Bioshock Infinite (2K Games, 2013)

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Figure 1. An image of Booker DeWitt dominates the cover art of BioShock Infinite (2K Games, 2013).

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Race and the First-P erson Shooter: Challenging the Video Gamer in BioShock Infinite

Diana Adesola Mafe

It is a bright summer day in an idyllic American city. A massive banner above an outdoor stage proclaims the setting to be the “1912 Columbia Raffle & Fair.” A crowd of people is gathered in front of the stage, and the master of ceremonies is leading them in the chorus of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” (1932). The singing continues until you join the fairgoers, which is when the emcee declares that the raffle will now begin. A flirtatious young woman beckons you over and offers you one of the baseballs from the basket she is carrying. You select a baseball with the raffle number seventy-seven painted on it in red. The emcee calls for the raffle bowl, which is brought to him by (in his own words) “the prettiest young white girl in all of Columbia.” He reaches into the bowl, declares seventy-seven the winning number, and urges you to come forward to collect your prize, “the first throw.” The red curtain behind the emcee slowly lifts, and an interracial couple, a white man and a black woman, are propelled to the front of the stage with their hands tied behind them. The crowd

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90 • Camera Obscura begins to hum “Here Comes the Bride,” and racist props — jungle foliage, a wedding party of grinning monkeys, and a grass-skirted officiant — surround the couple, who beg for mercy. The emcee turns to you expectantly and points to the baseball in your hand: “Come on! Are you gonna throw it? Or are you taking your coffee black these days?” He laughs maniacally at his own joke. The sinister implications of the scene are now evident. The seemingly down- home raffle is a masquerade for a lynch mob, and the innocuous baseballs, symbols of a favorite American pastime, are the execu- tion tools. A timer appears in the middle of the on-screen image, indicating that you will have to decide soon. The first button will throw the baseball at the couple. The second button will throw the baseball at the announcer. The choice is yours. This scene is just one example of the controversial content in the 2013 first-person shooter (FPS) game BioShock Infinite, the most recent installment of the BioShock video game franchise created by 2K Games. Rated M for Mature, the game explicitly addresses racism against nonwhites in turn-of-the-century America, as well as the abuse of the working poor and the dangers of religious funda- mentalism and government propaganda. As the above scene dem- onstrates, the game also pushes the player to critically engage with these issues by taking a stand. Of course, BioShock Infinite relies on a young, white male avatar, a former Pinkerton agent named Booker DeWitt, to exercise its social critique. The player must embody a white masculine position by default before she or he can enter into and ultimately judge the hypothetical American city of Colum- bia. But the game remains effective in putting the player on the spot and carefully unveiling a sophisticated narrative that does not shy away from the more uncomfortable aspects of US history. For example, BioShock Infinite highlights the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Chinese Boxer Rebellion that began in 1899 and ended in 1901. From the creepy Motorized Patriot robots modeled on George Washington to the Ku Klux Klan – like Fraternal Order of the Raven, the game effectively transforms American dreams into science fiction nightmares. Representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality remain largely superficial in the majority of American video games.

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Although an increasing number of FPS and role-playing games allow the player to customize her or his character, particularly in terms of gender and race, such customization usually has little impact on the narrative or the gameplay. Indeed, Espen Aarseth argues that the material or semiotic system of a game, namely the appearance of the game world, is its least important aspect when compared to the rules or gameplay. He compares a chess game to the video game Tomb Raider (Eidos Interactive, 1996), illustrat- ing that, like the chess pieces, what the video game’s avatar (Lara Croft) looks like is incidental: “The ‘royal’ theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different- looking body would not make me play differently.”1 In line with his analysis of games as self-contained simulations, Aarseth challenges literary theorists who attempt to read games as interactive narratives. My argument conflicts with Aarseth’s view that “the traditional hermeneutic paradigms of text, narrative, and semiotics are not well suited to the problems of a simulational hermeneutic” (54). In his effort to preclude narrativism and cultural analysis from game studies, Aarseth oversimplifies games in which these things not only matter but matter because game developers want them to. While Lara’s dimensions may be “irrelevant” to how the player proceeds in the game, her appearance cannot be so easily disassociated from the game’s marketing, popularity, or cultural relevance. Aarseth concedes that “the polygonal significance of Lara Croft’s physique goes beyond the gameplay” but maintains that her physique “doesn’t [tell] us much, if anything, about the gameplay” (49). However, his observation merely reaffirms the superficiality of video game representations of gender and race, as well as the exigencies in scholarship where such representations and their relevance to the gameplay are concerned.2 I too recognize the risks of myopically pigeonholing or even colonizing the video game through what Aarseth calls “the slanted and crude misapplication of ‘narrative’ theory to games.”3 His emphasis on the superfluity of the story line gives pause precisely

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92 • Camera Obscura because a game can usually be completed without much attention to the plot or cutscenes (noninteractive sections of a video game that typically provide expository information to the player). Also, his point that “the hidden structure behind . . . most computer games is not narrative — or that silly and abused term, ‘interactivity’ — but simulation” is a valid distinction (52, emphasis in original). Yet my reading of BioShock Infinite hinges on its representational strate- gies, its game world, and its narrative, which need not be so starkly removed from considerations of gameplay and simulation. As Nick Montfort points out, “Discourse about new media, at its best, no longer concerns itself with the mythical story/game dichotomy.”4 To that end, I prioritize both the story and the game in my analysis of this particular FPS game. The BioShock franchise has a reputation for thoughtful dys- topian narratives, beautiful retro worlds, and addictive gameplay. As the latest installment in an award-winning series first launched in 2007 by 2K Games, BioShock Infinite entices players on reputation alone. The in-game revelation of Columbia as a white supremacist city founded by a religious zealot named Zachary Comstock is an unexpected twist that quickly immerses the player in concerns deeper than which weapon to use or how much ammunition she or he has left. BioShock Infinite raises important questions about the function of social critique in video games. While clarifying that the game is not “a survey of American history,” BioShock’s creative director Ken Levine does articulate a desire to challenge gamers and to “be representative of reality.” He further describes the game as “a bit of a Rorschach for people.”5 This article situates BioShock Infinite as an FPS game that breaks new ground in its representation of social prejudice, particularly racism, and its balance of gaming as entertainment with gaming as education. Admittedly, BioShock Infinite adheres to many of the same formulas as its less subversive counterparts on the FPS gaming mar- ket. Neither the game’s cover art nor its launch trailer promises anything unique in terms of racial critique or socially conscious storytelling. An attractive white male hero, packing an arsenal of weaponry, sets out to save a Disneyesque white female character named Elizabeth. Although the game features pivotal nonwhite

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characters, including the African American rebel leader Daisy Fitz- roy and the Chinese American gunsmith Chen Lin, these characters are not protagonists. Daisy, in particular, fits into a class of nonwhite video game characters that Cathlena Martin describes as unwholesome role models.6 Originally hailed as the inspirational leader of the Vox Populi (“Voice of the People”) resistance group, Daisy becomes as brutal as the racist regime she is trying to topple. How then does this game challenge its players when it comes to questions of racial representation? I began with the premise that such representation in video games matters, and I would add here that these representations have the potential to simulate existing power structures. In her treatise Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison provides the useful metaphor of a fishbowl to describe white hegemony.7 She posits that the fishbowl contains and contex- tualizes the world within it but remains invisible and impermeable. Ironically, Aarseth’s dismissal of the Lara Croft avatar — “When I play, I don’t even see her body, but see through it and past it” — is a poignant example of how hegemony functions.8 Although he implies that any avatar is an empty signifier, his inability to see Lara’s white body is not unlike the inability to see the fishbowl but only “through it and past it” to the world it contains. BioShock Infinite relies on hegemonic codes of what constitutes a so-called normal and, more important, good FPS game — namely, challenging and rewarding gameplay, a white avatar, and a Eurocentric story. But its subversive potential lies in its ability to disrupt those codes (the contents of the fishbowl) over the course of the game and gradu- ally reveal the fishbowl itself. I argue thatBioShock Infinite invokes hegemonic models precisely in order to interrogate them. Despite a marketing campaign that prioritizes the game’s design, mechanics, and nonstop action, BioShock Infinite features unique constructions of race and an overarching nationalist narrative that challenges gamers to think critically about hegemonic power structures.

Introducing BioShock Infinite In his discussion of masculinity in video games, Ewan Kirkland identifies a historically successful model for representing male

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94 • Camera Obscura protagonists in the gaming industry: “In an early study analyz- ing video-game packaging, among stereotypical representations of women, Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. notes many muscular-chested males armed with huge weapons, wearing torn clothing, and posed in dominant, aggressive stances.”9 Kirkland also mentions Derek A. Burill’s study of the James Bond video game franchise (EA Games, 1999 – 2006; Activision, 2007 – 13), which notes the game’s capacity to facilitate “a performance of a violent, sexist ‘boyhood’ structured around killing enemies and saving (largely inconse- quential) females in a macho display that parallels many recent popular constructions of white masculinity” (166). The packaging for BioShock Infinite promises precisely this brand of machismo. The torso of the rugged hero dominates the game’s cover art. He is young, white, muscular, and unshaven, and he stands against a backdrop consisting of a burning American flag, a dis- tant zeppelin, and the golden rain of gunfire. A massive shotgun rests casually on his right shoulder, and bullet holes are visible in his jacket. The official launch trailer for the game, which features a 17+ rating due to “blood and gore, intense violence, language, mild sexual themes, and use of alcohol and tobacco,” expands on this image and the adventures that await this hero. Accompanied by the music of the rock band Nico Vega, the trailer first introduces a trapped and frightened girl who is clearly in need of saving. The hero then literally vaults into the picture and takes the viewer and the girl on an adrenaline ride via rollercoaster tracks, airships, surrounding explosions, and encounters with bad guys. The game’s introductory features — packaging, promotional videos, and so on — suggest that BioShock Infinite is a clichéd FPS game. Indeed, the mysterious tagline for the narrative, “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt,” confirms that this story boils down to the white male protagonist and (t)his “girl.” However, these introductory elements also point to the insidious ways in which hegemony functions. The challenge for the gamer is to question the normalcy of this narrative and to ultimately be unsettled by the social codes of the game. Raymond Wil- liams describes hegemony as “a particular way of seeing the world and human nature and relationships.” He also clarifies that “[hege-

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mony] is seen to depend for its hold not only on its expression of the interests of a ruling class but also on its acceptance as ‘normal reality’ or ‘common sense’ by those in practice subordinated to it.”10 At literal face value, BioShock Infinite appears to be the most normal of video games, presumably even to those players who do not embody or identify with the model of white masculinity fea- tured in the cover art. The early stages of the game confirm this presumably commonsense model of “seeing the world” through the eyes of a white male hero. Booker first appears in a rowboat off the coast of Maine in the year 1912. A mysterious pair of Brits brings him to a deserted lighthouse where a futuristic rocket launches him to the floating city of Columbia. His mission is to find Elizabeth and bring her back to New York as a means of paying off his gambling debts. The player experiences the world entirely from Booker’s first-person perspective and quickly takes control of his gaze and his movements. To borrow Kirkland’s words, “Events are therefore structured around the aims and activities of a white, heterosexual, male figure . . . whose movements direct the virtual camera, and whose masculinity is evident through avatar design and accompanying literature.”11 Incidentally, Booker’s masculinity as an avatar is mir- rored by the masculinity of the gameplay, which prioritizes activities that will ostensibly appeal to male gamers. Kirkland, building on the work of Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, highlights “ ‘violent action’ and ‘exploration of space’ . . . as defining the masculine disposition of many video games” (170). The player both embodies and performs a stereotypical masculinity by battling through an airborne world and leaving countless bodies in her or his wake. When Booker arrives in Columbia, the player’s sense of a seemingly normal in-game experience (already affirmed by the white male avatar and the promise of violence) is further supported by the game’s setting — a hyperbolic version of America, albeit in the early twentieth century. The initial point of entry to Columbia is through a cathedral with stained glass windows and soft candle- light, where the strains of a Christian hymn float through the cor- ridors. When Booker asks a man in white robes for the name of their location, the man replies, “Heaven, friend.” After undergoing

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Figure 2. The Founding Father statues in the Garden of New Eden, part of the gateway to Columbia in BioShock Infinite

a mandatory baptism at the hands of a preacher, Booker wakes up in a beautiful garden with statues of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson looking benevolently down at him. Both male and female pilgrims dressed in white pray fervently to these Founding Fathers, as well as to their more immediate founder, Comstock. From the Garden of New Eden, Booker makes his way to New Eden Square, a magical vision of floating buildings, cobblestone streets, rosebushes, and sunlight. Church bells ring in the distance, couples walk arm in arm, children laugh, and a barbershop quartet sings in perfect harmony. Perfection appears to be the norm in this strange city, where the stores operate on an honor system, and not even one blade of grass looks out of place. Granted, the apparent perfection of Columbia is intended to be suspicious, a point that the game signals by way of Booker’s vocal expressions of skepticism and the unmistakable propaganda that the player faces at every turn. Statues and placards of Com-

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stock, who bears a striking resemblance to Belgium’s notorious Leopold II, present him as a Mosaic deity that has led his people to a promised land. Overheard conversations hint at mysterious undesirables that remain unseen, and the game’s rating for violence ensures that Columbia will not remain idyllic for long. But there is another way that Columbia functions as a sinister model of an ideal America, although it may be less obvious in this appar- ently normal video game. Only white people populate this upscale part of Columbia, and Booker does not encounter a single person of color until the disturbing raffle scene. What renders Columbia’s whiteness ironic is the fact that whiteness is the norm in the average American FPS game. A number of games in this genre are set during specific historical wars or in geographical contexts that shape the demographics of the characters. Wolfenstein 3D (Apogee, 1992), a pioneering example, situates the white male avatar in the context of Nazi Germany. His opponents are white Germans and, eventually, the undead. Other examples include the highly successful Medal of Honor (EA Games, 1999) and Call of Duty (Activision, 2003), both of which are set during World War II and take place in Europe. Demons, zombies, and aliens are also common opponents, as illustrated by games such as Doom (id Software, 1993), Half-Life (Sierra Entertainment, 1998), Halo (Microsoft Studios, 2001), and Resistance (Sony Computer Entertainment, 2006). But all of these blockbuster FPS games feature a stereotypical white male avatar and a largely Eurocentric worldview in which the good guys are invariably white guys. In her discussion of race in online and digital spaces, Jen- nifer González addresses the potential of racially marked avatars to either reinforce or interrupt stereotypes. In particular, she takes on Mark B. N. Hansen’s optimistic argument that digital spaces can reveal “the contemporary bankruptcy of the image.”12 Through British artist Keith Piper’s exhibition Relocating the Remains (1997), Hansen reads the raced avatar as empty and ultimately irreconcil- able with the player’s affective experience: “Piper seizes the empty husk of the raced image, not to rehabilitate it against capitalist fetishism, but to extract its redemptive kernel. . . . He deploys this empty image as the catalyst for a reinvestment of embodiment

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98 • Camera Obscura beyond the image” (172). Hansen’s emphasis on the emptiness of the raced avatar corresponds with Aarseth’s general dismissal of avatar and game world appearances. But Hansen also situates the “empty husk” as a subversive reminder that visible race is an empty and paradoxical concept. Although González “applaud[s] Hansen’s antiracist goals,” she contests his reading of affect as a universal human experience that transcends the visual body.13 Furthermore, she questions the notion that visual images can be “empty” or “full” of meaning: “Images are signs deployed strategically in the context of an ongoing circulation of other signs. Whether ‘raced’ or not, images have different meanings for each subject who encounters them, regardless of their hegemonic or subaltern position” (45). My analysis of BioShock Infinite relies on the premise that the visual matters and that the raced bodies in the game are important to the game’s social critique. To borrow González’s terms, an avatar like Booker is neither “empty” nor “full.” Rather, he is a sign that is very much “deployed strategically” in the game world, which is itself “an ongoing circulation of other signs.” In this respect, my argument echoes that of González, who acknowledges the complicity of images in racial stereotyping but also their potential to be “redeployed to serve a counterhegemonic purpose” (46). There is a tradition of visual and narrative representation when it comes to American FPS games — hypermasculine male avatars, Eurocentric perspectives, and hegemonic whiteness. But BioShock Infinite arguably does “counterhegemonic” work by carefully deconstructing its own normalcy. At the same time, I want to reiterate Hansen’s point that new media can confront the player in ways that are pedagogical. Hansen uses the example of Piper’s video game installation, Caught Like a Nigger in Cyberspace (1997), to illustrate how a self-conscious game can teach its player something about race. The player’s goal — to enter cyberspace — is facilitated by a discourse of inclusion/ exclusion in which a black male figure is the primary target of exclusion and assault. Hansen describes his own frustrating experience of playing the game and concludes that, “Rather than an opportunity to experience ‘what it feels like’ to be this [black male] figure . . .

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the viewer is made to feel the utter pointlessness of any effort that stops short of grasping the bankruptcy of the racialized image.”14 Despite González’s rebuttal that such a digital transcendence of the visual raced image is not possible, I would argue that these kinds of racialized in-game experiences can constitute, for lack of a better phrase, teachable moments. If the average FPS game endorses hegemonic whiteness, then the initially all-white city of Columbia in BioShock Infinite is not unusual. The apparent perfection of the city is an early test for the player, who must filter through the reasons why Columbia seems ominous. Since hegemony functions through perceptions of normalcy, gamers may well consider the racial dynamics of the game not noteworthy until the inherent racism of those dynamics is made explicit, as in the raffle scene. ButBioShock Infinite carefully hints at underlying ideologies of racism early on as it builds up to more overt pedagogical commentaries. I would like to return to Morrison here not to perpetuate what Montfort calls “the ‘colonization’ of the new field by literary studies” but because her reflections on whiteness and the American literary imagination lend themselves to a discussion of whiteness and the American FPS imagination.15 Morrison’s critical work on race addresses the impact of hegemonic whiteness on the produc- tion of a national canon and the consumers of that canon. When Morrison points out that “the readers of virtually all of American fiction have been positioned as white,”16 her observation extends all too easily to the players of American video games. She describes a curious disassociation between canonical American literature and “the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African Americans in the United States.” Morrison concludes that the ideals of “Americanness” articulated through literature hinge on that “dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence” (5). Similarly, I would suggest that the American FPS gaming genre, which targets white gamers and often incorporates nationalist themes and rheto- ric, has been shaped by the very groups that it tends to exclude in its content and marketing. BioShock Infiniterepeatedly and ironically signals those marginalized others who are so crucial to the default white male perspective of the FPS gaming genre.

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Columbia’s deification of Franklin, Washington, and Jef- ferson is a satirical example of not only what Morrison calls “white Streets of London, Children of male views, genius, and power” but also the unspoken Africanist Men (2006) presence that buttressed that power, particularly in the form of slavery (5). When Booker first explores the city, he encounters a Simulacrum of Pink Floyd’s floating parade of dioramas that depicts Comstock’s journey from album cover Animals, Children of Men war veteran to prophet and political leader. A loudspeaker explains (2006) the first image as follows: “After the victory at Wounded Knee, the Michelangelo’s David, angel Columbia did present herself to Father Comstock and show Children of Men (2006) him a vision of the future.” The reference to Wounded Knee is subtle and easily missed as the player navigates the new world and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, interacts with the surroundings. But the celebratory representa- Children of Men (2006) tion of the battle at Wounded Knee — the massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children — as a “victory” is a telling indication of how Native American peoples fit into the world of Columbia. The numerous “voxophones” (audio recording players) and “kinetoscopes” (silent film projectors) scattered throughout the game also fill in details about Columbia and its ideologies. While the kinetoscopes function strictly as government propaganda, the voxophones are a medium for characters to tell their own stories in their own voices. The government-sanctioned kinetoscopes are usually in plain sight and easily accessible, whereas the voxophones are more elusive objects featuring recordings that regularly complicate or contradict the master narrative of the state. As such, voxophone audio commentaries function as another site of truth in the game and disrupt the deceptive imagery of not only the silent films but also the entire game. An early voxophone recording titled “Solution to Your Problems” immediately signals the hypocrisy behind this so-called Eden, but it is also tucked away in a dark corner and easily overlooked. Jeremiah Fink, the raffle emcee and one of the richest men in Columbia, sends the following message to Comstock: “I told you, Comstock, you sell ’em paradise, and the customers expect cherubs for every chore! ‘No menials in God’s kingdom!’ Well, I’ve a man in Georgia who’ll lease us as many Negro convicts as you can board! Why, you can say they’re simple souls, in penance for rising above their station.”

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Fink’s recording illustrates how this white supremacist world cannot sustain itself without the hard labor of those very people it deems inadmissible. Much as southern claims to Christian moral- ity were rendered hollow in the face of slavery, Columbia’s self- presentation as “God’s kingdom” is proven artificial. In keeping with the general trajectory of the game, the voxophone recordings become more explicit about racism and abuse in Columbia as the narrative progresses and the veneer of perfection peels away. But the player must do extra work to uncover these truths about Colum- bia precisely because the voxophones are concealed or seemingly inaccessible. The game thus encourages its player to see beyond what is in plain sight — to look past the contents of the fishbowl and make out the hidden structure of the bowl itself. The early chapters of BioShock Infinite invite the player to enjoy stunning visual effects and to think critically about the world that Booker has infiltrated. The game’s FPS action does not com- mence until the climactic moment of the raffle scene. Up until that point, the player is encouraged to explore and interact with the game world — she or he can take in the sights, read the posters, pick up food and money, and listen to conversations. At the carnival, the player can learn skills that will come in handy once the fighting begins. She or he can test out “vigors,” potions that imbue the drinker with special powers, and practice her or his aim at the shooting range. But the carnival games are also more than just games. For example, the range uses effigies of the Vox Populi and its African American leader, “the anarchist Daisy Fitzroy,” for target practice. By the time the player is faced with the decision of whether to perform an act of mob-incited racism by slinging a baseball at an interracial couple or whether to instead throw it at Jer- emiah, the surreal moment of choice should not be entirely unexpected. Admittedly, the choice itself is rendered moot. Regardless of what decision the player makes, a policeman who sees the brand on Booker’s right hand forestalls him from throwing the ball. The brand allegedly marks Booker as the “False Shepherd” and results in an attack from all sides that sets the traditional FPS gameplay of combat in motion. Yet the buildup to this moment lays the founda- tion for the kind of FPS game BioShock Infinite will be — its clichéd

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Noticing Race in BioShock Infinite Once the action of the game begins and enemies start attacking, the player has even less time to notice small details. Although FPS games incorporate puzzle solving, secret stashes, and side quests, the primary entertainment value lies in shooting or hacking one’s way through enemies and progressing toward a goal. But there is a racialized component to the gameplay in the sense that the distinguishing feature of the enemies in Columbia is their white supremacism. Booker’s first kill takes place in slow motion as part of the raffle scene. When two policemen threaten him, Booker shoves the face of one man into the other’s skyhook. The skyhook, a motorized melee weapon with three rotating hooks, grinds the man’s face into raw pulp, complete with chainsaw sound effects and blood spatter. Booker grabs the skyhook, which is now embed- ded in the man’s skull, and the player resumes control. The player can now replicate the kill on the second policeman, who has a tiny skull icon above his head to signal that a melee attack will execute him as well. As in Wolfenstein 3D, where the bad guys are members of the Nazi SS, BioShock Infinite initially pits the player against white rac- ists. If the gory hack-and-slash combat enhances the pleasure of the game, then such combat doubles as an antiracist crusade because of the narrative. The gameplay itself becomes a provocative part of the social critique as Booker fights his way through the city, butchering the military force known as the Columbia Authority, whose motto is “Protecting Our Race.” But the link between these enemies and the backstory of their racism is also easily forgotten as the player strategizes about how best to defeat them and pass each level. The player’s immediate goal is to reach Monument Island, where Elizabeth is held captive, rather than dwell on the racial politics of Columbia or notice all the racial nuances. There is incentive to explore Columbia thoroughly in the

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form of console rewards (“Achievements” on Xbox 360 and “Tro- phies” on PlayStation 3) and “Easter eggs” (a hidden message or feature of a video game that a player must seek out). For example, the player can earn the “Eavesdropper” reward if he or she finds all eighty voxophones. Booker can break into an abolitionist’s home and discover stacks of antislavery pamphlets. Or he can sneak into a “Colored and Irish” bathroom that is filthy and decrepit, especially when compared to the pristine “Whites” bathroom. On a more playful note, Rembrandt’s stolen masterpiece, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), hangs innocuously on the wall of a private residence. And the first Johann Sebastian Bach recording, “Air on the G String,” plays on a gramophone during one of Booker’s “boss battles” (a fight between the player’s avatar and a “boss,” the game’s strongest opponent, which usually occurs before the player achieves the next level or chapter of a video game). The player can find these subtle touches throughout the game, but she or he has to pay attention to notice them, and, as Aarseth might point out, these semiotic details are irrelevant to the game’s completion. However, there is content in BioShock Infinite that the player cannot avoid seeing because it has been incorporated in ways that prevent it from being dismissed or simply missed. Much of this blatant content deals with race. Morrison makes a valuable observation about the dangerous tendency to ignore race that is worth quoting at length:

In matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded, foreclosing open debate. The situation is aggravated by the tremor that breaks into discourse on race. It is further complicated by the fact that the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a grateful, even generous, liberal gesture. To notice is to recognize an already discredited difference. To enforce its invisibility through silence is to allow the black body a shadowless participation in the dominant cultural body. According to this logic, every well-bred instinct argues against noticing and forecloses adult discourse. (9 – 10, emphasis in original)

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Morrison identifies here the ways in which “the dominant cultural body” circumnavigates race under the pretext of politeness. Rather than empowering those who are “discredited” by virtue of their difference, this evasion simply reinforces the power imbal- ances that are already in place. To ignore race is also to ignore racism and to couch productive discourse and debate in a willfully blind “substitute language.” Again, Morrison’s literary criticism holds true for Ameri- can video game narratives in general and FPS game narratives in particular, the majority of which sidestep racial discourse. Most of these games are marketed to players who are seventeen years of age or older and engage explicitly with so-called adult themes that range from the ethics of warfare to the implications of genocide. Yet racial issues remain “encoded” even in plots that invite open debate. Consider the popular game Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft, 2008), which takes place in an unnamed war-torn African nation and which gives the player a number of multicultural, albeit exclusively male, avatar choices. The player is never challenged to think more deeply about the colonial histories behind African civil wars or what it means to place an African nation’s fate in the hands of foreign mercenaries. Since the point of the game is ostensibly to entertain and not to teach a history lesson, Far Cry 2 prioritizes a stereotypical Africa, a blend of chaos, corruption, and wildlife. But BioShock Infinite illustrates that video games need not sacrifice entertainment simply because they are socially conscious. The game remains traditionally entertaining as an FPS game, but it also pushes boundaries, especially in terms of race. There are numerous examples of this explicit racial discourse, but I will highlight a couple of key points where the player is effectively forced to notice race, even in the midst of combat. To proceed to Monument Island, Booker must pass through the headquarters of the Fraternal Order of the Raven. The bright and sunny atmosphere of Columbia disappears once Booker traverses the dark and gloomy courtyard of the Order and enters an imposing gray building inscribed with the motto “Audemus Patria Nostra Defen- dere” (“We Dare to Defend Our Fatherland”). The gothic interior features dim lighting, rotting food, and rowdy crows perched on

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Race and the First-Person Shooter • 105 the furniture. A giant statue of John Wilkes Booth dominates the foyer, giving the player an initial impression of the Order’s ideals. An oil painting in the dining room celebrates Booth in the act of assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Booth has a halo around his head while Lincoln is painted with glowing eyes and devil horns. Booker eventually discovers a meeting of the Order that is taking place in a chapel. Dressed in pointed blue hoods and robes, the group has congregated before a stage with an emblem that reads “Pro- tecting Our Race” and a backdrop mural of Washington standing against the “foreign hordes.” Booker must fight his way through the gathered members of the Order and ultimately kill their leader, a “Heavy Hitter” boss (a boss with extra power that is more challenging to defeat) called a Crow. Before fighting the Crow, however, Booker must watch a film projection endorsing phrenology, and he can find a voxophone recording on which Comstock declares, “No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation.” The entire sequence is an exercise in racial critique and intended to provoke debate. The Order’s demonization of Lincoln and canonization of Booth tap into the historical divide between North and South, as well as current sentiments about these historical figures and the principles for which they stand. The allu- sions to the Ku Klux Klan and the pseudoscience of phrenology are uncomfortable examples of racism that the player must at least notice as she or he makes her or his way through the building. For the player who is unfamiliar with these examples, BioShock Infinite offers an introduction and incentive to learn more about these very real groups and practices. And for the player who is aware of these examples, the game affords an opportunity for deeper reflection and discussion rather than the “silence and evasion” that Morrison identifies. Another point in the game where the player must notice race is in the Columbia museum called the Hall of Heroes, which features exhibits about Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion. These historical events may, like phrenology or the “white man’s burden,” be obscure to a generation of gamers that entered adult- hood after 9/11. But BioShock Infinite showcases these events as piv-

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106 • Camera Obscura otal case studies through which to think about race. By the time Booker reaches the museum he has rescued Elizabeth, who now travels with him as a nonplayer character (NPC). Despite the pretext of what Kirkland calls “the male-hero-rescuing-helpless-female trope” and Elizabeth’s stereotypical femininity in terms of appearance, she quickly proves to be independent and self-sufficient.17 Indeed, there are multiple points in the game where Elizabeth must save Booker and, more important, herself. Elizabeth has a number of practical abilities — she can manipulate parallel universes, pick locks, forage for provisions, and revive Booker during combat. These skills aside, Elizabeth’s role is also to question hegemonic power structures. Precisely because she has been living in isolation since infancy, she sees Columbia with a fresh, almost childlike, perspective and frames questions that challenge so- called common sense. Whereas Booker remains stoic in the face of injustice, Elizabeth is genuinely and increasingly troubled by the blatant discrimination she observes — segregated bathrooms, police brutality, and the abuse of the poor. As with the Order’s headquarters, the Hall of Heroes renders racial discourses larger than life and impossible to ignore. Wounded Knee is recreated as a spectacle of fire and smoke where glowing eyes lurk in the shadows. Booker must initially walk down a corridor displaying cardboard grass and teepees past sneering tomahawk-wielding silhouettes, including one automated cutout figure that leaps out of the grass to scare passersby. A grotesque tableau depicts two Indians in the act of scalping a terrified white woman to the accompanying sound track of drumming and chant- ing. Booker then walks through a second dynamic corridor of charging Indians on horseback and past the completion of the scalping narrative — a giant backlit statue of one of the warriors who now triumphantly holds the scalp high over the woman’s life- less body. A separate display features a Motorized Patriot that provides Columbia’s summation of these events: “With hue and cry, with hatchet red, they danced amongst our noble dead. But when our soldiers took the field, the savage horde could only yield.” The museum concludes the exhibit with Comstock, “the Hero of Wounded Knee,” subduing the “savage horde.”

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Comstock claims a similarly heroic role in the Boxer Rebel- lion and presents his version of history in that adjacent exhibit. Although the context of the almost four-year-long Boxer Rebellion in China is very different from that of the one-day battle at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, Columbia’s exhibits of these events are analogous in their reliance on stereotypes, fear mongering, and propaganda. Booker must enter through a doorway where a leer- ing yellow figure with long fingernails drops down unexpectedly from the lintel. A snowy landscape and a fast-paced sound track of percussions and screams set the tone for Peking. The initial tableau parallels that of the Wounded Knee exhibit — a Chinese warrior beheads a kneeling white woman while another woman clutches her child and screams in the background. Booker then crosses a curved bridge past spiked heads, stone dragons, and an armed Chinese mob. A Motorized Patriot explains in rhyming couplet what the visitor has witnessed so far: “ ’Twas yellow skin and slanted eyes that did betray us with their lies. Until they crossed the righteous path of our Prophet’s holy wrath.” Predictably, the next room features another giant statue of Comstock, now seated in the snow, draped in an American flag, bathed in light, and single-handedly holding back the surrounding Chinese army with a pistol. In case either of these exhibits is taken too literally, the game once again affords crucial audio commentary through Booker, Eliza- beth, and a third character, Captain Cornelius Slate. Cornelius is the boss figure for this sequence, but he also provides a first-person perspective for the events upon which the exhibits are based. Through Cornelius, a veteran of Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion, Elizabeth discovers the falsity of Comstock’s versions of these events. When Elizabeth says of the Boxer Rebellion that “[she] read about this . . . Comstock led the Columbian troops to Peking,” Cornelius is furious and yells, “Comstock wasn’t there!” But even Cornelius’s claims to glory are eroded by his own con- science, as he whispers of Wounded Knee: “I still hear the screams.” The player also learns that Booker is a Wounded Knee veteran, and his quiet detachment, along with Elizabeth’s muted horror, serves as a counternarrative to Comstock’s lies and Cornelius’s crazed demands for recognition.

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The player’s response to the Hall of Heroes, like her or his response to the Order’s headquarters, is subjective. All of these settings involve combat sequences that render the racial content secondary to the FPS gameplay. But the game world identities of the bad guys as eugenicists, agents of genocide, and so on, arguably factor into the hack-and-slash gameplay, if only because those identities add a retributive element to Booker’s battles. The emphasis on race remains blatant even during combat, thus opening up critical discourse on race rather than foreclosing it. If “the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a grateful, even generous, liberal gesture,” then BioShock Infinite puts the player in the habit of seeing race and thus makes evasion more difficult. The Hall of Heroes in particular hyperbolizes race through Comstock’s caricatures — as seen in the Indian’s beaked noses and feathered headdresses in the Wounded Knee exhibit as well as in the yellow peril imagery in the Boxer Rebellion exhibit. Discerning the “facts” of these historical events is ultimately up to the player, but the game warns against taking either history books or museum exhibits at face value.18 Evidence of the game’s success in promoting the critical perspectives on race that comprise adult discourse can be found in blogs, websites, reviews, and articles. Forbes magazine contributor Dave Thier writes, “You always know something is working if you’re making people angry. That’s been a lot of people’s response to some of the themes in BioShock: Infinite.”19 The game has triggered a range of reactions, particularly where its racial content is concerned. In an interview with PC Gamer, Levine recalls reading com- ments on the white supremacist website Stormfront that character- ize the game as “a white-person-killing simulator.”20 By contrast, Tyler Harper of Hazlitt magazine claims that “what’s special about BioShock Infinite is that it can intelligently approach issues of race and still have more to say, at a time when video games are still in their adolescence as an artistic medium.”21 While the game clearly condemns racism, it nonetheless encourages players to come away with their own conclusions about the politics of racial identity and the ways in which those politics shape nationhood.

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Contriving Miss Daisy A discussion of explicit racial discourses in BioShock Infinite would be incomplete without an emphasis on Daisy Fitzroy. Although she is an NPC, Daisy is integral to the plot and the social commentary of the game. Alejandro Quan-Madrid describes Daisy as “a blend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, anarchist Emma Gold- man, the women of the Soviet army in World War II, and Ameri- can civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.”22 She represents a militant response to injustice, and her character becomes interchangeable with the masses — she is the voice of the people. Indeed, a key aspect of her character is agency through voice, an important detail given the game’s cultivation of voices and sound as mediums of truth. Daisy is the most vital other in this narrative and a foil for Booker and Comstock, as well as for Elizabeth and the Prophet’s wife, Lady Comstock. Although Dai- sy’s characterization is also problematic, a point that I will discuss, the game developers anchor her identity as a black woman in a discourse of empowerment and resistance. Voxophone recordings provide Daisy’s backstory in her own words. She recalls her arrival in Columbia, her work in the Comstock household as a scullery maid, and the murder of Lady Comstock, for which Daisy is framed. Forced to go underground, Daisy is reborn as a revolutionary and begins to rally the underclass against the privileged elite. As she declares in the recording “Fan- ning a Flame,” “When you forced deep underground, well — you see things from the bottom up. And down at the bottom of the city, I saw a fire burning. A fire’s got heat aplenty, but it ain’t got no mouth. Daisy . . . now, she got herself a mouth big enough for all the fires in Columbia.” This representation of Daisy as the figure- head for the Vox Populi with “a mouth big enough for all the fires” is significant precisely because of a dominant Western tradition of silencing or simply “tuning out” black women.23 Daisy’s voice becomes impossible to ignore as the narrative progresses. When she finally overthrows Comstock’s government, her live speeches are broadcast from her zeppelin to the rioting masses below, and when Booker and Elizabeth briefly escape the chaos by entering a soundproof elevator, a telephone rings and Daisy’s recognizable voice is on the other end.

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Daisy does not become a revolutionary overnight. She origi- nates as a black woman who, in keeping with Audre Lorde’s obser- vations, stays quiet because “the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.”24 Daisy’s voxophone recordings confirm her initial desire to remain invisible despite her lack of civil liberties. But the murder of Lady Comstock leaves Daisy with little choice but to enter that visible and dangerous world of “language and action.” As she observes of her transformation in “The Invisible Color” voxophone recording: “One day, ain’t nobody notice me. Then they think I done for Lady Comstock and, well, everybody notice me.” Although she does not physically appear until about halfway through the narrative, Daisy is already a noticeable figure in Columbia in that she has been represented as an enemy of the state in the carnival shooting range, the Hall of Heroes, kineto- scope projections, and on wanted posters. Once again, the player must see race, this time through a black female perspective that frames a compelling alternative to the racism and megalomania of Comstock and his political party, the Founders. Booker first meets Daisy after he is knocked unconscious on an airship. He wakes up to the haunting sound of an African Amer- ican chain gang singing in the quarry below. A member of the Vox Populi, a black man with red face paint, stands above him. Daisy walks over from the shadowed area where she had been tending to her injured comrades aboard the commandeered ship. At the visual register, Daisy resists stereotypical representations of black women in video games as well as those of female characters in general. She is dressed in simple, conventionally masculine clothing — breeches, boots, a white shirt, suspenders, and a red kerchief. Her dreadlocked hair is pulled back, and she is attractive without being hypersexual. I have already argued that what a character looks like can contribute to the social critique of a game. Video games constitute a new frontier for iconography and the dissemination of ideo- logically charged images. The iconography of black womanhood has been historically racist, and games easily risk replicating those models and stereotypes.25 However, BioShock Infinite does the important work of chal-

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Race and the First-Person Shooter • 111 lenging racist portrayals through its representation of Daisy. The game avoids a visual reduction of Daisy to a sexual object and pre- serves her role as a revolutionary black woman whose most promi- nent feature is her voice. In response to Booker’s claim, “I ain’t looking for a fight,” Daisy retorts, “There’s already a fight, DeWitt. Only question is, which side you on?” After stating her terms — Booker can have the zeppelin if he retrieves a gun shipment for the Vox Populi — Daisy pushes Booker overboard. To appreciate this moment in which a black woman nonchalantly kicks a white man off her ship, one has to bear in mind the historical American practice of what bell hooks calls the “devaluation of black womanhood.” hooks’s criticism deals specifically with the damaging myths of black womanhood perpetuated in a white supremacist state. Along the same lines as Morrison, who argues that an Africanist presence underpins the white American literary canon, hooks insists that the “devaluation of black womanhood is central to the maintenance of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”26 Her claims are pertinent to a case study of a game like BioShock Infinite, which lampoons a “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” and its systematic assault on a black woman. In the voxophone recording “A Place in the World,” which is hidden behind a locked door, Daisy captures the dynamics of living in a world where white supremacy is normal and the only opportunities available to blacks involve menial labor: “Days at Comstock House was simple. Hard work, sure, but simple. Wringin’ the linens, scrubbing the floors . . . hmph, Lady Comstock, she even had a kind word, now and then. Almost enough to make me think I had a place in their world.” Black women in particular worked under unique pressures during the Jim Crow era, pressures that extended directly from their sexual objectification during slavery. In white homes, black women remained vulnerable to physical and emotional abuse by their white employers but were often unable to speak out or “talk back” given that black testimony carried such little weight in the justice system.27 Although BioShock Infinite does not explicitly tackle the sexual exploitation of black women, the game does take up the theme of black women as targets for white men. Comstock blames Daisy,

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112 • Camera Obscura a convenient scapegoat, for the murder of Lady Comstock. Daisy is sentenced to death in absentia, and Lady Comstock is canonized as a saint. These two characters exemplify the nineteenth-century tendency to idealize white women and simultaneously malign black women. As hooks points out, “The shift away from the image of white woman as sinful and sexual to that of white woman as virtu- ous lady occurred at the same time as mass sexual exploitation of enslaved black women.”28 Columbia effectively parades this racialized binary of womanhood through the respective and equally visible figures of the living Daisy and the dead Lady Comstock. The latter figure is introduced at the very beginning of the game when Booker explores the cathedral in Columbia. A stained glass window portrays Lady Comstock in a bustled blue dress and hat — a formal portrait that appears throughout Columbia. The words “And in my womb shall grow the seed of the Prophet” appear below the stained glass figure, which is flanked on either side by giant kneeling statues of Lady Comstock in prayer. The first voxophone (conspicuously located on a pulpit) features a recording by Lady Comstock, who declares, “Love the Prophet because he loves the sinner. Love the sinner, because he is you. Without the sinner, what need is there for a redeemer? Without sin, what grace has for- giveness?” This female character embodies the nineteenth-century deification of the white woman through the “cult of true womanhood” and her elevation from sinner to saint by way of white male representation.29 Since Lady Comstock is dead, her immortality is sustained through shrines, acolytes, the airship that bears her name, and a memorial garden where her embalmed body remains permanently on display. Of course, the counternarrative to white female virtue is black female corruption. Every idealized portrait of the sainted Lady Comstock is matched by negative imagery of the alleged anarchist Daisy. The third and final exhibit, the First Lady exhibit, in the Hall of Heroes poignantly illustrates this dichotomy. Booker enters the exhibit to the sweeping chorus of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” (“Weeping”) from the Requiem Mass (1791). Wall-sized portraits, candles, rosebushes, and fountains pay homage to Lady Comstock, and a massive statue shows the Lady in a horse-drawn

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Figure 3. The First Lady exhibit in the Hall of Heroes features statues of the “anarchist” Daisy Fitzroy and the “sainted” Lady Comstock. chariot, where she holds up the Prophet’s infant heir with both hands in fulfillment of her so-called womanly duty. The culmina- tion of the series is set to Mozart’s more martial “Rex Tremendae” (“King of Tremendous Majesty”), also from his Requiem Mass. A candlelit white statue of the Lady in prayer dominates a circular room with arched doorways. But a dark gray statue of Daisy lurks behind one wall, her hands pulling taut the red garrote she will use to strangle her mistress. Beneath the statue of Daisy a plaque reads, “The cruel murder of our dear Lady Comstock by the anarchist Daisy Fitzroy.” The final tableau, titled “The Vengeance of the Prophet,” features Comstock pointing a rapier at Daisy as she flees toward a precipice with a symbolic lake of fire below. The player is made aware of Daisy’s innocence by way of the voxophone recordings, which again reveal the truth that Comstock himself orchestrated his wife’s murder and that Lady Comstock was neither the paragon nor the devotee that her husband has post humously made her out to be. The stereotypical iconography of both women is meant to be deceptive, proving the limits of visual

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114 • Camera Obscura icons, which cannot do justice to the individuals they represent, let alone an entire class of people. Since Daisy, much like Lady Comstock, is unable to publicly tell her side of the story, she founds the Vox Populi as a means of making herself and the rest of the “common folk” heard. At the same time, her founding of the Vox Populi challenges the myth that founders can only be white men. As a white man in a patriarchal and white supremacist world, Booker himself initially represents the same things as Comstock — oppression, abuse, and injustice. The player discovers just how simi- lar the two men are once the narrative’s conclusion reveals that Booker and Comstock are the same person but from different parallel universes. Booker’s ongoing attempts to evade responsibility in Columbia (“I ain’t looking for a fight”) are intended to seem disin- genuous for a number of reasons, which range from his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre to his willingness to accept the privileges of his race, gender, and class without championing the same privileges for everyone else. That Daisy is the one with agency when she finds Booker, however, subverts commonsense expecta- tions of how a black female character and a white male character might interact, not only in Columbia but also in an FPS game. Booker is powerless by the time he wakes up on the airship, which he originally stole but Daisy now claims as her own. His only option for reclaiming the airship is to give in to Daisy’s demands, a definite reversal of traditional roles where white men and black women are concerned. Daisy’s final act of walking away as Booker falls screaming out of the airship interrupts a dominant historical discourse of terrorized black women who remain subject and secondary to white men. Certainly, the scene reverses Comstock’s elab- orate projection of Daisy’s downfall in the Hall of Heroes where she is the one being pushed to the brink of a precipice. I would suggest that a scene like this is radical, if only because it is unprecedented in the FPS gaming genre. But Daisy also risks reinforcing predictable models — especially in her death scene. Booker and Elizabeth bend time and space in order to find the gunsmith, Chen Lin, and fulfill Daisy’s request for weapons. By the time they find a universe where Chen

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Lin is alive and the armament is accessible, however, the entire course of history has shifted. The Vox Populi have taken over Columbia in a violent uprising, and Daisy is now a bloodthirsty Robespierre-esque figure who sanctions the slaughter of all Found- ers and their families. The imagery and narrative for this portion of the game draw on historical events such as the French and Rus- sian Revolutions, where mass uprisings led to reigns of terror. The Vox Populi replace Comstock’s men as Booker’s enemies and patrol Columbia in red uniforms and devil masks. Bodies are piled up in the streets, and the bloody scalps of the Founders have been nailed to a wooden board as a warning. In this world, Booker makes the uncomfortable observation that “the only difference between Com- stock and Fitzroy is how you spell the name.” Like the juxtaposi- tion of Lincoln and Booth, this comparison is implicitly intended to provoke debate, which it has done. A number of online forums address this specific comment by Booker and its appropriateness. As one player writes on the GameFAQs website message board, “I found [Booker’s comment] a little offensive. Comstock is a racist who institutionalizes segregation; Fitzroy is a victim of it and is revolting against the system.”30 This post generated immediate responses from other players, once again demonstrating the game’s ability to stimulate adult discourse. Ironically, Daisy replaces Comstock as a villain and proves her ruthlessness by shooting Jeremiah, the raffle emcee, through the head. Safely behind the bulletproof glass in Jeremiah’s office, Daisy taunts Booker by smearing Jeremiah’s blood across her face and declaring, “Kill the imposters. Burn their bodies when you’re done.” The blood substitutes for the red face paint of the Vox Populi members but also marks Daisy as a savage-like character who now resorts to scalping and other primitive acts of violence. As an ultimate act of barbarity, Daisy grabs a little boy — implicitly the son of Jeremiah — and holds a pistol to his head with the following justification: “The Founders ain’t nothing but weeds. Cut ’em down and they just grow back. If you want to get rid of a weed, you got to pull it up from the root!” She is prevented from murdering the child when Elizabeth sneaks up behind her and stabs

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116 • Camera Obscura her in the back — a symbolic gesture — with a giant pair of shears. Stunned, Daisy falls to the ground and bleeds quickly to death at Elizabeth’s feet.31 Given her significance as a symbol for justice and civil rights, Daisy’s brutality and seemingly necessary death in order to spare the life of a child require some deconstruction. The game can be credited with resisting the idealization of Daisy as a paragon. Rendering Daisy perfect or one-dimensionally good would reinforce the very binaries that BioShock Infinite interrogates. All the central characters in the game prove simply to be human, and each has the capacity for good and evil. Indeed, Elizabeth dispenses with her own identity as moral compass the moment she stabs Daisy in the back. But there remains a lingering sense that Daisy’s potential as an empowered black female character and her subversion of hegemonic models is eroded and even negated by the conclusion to her story. When Booker and Elizabeth frantically attempt to stop Daisy before she commits the heinous act of murdering a child, the player experiences a sense of urgency that is exacerbated by the fact that Daisy is in a locked room and thus inaccessible. The implication here is that Daisy is about to cross a moral boundary within this violent FPS game. Booker, of course, has spent the majority of the game killing people, a practice that Elizabeth first abhors but ultimately helps him carry out. Although Comstock as an individual remains somewhat abstract, the legacies of his brutality, including the murder of his own wife, are everywhere. The genocide at Wounded Knee, the bodies of torture victims in the Columbia prison, and the African American chain gang showcase the myriad ways in which human rights are violated within this allegorical world. And yet it is Daisy who embodies inhumanity in a personal- ized way that surpasses Jeremiah’s racism during the raffle scene or Booker’s brutal act of sawing off a man’s head with his skyhook. The danger in BioShock Infinite is that Daisy’s inhumane side — indicated by the white man’s blood smeared on her face and a young white hostage in her clutches — is the last image that the player sees of her. When Elizabeth impales Daisy with the scissors, the player

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can breathe a sigh of relief because the child is rescued and the now-feral Daisy has been, in keeping with her dehumanization, put down.32 Despite Elizabeth’s shock at her own ability to commit murder, the player’s job is not to reprimand her or mourn Daisy but to step over Daisy’s corpse and comfort Elizabeth. The instruc- tion “comfort Elizabeth” appears on the screen immediately after Daisy’s death. In its summation of Daisy’s story and the silencing of her emblematic voice through death, the game arguably falls short in its otherwise commendable ability to challenge and complicate hegemonic models. However, if Daisy’s martyrdom was carried out in a different fashion — by firing squad or at the end of Comstock’s sword — it would not necessarily have been more effective in challenging racial norms. Curiously for an FPS game, the player is not permit- ted to fight and kill Daisy in a boss battle despite the fact that she replaces Comstock as Booker’s primary enemy. Her murder by an NPC in a cutscene speaks to the complexities of her role and inti- mates that her death at Booker’s hands would have been inappro- priate. Daisy remains a memorable black female character in the broader context of FPS games because of her self-possession and ability to voice a critique of white patriarchal norms. Her death is undeniably controversial, but the narrative rightfully returns to the moral ambiguities at the heart of her death when it forces both Elizabeth and Booker to make their own morally compromised choices as they move forward. There is an obvious irony in the fact that Daisy’s so-called hypocrisy is ultimately exceeded by that of the white male hero, Booker, who turns out to be his own nemesis, Comstock.

Conclusion Racial content and critique in American video games continue to be glossed over both by the video game industry and in video game scholarship despite the fact that race is very much present in games across genres. Sports games often feature lead nonwhite characters that correlate to real-life players. The open world Grand Theft Auto franchise (Rockstar Games, 1999 – 2014) has a number

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118 • Camera Obscura of releases that take place in very specific cultural contexts, for example San Andreas (2004) and Chinatown Wars (2009). Fantasy games like the Elder Scrolls series (Bethesda, 1994 – 2011) offer the player a plethora of races to choose from — High Elves, Dark Elves, Dwarves, Orcs — and each avatar has its own unique features and abilities. The problem is that this pervasive racial content is “encoded,” as Morrison argues, in a “substitute language” of sports, fantasy, and action. The player learns to ignore race even as she or he embodies an African American basketball player or chooses a Dwarf as an avatar. BioShock Infinite does not look any different when the player begins the journey into Columbia as Booker. Hegemonic models dominate the game, and the “substitute language” of FPS action risks drowning out the game’s racial implications. But the game also interrupts that action regularly, filling the silences with the racial debates of its characters and rendering race highly visible in its setting, narrative, and even gameplay. If the appearance of the game endorses commonsense notions about the FPS gaming genre, BioShock Infinite exploits that sense of normalcy within min- utes. The player is faced at every turn with racial ideologies that beg to be debated precisely because they are so blatant. A poster that reads, “Columbia Security: Protecting Our Faith, Wealth, and Racial Purity,” is not subtle. The raffle scene, a reenactment of a lynch mob, is not subtle. This stripping away of evasion and encod- ing allows for representations of race that have more depth and that stimulate adult discourse. BioShock Infinite showcases the ways in which a video game can be a creative space where the player experiences identity politics as both author and character and where gaming is not only entertainment but also education.

Notes

1. Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 48.

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2. I would also counter that, for certain games, a character’s physique, gender, and appearance can tell us something about the gameplay. For example, a hypermasculine male avatar often promises masculine gameplay such as deathmatch play (in which a player must kill a certain number of in-game opponents by any means necessary, typically using guns as in FPS games), hack- and-slash play (in which a player must engage in hand-to-hand combat in order to defeat in-game opponents), or twitch play (in which the player’s reaction time is important to her or his success).

3. Aarseth, “Genre Trouble,” 54. 4. Nick Montfort, “Interactive Fiction as ‘Story,’ ‘Game,’ ‘Storygame,’ ‘Novel,’ ‘World,’ ‘Literature,’ ‘Puzzle,’ ‘Problem,’ ‘Riddle,’ and ‘Machine,’ ” in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 310. 5. Ken Levine, interview with Evan Lahti, PC Gamer, 12 December 2012, www.pcgamer.com/bioshock-infinite-interview-ken-levine -racism- history/. 6. Cathlena Martin, “Children’s Video Games as Interactive Racialization,” Comparative Literature and Culture 10, no. 2 (2008): 3.

7. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 17. 8. Aarseth, “Genre Trouble,” 48. 9. Ewan Kirkland, “Masculinity in Video Games: The Gendered Gameplay of Silent Hill,” Camera Obscura, no. 71 (2009): 165. 10. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (1976; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 145. 11. Kirkland, “Masculinity in Video Games,” 168.

12. Mark B. N. Hansen, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media (New York: Routledge, 2006), 157.

13. Jennifer González, “The Face and the Public: Race, Secrecy, and Digital Art Practice,” Camera Obscura, no. 70 (2009): 39.

14. Hansen, Bodies in Code, 168. 15. Montfort, “Interactive Fiction,” 310.

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16. Morrison, Playing in the Dark, xii. 17. Kirkland, “Masculinity in Video Games,” 174. 18. A relevant example of a museum providing a so-called right version of history is the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas, Texas. The library includes an interactive game, “Decision Points,” which encourages the player to review and revise the decisions made by George W. Bush during his presidency, particularly his decision to invade Iraq. But if the player chooses a different course of action than that of the former president, a video of Bush appears on the screen to explain why his choices were in fact the right ones.

19. Dave Thier, “ ‘BioShock: Infinite’ Making Enemies across the Political Spectrum,” Forbes, 14 December 2012, www.forbes.com /sites/davidthier/2012/12/14/bioshock-infinite-making-enemies -across-the-political-spectrum. 20. Levine, interview by Lahti. 21. Tyler Harper, “What Bioshock Infinite Gets Right about Racism,” Hazlitt, 8 April 2013, www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/what -bioshock-infinite-gets-right-about-racism. 22. Alejandro Quan-Madrid, “BioShock Infinite Forces Players to Confront Racism (Hands-On Preview),” VentureBeat, 7 December 2012, venturebeat.com/2012/12/07/bioshock-infinite- forces -players-to-confront-racism-hands-on-preview. 23. In her seminal black feminist piece “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde urges black women to speak out and warns that “your silence will not protect you.” Lorde argues that black women often remain silent because “[they] fear the visibility without which [they] cannot truly live.” Instead of sustaining a spirit of fear, which will persist even in silence, Lorde promotes voice and visibility. Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984; Berkeley, CA: Crossing, 2007), 41 – 42. By contrast, bell hooks argues that “for black women, our struggle has not been to emerge from silence into speech but to change the nature and direction of our speech, to make a speech that compels listeners, one that is heard.” bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End, 1989), 6.

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24. Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” 42.

25. Cultural critics like Sander L. Gilman and bell hooks have charted the ways in which Western art and media have been complicit in the stereotyping of black women, who are often symbolically reduced to their sexual parts and rarely find an agency that is independent of their sexuality. Gilman, who explores nineteenth-century iconographies of the black female body in art, medicine, and literature, stresses “the essential iconographic nature of all visual representation.” Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 205; bell hooks, “Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace,” in Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, ed. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 113 – 28.

26. bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 78.

27. bell hooks, Talking Back, 5. 28. bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End, 1981), 32.

29. In her seminal article, historian Barbara Welter defines “the cult of True Womanhood” as follows: “The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors, and society could be divided into four cardinal virtues — piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.” Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820 – 1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 152. 30. Vanderzoo, 19 April 2013 (1:56 p.m.), comment on “Strongly Disagree with Booker on Fitzroy,” GameFAQs, 19 April 2013, www.gamefaqs.com/boards/605053-bioshock-infinite /65997174.

31. Daisy’s death is comparable to the death of the African American rebel leader Marlene in the contemporaneous action game The Last of Us (Sony, 2013). There are a number of parallels between the two games, including the stereotypical

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white male protagonist (voiced by the same actor, Troy Baker) and the inclusion of a black woman as the head of a resistance movement. In both games the black female character is killed to prevent the death of a white child.

32. In a very different and yet relevant scene from Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe chooses death for her children rather than life in slavery. Sethe’s terrible choice is also a moral one, and her decision is premised on what is best for her children in an amoral world: “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that.” But the response to Sethe’s choice by the entire community — by white and black members alike — is shock and incomprehension. Their own barbarity aside, the white slave owners cannot understand Sethe’s infanticide or its connection to their cruelty. Even Sethe’s fellow slave and lover Paul D famously admonishes, “You got two feet, Sethe, not four.” Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Penguin, 1988), 165.

Diana Adesola Mafe is an associate professor of English at Denison University, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies. She has published articles in Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, Safundi, Camera Obscura, and African Women Writing Resistance. Her book Mixed Race Stereotypes in South African and American Literature: Coloring Outside the (Black and White) Lines (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) examines the trope of the “tragic mulatto” from a transnational perspective.

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Figure 4. The Motorized Patriot, a “Heavy Hitter” boss in BioShock Infinite modeled on George Washington

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