America is Dead. Long Live America! Political Affect in Days Gone

European Journal of American Studies

关键词: Days Gone;    video games;    videogames;    affect;    political affect;    self-reliance;   

DOI  :  10.4000/ejas.17409

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This essay considers political affect in the open world action-adventure survival horror game Days Gone (SIE Bend Studio, 2019). Through an examination of its rendering of the Pacific Northwest landscape as ideology, much is revealed about a deeply troubled and oppositional worldview. While this research addresses matters of representation—particularly notions of fraught masculinity and a struggle for recognition—its focus is on how the game functions as a window onto a fantasy of American self-reliance and populism that strongly resonates with a Trump-era nationalist turn in the U.S. The essay also gestures toward a methodology of experiential close-reading, one focused on working-through and sitting with a difficult aesthetic object that may at first seem entirely generic. In this essay, the author reaches through the offending, formulaic image to grasp the political affect that emanates from a sustained aesthetic experience of playing Days Gone.

【 授权许可】

Unknown