Mirror’s Edge and The Freedom of Movement

Created in 2009 Mirror's Edge is a game about an authoritarian society that is under heavy surveillance. It takes place in the City of Glass and centers on Faith, a character who lives on the edge of that society

Faith is a runner. Runners are best described as mailmen, or couriers, who deliver messages or packages that the civilians do not want monitored by the system.

The actual plot of Mirror's Edge involves the framing of Faith's sister which causes us to go on a quest to prove her innocence while also uncovering the government's plans for the runners;  the only part of the system that they don't have full control over. In my mind, the game is pretty depressing. It feels as if all traces of hope except for tiny slivers have been squeezed out by the end of the game.

We aren’t going to talk about the story of Mirror's Edge. We're going to talk about how fitness can expand our freedom. Training to be healthy is great, but there are reasons to train for more.

When you play Mirror's Edge, after a while you will notice that you are alone. Sometimes you’ll hear Merc, the “guy in the chair” in your ear and you can count on one hand the number of times you see other runners, excluding cutscenes. But for the majority of the game, it’s you against the world. 90% of the characters you interact with are trying to kill you. The city, at first glance, is extremely hostile to you.

You’re given very few tools to help. You don't have weapons, cars, or jetpacks. No, the way that you combat the world is with Faith's physicality. Her athleticism; her skills are what get her from point A to point B.

You never start with a weapon. Once you get that weapon, you can't even reload it. Once you're out of ammo you have to start the process all over again. The onus, the emphasis, the foundation is on Faith's athleticism. She only has herself to rely on.

If she was less capable, most of the game couldn’t happen. How far would we get in the game, if Faith was winded 20 seconds into a sprint? What if she could only jump across a 5-foot gap? We wouldn’t get very far.

Imagine this: You, yes, you in real life, need to get to the end of a long alley, but there is a wall in your way. 

What are you going to do to get around it? How will you get to your goal? If the wall is 2 feet tall, you can step over it. If it’s 5 feet tall, you can climb over it.

But what if the wall is 10 feet tall? Can you climb over it? Can you grab the top and pull yourself up? Or wall run and vault over it? If the wall is 13 or 15 feet tall, has it barred you from your goal?

 Now, in the modern day, for now, there are other options to get around the wall. You can call your friends and they can help you. Or you can call a construction company and break the wall down (assuming you have money). But that involves relying on other people, which involves relying on a system that is permissive to you reaching your goal.

What if no one wants to help you? What if the system will send people to stop you from getting over the wall if you're not quick enough? Think about this for a moment. We’re going to come back to it, let’s take a quick detour to talk about freedom. (USA REFERENCE)

None of us are truly free. We all have a relative amount of freedom to do the things we want to do. We're not free to jump off of a cliff and fly away. Gravity will impose restrictions on us. Faith has more relative freedom than many in her city, but she’s not as free as those outside it.

We will always have some restrictions on what we’re physically capable of so our goal should not be absolute freedom. But we should take a look at ourselves, and see if we are unnecessarily adding restrictions to ourselves. Getting back to the wall thought experiment, we don’t want to be unable to climb the wall because we are too heavy, or we don’t have enough strength. We shouldn’t allow anything other than physics, or our desires to stop us. If we don’t want to get past the wall at all, that’s perfectly fair.

Now, that’s not to say that everyone can, or should train themselves to the level of people like Dominic Tomssiao or  “That black guy”. It’s also not to say that the world is such a mess that we may need to parkour away from cops. (though it may be close to that)

No, all we need to do is examine our physical capabilities, and then determine what is “our wall”, and what is our “goal”, and understand that those two variables are subject to change. One day our goal may be to reorganize our house, and the wall may be our heavy couch.

Another day, that goal may be hiking with our friends, and the wall may be our poor cardio.

And we should strongly consider if we are capable of physically getting what we want if we had to rely only on ourselves. We can’t hire movers to help us reorganize. We can’t ask our friend to carry our backpack all day, while we hike.

Other ways to think of this might be: like being able to play with your children.  Is the wall in the scenario your energy levels? Is it your bad back? Is it your weak musculature?  and then in very extreme situations yeah are you fast enough to remove yourself from Bad situations? Or if that's not an option do you have the skills to get past the wall that is a physical confrontation? Can you fight if you need to fight? (physical 100 reference?) 

In 2023 Netflix aired a Korean show called Physical 100.

A mix of men and women compete in a variety of physical challenges that test their endurance, and strength. The show’s stated goal is to “ find the ideal human physique based on many performance tests.”

I think the goal is a little silly. Maybe it’s a mistranslation. But I believe that the show is onto something. It pits many athletes from different fields against each other. In season 1, and season 2, the first real challenge is basically a fight. Two people compete to maintain control over a large ball by the end of a 3-minute countdown. What we often see is that people who have a background in martial arts almost always do better than people who’s only exposure to fitness is modeling or bodybuilding. This show is an excellent stress test, because, disregarding the steroid use that I am absolutely sure is rampant with most contestants, most of these people are very fit.  Some “fit” people lose to “less fit” people because they don’t have the physical skills or athleticism that their competition has. 

There is a lesson to be learned here, that resonates with Mirror’s Edge. That lesson is that training to be healthy only goes so far. And training purely for aesthetics, like a bodybuilder, will take you a little further, but it still has its limits. A lot can be gained from imagining more intense scenarios, and training performance for those, in mind.

Mirror's Edge is not telling us that running is the only skill that we need. It's not telling us that parkour, no matter how amazing and how useful it could be, is the only skill that we need. Faith is good at running, fighting, and parkour. She's well-rounded.

 Mirror's Edge is making the argument that when push comes to shove your ability to get the things you want; your freedom comes from you. The stronger, faster,  we can even say smarter,  that you are, the more you are capable of doing even when the world tries to stop you.

If you want to experience the freedom that movement, that fitness, can give you, Mirror's Edge gives you a starter pack.

Prison is one of the most extreme removals of a person's freedom. A prisoner is constrained to one physical location.

 Running can easily be thought of as the antithesis of prison.  Running is all about changing your physical location, moving around, and exploring the area around you. Running gives you more freedom and has a very low barrier to entry. It doesn't cost much of anything. You can even run barefoot if you want. You don't need a gym membership to go running. 

Martial arts is another key to physical freedom. Martial arts has a long history of self-discipline and learning what your body is capable of and giving you more control over your body. 

A practical martial art will also give you the freedom of knowing that you are statistically safer.

If something pops off, if there is a confrontation you know that you are free to handle it.

You can run if you want to you can run if you need to, but if it's a situation where the best thing to do is face the confrontation. Maybe your partner or child is with you, and running away would put them in danger—your ability to fight gives you that option. It gives you the freedom to make that choice.

Parkour is another skill that gives you the freedom to be awesome. But seriously, parkour in a person's day-to-day life doesn't have quite so many benefits, but in the same way that a martial art will give you the freedom to fight back if needed, parkour gives you the ability to get anywhere you want to get if you need to get there. 

Freedom through movement is almost so foundational we forget how special it is, and we forget that it can be improved upon. If you can walk around, climb stairs, and go for a jog then you have an incredible gift that you should be very grateful for. If you lose those abilities, many restrictions can be put on you that drastically change your life. On the other hand, if you have two legs and two arms and you're physically healthy you can increase your freedom. 

We can look at Mirror’s Edge and our modern world, and see how close we might be to losing freedoms granted to us. This should incentivize us to do what we can to increase our capabilities, to increase our skills so that we can be more free. On a less physical note, this should also incentivize us to help others become more free so we can in general push back against the trend of authoritarianism. But back to the physical side of things…

If the world becomes more authoritarian, and falling in line is not something we want to do, then we would only benefit from being a beast physically.

If you lived in the city of Glass, would you be a runner, would you be a civilian who hires runners, or would you submit in totality to the system? Your body, your athleticism, gives you the choice.