From Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism by Javier Sethness
The marvelous PC and video game Black Myth: Wukong (2024), created by the previously low-profile Chinese company Game Science, is a spirited blockbuster adaptation of Wu Cheng’en’s epic fantasy novel, Journey to the West (c. 1592). Considered one of the four classic Chinese novels, Journey to the West presents a mythological spin on the monk Xuanzang’s unsanctioned seventh-century pilgrimage from China to India to recover Buddhist scriptures. While both Xuanzang and his literary counterpart Tang Sanzang are absent from Black Myth: Wukong, the “Great Sage” Sun Wukong—the novel’s beloved trickster monkey god and Sanzang’s main bodyguard—plays a prominent role.
Being set some time after the events of Journey to the West, Black Myth: Wukong immerses players in an enchanted world suffused by Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese folk religion that has been defiled by yaoguai (demon) usurpers. Gamers play as a monkey known as the “Destined One” who uses magical spells and supernatural strength to meditatively defeat this myriad of monsters. In the words of Chinese literature professor Shi Changyu, most of the yaoguais in Journey to the West symbolize “social evils” from China’s feudal period, while Wukong and his fellow protectors of Sanzang take after numerous historical examples of Chinese peasant insurgents (Changyu 11, 13). Such critical social commentary is not lost in Black Myth: Wukong’s spin on the Journey.
Rather, the game’s stunning graphics, compelling soundtrack, and exciting and challenging style could be interpreted as providing compelling virtual representations—even celebrations—of radical direct action! Despite Black Myth: Wukong’s setting in a fantastical world from long ago, the game’s instant appeal likely has much to do with Journey’s massive popularity in East and Southeast Asia and the diaspora—plus, the fact that the game basically amounts to a war on the bosses. This cause is timeless and transhistorical, indeed!
Ironically, such an edifying dynamic holds true, even if Black Myth: Wukong’s budget came out to $70 million (compared to Cyberpunk 2077’s unprecedented budget of $300 million), and even if Game Science inevitably coordinated with the neo-fascist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during production. Presumably, the CCP has capitalized on the success of the game, which sold an estimated 20 million copies within its first month after launch, just as Amazon and Jeff Bezos profit in parallel from their billion-dollar investment in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022/2024) mini-series, which critically depicts J.R.R. Tolkien’s infamous Dark Lord Sauron as a corporate psychopath. Meanwhile, Bezos and his managers systematically bust up unions and legitimize and bankroll Donald Trump’s neo-Nazi regime!
As Thomas Jardine Wilson and I have discussed previously, this unpleasant overlap between big capital and dystopian speculative fiction raises concern for a phenomenon known as “interpassivity.” Rehashing critical theorist Herbert Marcuse’s worries about so-called “repressive desublimation”—or, to put it simply, false liberation—the concept of interpassivity suggests that viewers and gamers, when consuming critical, subversive, or ostensibly anti-capitalist media, may derive pleasure from experiencing imaginary and indirect struggles against bourgeois exploitation and State control, to the detriment of actually and directly struggling against these ills in the real world.
Whether or not playing Black Myth: Wukong activates a sense of interpassivity, in light of its virtual championing of anti-authoritarian direct action, or instead encourages gamers to take up Wukong’s heroic example in their own lives, is unknown. As with Cyberpunk 2077, The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, and many other examples, though, this is an enduring, intractable—one might even say wicked—problem that merits further research. Initially, though, one could say that this tension between the corporate underwriting and commodification of subversive mediatic messaging reflects the basic contradictions of capitalism and the so-called culture industry.
This article will briefly review some of the anarchist themes that can be gleaned in Black Myth: Wukong, reflecting the satirical spirit of Cheng’en’s original epic novel. Still, only the early part of Black Myth’s plot will be discussed, so as to avoid spoilers. Before concluding, some of the dialectical tensions between Daoism and anarchism will also be discussed.
Anarchist Themes in Black Myth: Wukong
Like many other PC and video games, especially those integrating noir motifs highlighting the horrors of capitalism and the State, Black Myth: Wukong excels in presenting players with virtual opportunities to engage in anarchic direct action within a simulated world that is far-removed from the present. Indeed, Black Myth’s plot revolves around the corruption of the Buddhosphere, or Buddhist world, by resurgent yaoguais about a thousand years ago. This is the basis of the need for the Destined One to heroically subdue these monsters and restore order. Said goal is arguably done in a manner consistent with the French anarchist Anselme Bellegarrigue’s well-known formulation: “Anarchy is order […].”
After all, given the close parallels between Sun Wukong and the Destined One, Black Myth effectively has its players take up an antagonistic attitude toward established authority. This is evident from the very beginning, when gamers play briefly as the Great Sage himself, standing alone against the overwhelming force of the Celestial Court (see above screenshot): the so-called “Heavenly Thousand” soldiers, the giant river deity Juling Shen, the Four Heavenly Kings (Buddhist devas, or gods), and the “Little Sage” Erlang Shen (nephew of the Jade Emperor, Daoism’s highest authority). While this clash pays tribute to the famous “Havoc in Heaven” sequence at the beginning of Journey to the West, when the Great Sage wages war directly on the divine rulers, this reimagined Wukong also emulates the iconic “Tank Man” who defied an entire armored column from the Chinese Liberation Army in June 1989, just hours after its massacre of over 1,000 students and workers in and around Tiananmen Square.
If we apply a humanistic lens inspired by philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach to the scene, the game’s initial portrayal of the stifling vertical power of the Celestial Palace functions as a satire of both the Court’s real-life “double” in the enduring imperial Chinese bureaucracy, as well as of class and socio-political hierarchy, broadly conceived. By contrast, the fierce anti-authoritarianism and yearning for tranquility that Wukong expresses to his foes play on his status as a rebel, social bandit, and Daoist-Buddhist sage, as established in Cheng’en’s novel.
After this opening sequence, players take on the role of an Old World monkey known variously as the Destined One, “Young Sage,” or even “feral monk.” To begin with (see featured image above), gamers must clear the temple of the Bodhisattva (or spiritual heroine) Guanyin, which is being occupied by a menacing yaoguai king that has taken on the form of a wolf. Then, players confront a landlord in a river, who is aptly revealed to be a water-snake. Later, they face down a tiger yaoguai king lording over a ruined temple, pools of blood, and headless statues of Guanyin and Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (c. 5th or 6th century BCE). Other foes from the early game include a repellent and Machiavellian yaoguai king who misrepresents himself as the Buddha while elevating himself over the scriptures. Such dystopian iconoclasm conveys that these virtual landscapes are definitely not part of the Buddhosphere dialectically built or inspired by the Mauryan monarch Ashoka’s (c. 304–232 BCE) so-called “Empire of Peace.”
In keeping with Journey to the West, Black Myth emphasizes the intimate connection between courageous direct action and Buddhist piety. Both epics communicate the apocalyptical sense that humanity “and heaven are made known” once “the demons are all defeated” (Cheng’en 2281). Likewise, in parallel to not only the Journey, but also the Daoist fairy tale “Peach Blossom Spring” (421 CE), Black Myth both conveys and reflects the desire to change the world.
The Dialectic of the Dao
Along these lines, let us briefly comment on the dialectical relationship between Daoism and anarchism. According to Cheng’en, Sun Wukong discovers his immense powers in Journey to the West specifically by studying the Dao, or “Way,” under the Patriarch Subodhi (fashioned after the Buddha’s disciple Subhūti). Using his supernatural abilities and newfound immortality, the Great Sage goes on to wreck havoc in the Celestial Palace before being stopped in his tracks by the Buddha. Guanyin then converts Wukong to the faith following five centuries of imprisonment, as she instructs him to escort Tang Sanzang on the latter’s pilgrimage, in order to comply with his penance as a newfound Buddhist novice.
Still, in a reflection of his syncretic nature, the Great Sage also embodies certain Daoist teachings, given the character’s desire to “return to nature, [and…] the natural, spontaneous, free and happy life, stripped of all convention, without law or morality,” in the words of the late Vietnamese Trotskyist Ngo Van. What is more, the massive threat posed to the Court by Wukong’s uprising closely mirrors the numerous peasant revolts in ancient China that were driven by Daoist messianism. Plus, in parallel to the utopianism of the aforementioned “Peach Blossom Spring,” the fearless leveling practiced by the Great Sage and the Destined One may be taken as seeking the far-off utopian land, described in the Liezi Daoist text (c. 5th century BCE), where “there is no king and there are no subjects […].”
Likewise, the political scientist John A. Rapp discusses many of the affinities between Daoism and anarchism in his 2012 volume dedicated to the subject. Still, the question must be asked: what of the Celestial Court, which originates with Daoism? The despotism of the Jade Emperor’s Court—the yin, perhaps, to the anarchist yang—complicates the idea that Daoism is so straightforwardly emancipatory. Indeed, several antagonists from Black Myth directly invoke the Dao in their counter-revolutionary efforts to put down the Destined One!
Closing Thoughts
As mentioned in the introduction, Black Myth features the “lone-wolf” struggle of the Destined One against an array of menacing yaoguais. While Wukong’s former companion Zhu Baije, also known as Pig, has a few cameos, both Tang Sanzang and his other two protectors, Friar Sand and the dragon horse, are absent from the game. Does this perhaps mirror the ascendancy of bourgeois-individualist culture and psychology in China in recent decades, since the Chinese Communist Party and international investors conspired to impose a totalitarian-capitalist regime? What is more, the removal of Tang Sanzang from Black Myth allows the Young Sage to be presented as remarkably asexual, in contrast to Wukong, whose character has a clearly erotic-platonic attachment to his Buddhist master in Journey to the West. Such homonegative changes certainly conform to the CCP’s heteropatriarchal agenda.
After all, perhaps one of the most ironic aspects of Black Myth—which currently serves the CCP’s desires for fame and (presumably) profit—is that its heroic adventure story could be retold in present-day China, with the gauntlet of yaoguais recast as the minions of the CCP itself. (It could likely be adapted for many other country contexts, too.) While the game’s virtual scenes of reactionary, anti-Buddhist iconoclasm are reminiscent of the Taliban’s shocking destruction of the monumental Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, they are also reminiscent of the CCP’s ongoing settler-colonization of the Buddhist-majority region of Tibet, and its cultural and physical genocide of Uyghurs, Hui, and other Turkic Muslim peoples in Xinjiang. This latter atrocity, ordered by CCP General Secretary and President Xi Jinping in 2014 as an emulation of certain “aspects of [the United States of] America’s ‘war on terror’ after the Sept. 11 [2001] attacks,” moreover echoes the Red Guards’ widespread targeting of ostensible symbols and purveyors of traditional Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) incited by Mao Zedong. Ironically enough, despite his contempt for the so-called “Four Olds,” Mao was a fan of Sun Wukong.
Indeed, some observers have likened newfound U.S. President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks on scientific research, evidence-based medicine, and academic freedom to the anti-intellectual fervor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which served to stabilize the CCP’s bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. This brings us full-circle, such that the yaoguais from Black Myth: Wukong could be recast as present-day power-wielders in Western societies. After all, as Alberto Toscano observes, “today’s Right” is intent on creating “a real time of monsters.” In this precarious situation, like a boxer in the ring, or the Destined One fighting some demonic king, the only choice we have is “either [to] fight back and defend [one]self,” or to “g[o] down.” Let us therefore render homage to the Great Sage and “Victorious Fighting Buddha,” through compassion, mercy, benevolence, and resistance.
Works Cited
Changyu, Shi 2023. “Introduction.” Journey to the West, vol. 1. Trans. W.J.F. Jenner. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. 1–22.
Cheng’en, Wu 2023. Journey to the West. 4 vols. Trans. W.J.F. Jenner. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.


Comments
classical anarchism…
lizard78 (not verified) Sat, 04/19/2025 - 17:19
classical anarchism impregnated with morals, prescriptions and organisational theories sounds more like confucianism
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