleasures stem from the sensory gratification the mouth provides. Spend any appreciable amount of time around babies, and you’ll see the wisdom in Freud’s assessment. Newborns are basically digestive tracts for the initial stretch of their lives, capable of little besides feeding and excreting. The intake of food is the first happiness they know. And infants eagerly insert anything they grab into their mouths, taking pleasure in touch and texture. The preliminary battles of child-rearing are about convincing them to show greater discernment about what should go in there. By focusing on the mouth – and what it’s permitted to do – Kirby’s Dream Land encodes the struggles of this earliest period of desire.
Later phases of human development in this model of Freud’s move from the organs of digestion to those of procreation. In what Freud calls the “phallic stage,” the mind begins to recognize and process anatomical differences, specifically the genitals. This gives rise to all sorts of tangled emotional responses, ranging from attraction (“I like people built like X”) to jealousy (“I wish I had X”) to outright fear (“I don’t want to be around people who have/lack X”). But Freud suggests these don’t turn into sexual urges quite yet, as the body is immature at this point in its development. Instead, the mind enters the “latent stage,” where sexual matters are pushed to the background, and social concerns are of greater interest. In the latent stage, people are more preoccupied with understanding others, making friends, or enjoying hobbies than seeking romantic partners – but their sexual impulses still remain, lying dormant.
These same dynamics are at work, cleverly disguised, in Kirby’s Dream Land 2. A major change from the first game is that Kirby can now mimic the abilities of eaten enemies. But what Kirby gains in the process serves to underscore what he doesn’t have. This new capacity to copy abilities is an expression of difference and lack that aligns with Freud’s portrait of the phallic stage. This game mechanic announces, “I don’t have that thing you do, but I want it.” Wish you could swing a parasol around? Put an enemy that carries one into your mouth. No veiled sexual subtext there, right?
The telltale signs of the latent stage are on full display in Kirby’s Dream Land 2, as well. Whereas Kirby’s first outing was a solo jaunt, the sequel introduces a trio of animal companions (Rick the hamster, Kine the fish, and Coo the owl). One of the game’s main challenges is learning how to work with them: determining who will help you navigate a particular stage the best, for instance, or figuring out which friend is needed to solve certain puzzles. At its heart, the game is about relationships, and understanding who is suited for what – the sorts of social concerns that characterize Freud’s latent stage. And in the meantime, sexuality is literally in the background. An infamous segment of Red Canyon’s Stage 5 depicts a crudely-drawn nude whose entirety is only visible in external maps. In-game, it’s glimpsed one small segment at a time; the whole picture is unnoticeable unless you’re actively documenting each part. It’s a portrait perfectly matching Freud’s concept of latent sexuality: you may not know it, you may not see it, but it’s there – and always has been.
By the time we reach Kirby’s Dream Land 3, we approach the final stages of development and desire. Freud believed human development culminated in what he called the “genital stage,” where mind and body are in harmony, and sexual energies are put toward (re)productive uses. Freud’s rightly been criticized for heteronormativity, as he considered heterosexual relationships alone to be the goal of human development, while labeling other orientations or identifications as disorders. However, it’s worth remembering that Freud viewed this process primarily in terms of procreation, and what the science of his era thought biologically necessary for the continuation of the species. In a charitable, modernized reading, Freud’s theory says simply that the last phase of human development is a healthy relationship with one’s sexuality – recognizing who and what one likes, and feeling comfortable with those preferences such that they don’t interfere with being a functional adult. To this end, the genital stage is a state of responsible adulthood in which sexual impulses are mastered, freeing the organism to pursue other varieties of personal fulfillment and meaningful relationships with others. Sex is all well and good, of course, but it’s not the only thing life has to offer. In the genital stage, the mind comes to recognize multiple avenues for pleasure, and learns when each is appropriate to pursue. This diversifies its possibilities for gratification, allowing for a richer, more rewarding life.
In Kirby’s Dream Land 3, the tenor of the mission changes accordingly. You have the same tools at your disposal as in the previous games – the stomach capacity, the copy abilities, the animal friends – but instead of pushing for something Kirby wants, you’re working on behalf of others and cultivating relationships with them. Outside of boss levels, each stage in Kirby’s Dream Land 3 tasks you with making a Dream Lander happy. Success grants you a “Heart Star” in token of the good will you’ve fostered. In some cases, fulfilling the Dream Lander’s wish involves watering flowers; in others, you’re called upon to trample them. Sometimes you’re reuniting separated family members or granting somebody a glimpse of a loved one, while other missions involve alleviating loneliness for isolated creatures. The arc of the game reveals the kaleidoscopic variety of desires people can have – and since all of them offer the same reward, they’re all treated as equally valid.
But Kirby’s Dream Land 3 isn’t all happiness and rainbows, even setting aside the terrifying final bosses. Thanks to an enigmatic ally named Gooey, Kirby’s own connection with Dream Land’s darker forces is made apparent. Gooey is a blue blob who can be controlled by either an AI or a second player. He functions more or less the same as Kirby (he wraps enemies in his long tongue rather than inhaling them), but adds a few uncomfortable wrinkles to the Dream Land mythos. In the secret area where Kirby duels the true final bosses, Dark Matter and Zero, Gooey is shown to be a species of Dark Matter, sprouting the same posterior fins as the monster Kirby fights. To complicate matters further, the game implies that Gooey is made from the same stuff as Kirby. Gooey materializes at the press of a button – in exchange for a portion of Kirby’s maximum health, as if he’s cut from a chunk of our hero. (Kirby can ingest Gooey to regain the lost health, removing him from the game until he’s summoned again.) How should we interpret this googly-eyed ooze, equal parts the stuff of nightmares and our favorite pink puffball, that damages Kirby in the name of helping him?
For psychoanalysis, Gooey corresponds to a phenomenon Freud called the “death drive.” Freud observed that living things have a tendency to seek an earlier state of being as a recuperative measure, such as when people curl into a fetal position as a defensive reflex. Taken to its logical conclusion, the earliest state of any living creature is inorganic matter – the nonliving substances that built the body. This led Freud to conclude in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” that “the aim of all life is death,” and that this urge for death numbers among the id’s impulses. The implication is that desire and destruction are fundamentally the same impulse and can turn in harmful directions if healthy outlets are unavailable. If the death drive is the id’s destructive undercurrent, Gooey plays the same role for Kirby, tying him to Dream Land’s dark side. In part, Kirby’s Dream Land 3 is about finding the right outlets for that drive, and learning to live with the darker urges that follow you every step of your journey. It’s harder for Kirby to survive when Gooey joins the action, but it’s far from impossible. It simply requires a different approach.
Truth be told, though I’ve loved every Kirby game I’ve played, I’ve been unable to keep up with recent releases. The last one I bought was Return to Dream Land on the Wii. I played Star Allies at a friend’s in the distant days before COVID-19. But for the most part, I look at each new Kirby game with a little less delight – as one more instance of a company squeezing profits from a safe IP or another forgettable artifact of a console I’ll never own for lack of time to play it. Some days Kirby seems to symbolize a different kind of unfulfilled (or unattainable) desire: the corporation’s endless appetite for money, perhaps, or the wish to revisit bygone days when time served no purpose but its own passage.
But I do find it appropriate that Kirby should return, game after game, like a recurring dream. It’s not in the nature of desires to disappear. They only repackage themselves, resurfacing in other guises. For each new generation of wants, there will be a new Kirby, ready to make life a little more bearable, at least for a while.
[1] The Japanese description for Shiver Star reads, “A pure white star full of snow and fluffy clouds. It was so cold that all the people who lived there moved.”
