Dave is never as affectionate as he is on the battlefield. It makes Hal more reckless.
Dave, who has always been Snake, does not know affection unless it was with his comrades in war – Frank, Miller – and always tinged with violence.
You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men. (Kruger, 1981)
In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy – as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. (…) Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability. (Brintnall, 2004)
Having stepped away from the battlefield, he becomes despondent and starved for affection. It’s part of why his relationship with Meryl fails: they are not in a war. He doesn’t get along as well as when they’re both under threat of death. Off the battlefield, he’s not Snake, and only Snake knows affection.
It’s why he ultimately agrees to Philanthropy. He’s starved for it.
He comes alive on missions, feels like he’s really connecting with Hal in a way he doesn’t in his off-time. Actually sees him – well, sees Otacon. Snake gets close to Otacon in a way that Dave doesn’t to Hal.
(Does Dave know this about himself? Is it something he knows and identifies as part of himself, right and just? Is it something that frustrates him, something he doesn’t know how to bridge? Or is it another invisible barrier between him and other people?)
Even as he warms up to Hal, as they truly become friends, (as Hal begins to want more,) the most marked difference between Snake and Dave is their physical affection.
Snake reaches over and grasps his shoulder in reassurance. Dave doesn’t touch him as he squeezes past. Snake looks worried and asks if he’s feeling alright when he thinks Hal is about to drop dead in the field. Dave raises a brow at his bad habits over his mug of coffee and says nothing.
Dave is never as affectionate as he is on the battlefield. It makes Hal more reckless.
Hal has never been as close to Snake – to Dave – as he was during the Tanker incident, when Dave was fading out in his arms.
Hal is starved for affection too – has been his whole life. It’s always been something denied him, held at arms length from him, used to manipulate him, used against him.
After Tanker, Hal starts insisting that he should be on the field in some capacity. Dave insists otherwise, that it puts him in unnecessary danger and complicates the mission. But he comes up with reasons, some of which are even true: communication is less likely to be intercepted, some information can only be accessed in person.
It’s enough that Snake begins training him, and even this is adjacent enough to violence that he becomes more physically affectionate. A hand over his own, curled around the grip of a pistol, knees tucked behind his. A friendly slap on the back, ‘takes me back to being a rookie. Master Miller would have had my ass for that poor form’. By nature, Hal shies away from violence – he insists on tranquillisers, he does not want to kill – but at the same time is inexorably drawn to it, to the chance of being close.
Something changes here. They get closer. But they’re always on a mission now, always in the middle of something. Maybe that’s what lets them stay close. Bittersweet.
Hal starts to follow Dave onto the field. It makes him follow him onto Big Shell.
When Emma dies, who hugs him? Snake? Pliskin? or Dave? It’s the closest they’ve been since Tanker.
“Do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield?”
“Yeah, I do. I think at any time, any place, people can fall in love with each other.” (Metal Gear Solid)
It’s not that he thinks people can fall in love even on a battlefield, it’s that to Dave, it’s the only place one ‘truly’ falls in love. He’s aware that life is not all about war. He knows he’s been made into the perfect soldier, who is only valued for his use on the battlefield… and at the same time, it still has been most of his life. If love can bloom on the battlefield, then surely it must bloom elsewhere, in ‘real life’… but he doesn’t have that experience. He tries to ‘fall in love’ out of combat and it’s not the same. To love someone, you have to be able to protect them – by risking your own life you prove your love for them. What is there to prove out of war?
To a man who holds affection for another man but has too many mental hangups to do anything or to even fully understand himself, the fake dating scenario offers an opportunity to do something about it.
Not only is he on the battlefield, the one place he seems to think tenderness has its place, but he’s also explicitly supposed to be affectionate.
The problem is that Hal is fully cognisant of the fact that Snake is just doing this because of the mission. He already knows about his tendency to only show affection on the field, so he dismisses the idea that there are any ‘actual feelings’ behind it. Still, he’s unable to quash the hope that maybe Dave could be this affectionate off the field. After all, he was able to be affectionate in a ‘dating’ scenario, right?
They get together for real towards the end of the mission… and immediately post-mission, they’re back to square one. Dave pulls away, whether he means to or not. It’s Meryl all over again. He notices the signs as Hal too starts to become withdrawn, frustrated. He doesn’t want that to happen again. So he asks again, what am I doing wrong?
When he asked Meryl, the answer must have felt like an attack. She was young, and blunt. To Snake, it probably boiled down to ‘you’re not the guy [the legendary Solid Snake] I thought you were’.
Hal starts with ‘Dave, you’re not the same guy you are on missions’, and he’s defensive, bracing himself for the same argument. This time, he feels more betrayed, because he thought they knew each other better than that. Then Hal continues, did you know you avoid touching me off the field?
Dave says, well, that can’t be right. Hal insists that it is. He’s still friendly, but it’s not the same. He’s less… vulnerable. And ordinarily perhaps Snake wouldn’t say anything, just glare mulishly, but he’s keyed up and can’t figure out where he’s going wrong and wants answers so he blurts out, why would I be?
Hal has to laugh in disbelief because what kind of mindset do you need to have for the battlefield to be an appropriate place for vulnerability and daily life, romantic relationships, not? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Either one is always vulnerable on the battlefield, and therefore it is the only place to be vulnerable, or because your life is in danger on the battlefield, it is the only place one affords to show affection. It’s the only place vulnerability can be excused.
Eventually, Hal is able to say, Dave, you know you’re allowed to be affectionate off the battlefield, and Dave replying, I know. But it’s not enough to say it. Hal realises that outside of the battlefield, in daily life, he will need to be the one to initiate, at least until Dave actually, truly understands. Suggesting this aloud, he fights the urge to back out, and he reaches for a hug. Dave accepts, and it’s awkward, and he says, what’s the point, though, to which Hal responds, there doesn’t have to be a point to a hug. You can do it because you want to. Because I want to be close to you.
It’s a sentiment that would never have been afforded out of the battlefield. But Dave just nods, thinking everything over. It’s supremely awkward. Hal coughs and pushes his glasses up, goes, I know just saying it doesn’t mean much. But I really think this is just something you need to practice at, and what can Dave say but OK?
It’s one thing to say there’s more to life than just fighting, but Dave sure doesn’t act like it. As though war is the only real thing in the world, like everything else is just play, or less serious, somehow.
Does Dave think that what Hal does doesn’t matter because he’s not directly in the field? Of course not. But what he does matters because of the mission, and that’s the big sticking point.
The mission isn’t the only thing that ‘matters’. It can’t be. Dave might say something about priorities, and Hal might agree. He might segue into some philosophical discussion about the point of the mission – humanity, caring about people, rectifying their mistakes – but the mission is just the means to get there, not the meaning in itself. If what they’re doing ever goes against what they stand for, the things they care about, then they drop the mission, because the mission itself isn’t what’s important.
It’s not that simple, Dave says, and Hal says, sure. But you get what I’m trying to say, right? See the forest for the trees, or something like that.
And what about when there’s no mission left? What happens to your priorities then? Dave goes, well, in the situation that there’s nothing left to be done, that’s when you can finally kick back and relax. Except his past ‘retirements’ have shown that this isn’t true. He drank himself into a stupor the first time around. Fucked up his relationship in the second. The truth is that for all he says and consciously thinks, to Dave – Snake – the highest priority, the only priority, is The Mission. This is obviously not something you can stop thinking straight away, especially while Philanthropy – while the spectre of Metal Gear is still active. But he has to try. And Dave agrees, reluctantly, at least to that.
Hal brings up that they’re fighting for an end to all the fighting, to Metal Gear. Does Dave not think they can do that? And he says, of course I think we can do it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And Hal says, then one day the fighting will end. There won’t be a mission. He needs to figure out how he’s going to live with himself before then.
The truth is obviously that Dave never expected to live past The Mission. His life, literally and figuratively, ends with the mission. Learning to actually live the life he loves so much is another part of learning to love off the battlefield.
This was all written with the mind that Dave associates intimacy generally with violence, but it must be noted that in referenced literature, violence in media specifically functions as a way of preserving the (heterosexual) masculine ego by allowing a man to be viewed erotically without explicitly being marked as an erotic object, something reserved for women (see Neale, 1983). I’m of the opinion that Snake could be interpreted as gay or otherwise unattracted to women (see Psycho Mantis’ comment on Snake apparently having no desire to pass on his seed), and that his pursuit of women is just a further example of preserving heterosexual expectations of masculinity. This is all to say that if he were able to abandon the need to conform to heterosexual expectations, he might develop a better relationship with intimacy…
Brintnall, K. L. (2004). TARANTINO’S INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY: “Reservoir Dogs”, Crucifixions and Spectacular Violence. CrossCurrents, 54(1), 66–75. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Tarantino%27s+incarnational+theology%3a+Reservoir+Dogs%2c+crucifixions+and…-a0118880769
Kruger, B. (1981). Untitled (You Construct Intricate Rituals) [Photograph]. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, United States. https://collections.mfa.org/objects/35582
Neale, S. (1983). Masculinity as Spectacle. Screen, 24(6), 2-17. http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/rrushing/470j/ewExternalFiles/Screen-1983-Neale-2-17.pdf
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