on humiliation in disco elysium
major spoilers ahead obviously
In beating disco elysium for the first time, it took a few days for it to click. On its surface elysium is so unbelievably witty and fun to play. If you allow a moderate amount of save-scumming, you can stop dying inside of a garbage disposal and begin to unravel a masterclass in political ideology. In any play through, some things connect to the case in hand, some don't. I picked up so many quests I got half-way done with, having ambition kick me in the end after having not even found my gun by the cases end.
Time in disco elysium plays a few parts, most obviously as an incentive to explore and cutoff for new content. When the sun was beginning to set I would scramble to talk to characters around the map who I hadn't exhausted yet with my communist rhetoric. You don't want to miss anything, and with even the arachnid cryptid sidequest having a more than worthwhile payoff, you're right to want to see everything this game has to offer. Time marches forward, and everyone goes to bed. As previously mentioned I passed away several times because I didn't have enough money to pay for a bed in the whirling rags (hobocop erasure). There are no cheap ways out, something I didn't fully understand, buying several pairs of cool sunglasses and jeans by day 1. You are without people to beg for money after a certain point in the night, and you die. This is then the third purpose of time in disco elysium and one that set in the premise of the story most clearly by day 2.
"To be made of flesh was humiliation" - Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
Change isn't something that is instantaneous, you becoming Harry during the events of the story don't exempt you from the life he had. It is humiliating being Harry Du Bois, and I don't just mean to say he's a drunk or says weird things. Begging a despicable woman, stealing the rims off your partners car, selling gifts, they're nearly required to get by. You have become an active participant in the circus of his life. I stand beside the payphone begging Dora to listen to me, in some way hoping that my actions in the days previous would mean I had changed. The dialogue options never change though, you can't rhetoric check your way out of being Harry Du Bois. Kim Kitsuragi is the exemption to this rule, recognizing who you are, but everyone with the misfortune of knowing Harry prior knows the workings of his organs, his habits.
On the balcony late at night on the first day, Kitsuragi talks to you about the current prospects in the case. In my playthrough, I had gotten practically no where, at this point questioning if I had done something wrong. I looked back at silly dialogue choices I made prior in the day. In that moment I wanted Kitsuragi to speak to me as I was, but I was not yet an active participant in Harry's brain. I bargained with myself as Kim tells us we hadn't inspected the body because I was hungover. I felt like the son of an unremarkable man; I had been spoken for. By the end of day 1 I was all of a radical feminist, hobocop, and cryptid enthusiast. Bouncing around interactions looking for a way out, I cling on to intrusive ideas. They they are a borrowed identity for you, taking hold of the narrative for just a moment. Fleeting as it is, I never did find the communist underground.
