Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 63

Popular Culture Review 29.2
the environmental destruction occurring in the Dust District and is instead known for his gluttony and elaborate , wasteful parties . Jessamine , speaking through the Heart , comments on the divide between the wealthy and poor : “ I see a mine collapsing on a dozen workers . A beggar succumbs to bloodflies . A cat sleeps on a velvet pillow .” This stark contrast of victimization and opulence surrounds the embodied player in the fictional world of the game , but the issues of the dangers of mining and the disregard of worker safety have their real-world counterparts .
Historically , mining safety has mattered , as it does in the Dishonored series , only to those whose lives are directly impacted , seeming almost a novel thought to those not directly in harm ’ s potential way . A news item published in the New York Evangelist in 1877 reported on an accident in a silver mine in which worker Hugh McDonald fainted as the transport cage was working its way back to the surface . He fell to his death owing to the absence of a security railing to prevent such an incident . The journalist comments that “ it is not an unusual occurrence ” for miners to faint from the heat in the mines and that “ some enclosures should be provided ” to prevent miners from falling to their deaths ( 1 ). While these comments can be read as sympathetic , they may also seem disconnected , as though such enclosures are intended for animal rather than human safety . Laws in some countries have since improved mine worker conditions , but the industry as a whole remains a threat to both them and to the environment . Matilda Lee explains of modern-day silver mining ,
Generally , silver comes to market as a byproduct of the industrial mining of other metals , such as copper , zinc , and gold . In 2005 , only 30 percent of silver came from actual silver mines . It is no high honour to
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