Embodied Historiographies: Affect and Realism in the "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty" Franchises after "Saving Private Ryan"

Abstract

This dissertation examines the representation of World War II in First Person Shooters (FPSs) and the shift in their perception after the release of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998). It argues that the release of Saving Private Ryan (1998) allowed the genre to unhinge itself from a popular discourse critical of immersive video games and attach itself to a discourse that regarded embodiment as a privileged way of representing history realistically. The first chapter analyzes the PC game Wolfenstein 3D (1992) to establish the genre’s state of play before the release of Spielberg’s film. It lays out the limitations faced by the game genre: due to the perception that FPSs engage the players’ bodies more directly than other media, they found themselves unable to function as fact-based historiographies. As a result, they approached representations of WWII by combining them with the genre inventories of science fiction and horror. Chapter II introduces the term “visceral realism” to analyze the impact of Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan on representations of WWII and their perception. It argues that the highly physical opening battle scene in particular shifted the perception of such representations from associations with horror and the ‘body genre’ to the idea that bodily experienced WWII historiographies offer a privileged access to the hardships and struggles of the ‘Greatest Generation.’ Chapter III analyzes the first FPS to react to this shift, Medal of Honor (1999), and argues that it unhinged the genre from public controversies in the wake of the Columbine High School Massacre by alluding to accepted genres like the spy thriller and ideologies like the celebration of the ‘Greatest Generation.’ Chapter IV discusses the 2003 FPS Call of Duty and its use of cinematic conventions and portrayal of historical artifacts to establish a U.S.-centric narrative of war from the perspectives of the U.S., U.K. and USSR troops. I argue that this shift in national subjectivities during the game serves as an extension of Cold War ideology by constructing a moral hierarchy between the United States, Great Britain and Communist Russia. Finally, the conclusion considers the historical and cultural environment of this dissertation’s analyses and, using postwar Germany as an example, shows the wide variety of possible readings of these games.