One Neoliberalism, Many Resistances by Dennis R. Redmond
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Copyright 2012 Dennis R. Redmond VIDEOGAME CULTURE AS TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA: ONE NEOLIBERALISM, MANY RESISTANCES BY DENNIS R. REDMOND DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communications in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Angharad Valdivia, Chair Professor Isabel Molina Professor Antoinette Burton Professor Paula Treichler, Emeritus ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes two best-selling videogames, Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) and Square Enix' Final Fantasy 12 (2006), as sites of contestation between commercial media corporations on the one hand, and communities of artists, consumers and non-commercial digital users on the other. I argue that Metal Gear Solid 4 rewrites the stealth espionage thriller into a critique of neoliberalism's financial speculations and neocolonial wars, while Final Fantasy 12 rewrites the fantasy role-playing videogame into a critique of the colonial and neocolonial legacies of fantasy and role-playing fiction. Using the tools of critical communications theory, postcolonial media studies, and digital media scholarship, I argue that these videogames narrate the struggle between neoliberalism (i.e. the ideology of late 20 th century market fundamentalism which exerted global hegemony during the thirty years from 1975 to 2005) and a wide range of anti-neoliberal social movements, developmental states (especially those of the BRIC nations, i.e. Brazil, Russia, India and China), and non-commercial networks of digital production, distribution and consumption. I also argue that these videogames frame the politics of transnational media production and transnational audience reception in productive ways. At their best, they offer new ways to critique digital capitalism as well as its shadowy obverse, financialized neocolonialism. I conclude that videogames have become an important space for anti-neoliberal cultural critique and political mobilization, and that videogame narratives offer unique insights into transnational identity-politics, the institutions of the digital commons, and the geopolitics of the emerging multipolar world. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: VIDEOGAMES AS TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA................................................14 1.1 Constructing The Transnational Audience...................................................................18 1.2 Neoliberal Corporations versus the Digital Commons................................................34 1.3 Videogames as Transnational Commodities: From Game Studies to Digital Class Struggle........................................................................................................................46 1.4 Towards a Theory of Videogame Culture....................................................................61 CHAPTER 3: PLANET METAL GEAR......................................................................................63 2.1 Transnational Platforms and Videogame Franchises...................................................66 2.2 Transnational Media Genres........................................................................................78 2.3 Transnational Media Institutions..................................................................................90 2.4 Diagnosing Neoliberalism..........................................................................................102 CHAPTER 4: SOLID BRICS, LIQUID COMMONS.................................................................118 3.1 Videogame Studios and the Transnational Division of Labor....................................119 3.2 Historicizing Neoliberalism.......................................................................................127 3.3 Critiquing the Lineages of Empire.............................................................................133 3.4 From Anti-Imperial Lineages To Anti-Neoliberal Uprising.......................................144 CHAPTER 5: PIRATES OF THE SKY.......................................................................................173 4.1 The Transnational Audience and Postcolonial History..............................................178 4.2 Videogame Localization as Transnational Aesthetics................................................198 4.3 Videogames as Transnational Multimedia.................................................................206 4.4 From Postcolonial Brotherhood To Transnational Sisterhood...................................218 CHAPTER 6: THE POSTCOLONIAL AS THE DIGITAL........................................................237 5.1 Replayability And Narratives of Equal Exchange.....................................................243 5.2 Lineages of Anti-Imperial Resistance........................................................................251 5.3 The Sky-pirate as Transnational Audience.................................................................260 5.4 One Neoliberalism, Many Resistances......................................................................269 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION....................................................................................................280 REFERENCES............................................................................................................................285 iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Long ago, Theodor Adorno wrote that there is a secret affinity between great works of art, and the regressive or mass-cultural kitsch these latter just barely avoided becoming. Behind every soaring symphonic theme lurks the ad jingle, behind every great novel lurks the press release, behind every awe-inspiring film panorama lurks the tourist snapshot.1 The contemporary version of this contradiction is the secret affinity between the greatest videogames of the present era, and the neoliberal financial bubbles they just barely avoided becoming. This contradiction lies at the heart of the videogames which form the major case studies of this dissertation, namely Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) and Square Enix's Final Fantasy 12 (2006). Both videogames are best-selling digital commodities, produced by some of the largest commercial publishers (Konami and Square Enix) in the videogame industry. They were produced by the labor of hundreds of professional artists, technicians, coders and testers, at the cost of tens of millions of dollars. They are played on oligopolistic commercial platforms, namely the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3, which are owned exclusively by the Sony Corporation. Finally, both videogames are best-selling iterations of transnational franchises in the console gaming market, a market which comprises roughly four-fifths of world videogame revenues. Yet both videogames are far more than digital commodities. As works of art, they are fiercely critical of neoliberalism, a.k.a. the dominant ideology of transnational capitalism from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. Far from celebrating neoliberalism, their storylines identify its 1 internal contradictions with surgical precision. Their modes of game-play turn the democratic potential of online public space, a.k.a. the digital commons, against neoliberal consumerism. Their game-worlds draw upon the non-commercial and informal networks of digital production, distribution and consumption flourishing in the transnational audience. Most remarkable of all, both videogames culminate with the spectacle of democratic resistance movements successfully defeating neoliberal empires. However, these videogames do more than simply tell the stories which the mainstream neoliberal media attempted to silence or marginalize. Their greatest contribution is to make the contradictions of neoliberalism playable. Put more provocatively still, the greatest videogames of our time are real-time walk-throughs of neoliberalism. They teach players to play through, critique, and ultimately resist the global factory. Where the ideology of neoliberalism transforms digital labor into simulacra of play, videogames turn digital play back into simulacra of digital labor. Before delving deeper into this contradiction, however, it is important to specify the term “neoliberalism” with greater precision. As its name implies, neoliberalism is a modified version of the doctrine of Britain's Victorian-era economic liberalism expounded by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and critiqued by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Liberalism proclaimed the private ownership of the means of production, distribution and consumption to be the end-point of human history, and argued that market competition with a minimum of state interference always results in the maximum social good. In practice, to be sure, liberalism relied on the non- market power of the British state and its globe-spanning colonial empire. Twentieth century partisans of neoliberalism such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, 2 Ayn Rand and Francis Fukuyama rewrote classical liberalism into a doctrine celebrating transnational financial speculation and corporate ownership as the end-point of human history. Just like its liberal predecessor, neoliberalism extolled markets while denouncing state authority, but was always deeply complicit with the power of the state. Critics of neoliberalism such as economists Ha-Joon Chang and Joseph Stiglitz, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and social geographer David