Image credit Nintendo via GameRant
On Sunday, March 10, Oppenheimer was awarded seven Oscar’s at the 96th Academy Awards, one of them for Best Original Score. During his speech, composer Ludwig Göransson thanked his parents for encouraging him to pursue music.
The way he presented his gratitude, however, had the gaming community scratching their heads. Göransson thanked his parents by saying, “thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines, instead of video games!”
Society has always placed people into boxes; the jocks, the beautiful people, nerds, goths, the list goes on and on. But society also likes to think that people can only take on one of these tropes in their lives.
More and more, people are proving that art, in all its forms, can transcend beyond just the “nerdy” people. Henry Cavill has shared in many interviews his love for tabletop gaming and video games, Terry Crews built a PC to bond with his son and also plays the flute, and just recently in his retirement speech, Jason Kelse thanked his band director for the lessons his director taught him when he was a kid.
After Göransson’s speech, gamers were quick to point out that some of the best music has come from video game soundtracks. They give praise to composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Jeremy Soule, and Yoko Shimomura for their work on the Final Fantasy series, the Elder Scrolls series, and the Kingdom Hearts series, respectively. And these composers are just the tip of the iceberg.
While the gaming community had a lot of dissenting opinions on his statement, some in the gaming community are quick to point out that it’s not bad to have multiple hobbies. One X (formerly Twitter) user says that video game soundtracks are lot of the reason people become fans of orchestral music.
Gaming industry veteran Tony Barnes says that he had video games, keyboards, AND drum machines as a child, and found Göransson’s comments to be a cheep shot against the gaming industry.
However, in a voice of reason, composer David Wise comes to Göransson’s defense, pointing out that the Oscar winner wasn’t saying that he didn’t like video games, but that he was grateful for his parents providing him with the tools to pursue music. Wise composed the music for some of the industry’s more successful games, including the Donkey Kong Country series and Yooka Laylee.
Art as a whole can take on many forms, as well as many disciplines. To become a master at a craft, some choose to focus on a multidisciplinary route, allowing them to be open to different options in their field. Others, like Göransson, choose one form of mastery, and in many cases, this leads them to the ultimate prize of an Oscar, a Grammy, or an Emmy.
Some believe that Göransson’s statement could have been worded differently to avoid the backlash of cancel culture, but the composer wanted to make it clear that creating music was his path from childhood.
It doesn’t mean we always have to choose one or the other. This author wanted to be a musician while playing sports and video games as a child, but instead found happiness in writing and creating.
Sometimes, our paths can take a winding road to mastery. For others, like Göransson, their paths are laid out from the time their born.
His name is Ludwig, after-all.
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