With Barack Obama’s inauguration this past Tuesday, the United States has ushered in a new era in American history. Throughout the campaign, President Obama promised a new ear of diplomacy focusing on international cooperation, and his inauguration speech and Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks indicate that he intends to keep that promise. However, are Americans really ready? Our cultural consumption suggests we may have some work to do.
Video gaming is one of the industries that many analysts suggest will continue to thrive, with many calling the industry “recession proof.” What are Americans spending their money on? 4.63 million copies of Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War were sold in 2008, the fifth-best selling game of the year, and the success of this game suggests that Americans aren’t quite ready to abandon the mythos that Andrew Bacevich explores in The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Bacevich identifies four convictions have led us to what has been our problematic foreign policy:
- History has an identifiable and indisputable purpose
- The United States has always embodied and continues to embody freedom
- Providence summons American to ensure freedom’s ultimate triumph
- For the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere.
Bacevich argues that these convictions, which are not exclusively Republican or Democratic, have been a part of the American mythos for quite some time. Bacevich argues that the American people are ultimately responsible for reigning in imperial presidencies, changing national security priorities and American military strategy, ending dependence, combating climate change, and creating a post-fossil fuel economy. However, “As long as American remain in denial—insisting that the power of the United States is without limits, they will remain unlikely to do any of these things. Instead, abetted by their political leaders, they ill continue to fancy that some version of global war offers an antidote to Islamic radicalism.”
Call of Duty: World at War’s success indicates that Americans are literally invested in these ideas as it essentially co-opts those convictions and puts them into a violent, first-person format. While the game’s first-person format ensures that the player must follow objectives, the choice of World War II as the game’s setting suggests both that history has a purpose and that the purpose is to ensure American freedom both at home and abroad. While the game is very graphic and speaks to the uncertain nature of war, the very violence and uncertainty is romanticized and sensationalized in the name of freedom. At one point in the game, the objective is literally to kill captured German soldiers, a gross celebration of human rights abuses. However, this act is conducted while playing as a Russian soldier, thus ensuring that the US would never conduct such an atrocity during wartime. The game systematically moves through both fronts, as the final American battle is the assault on Shuri Castle and the final eastern battle is the assault on the Reichstag. The lesser-known assault on Shuri Castle, while of course ensuring freedom at home and abroad, carries the additional emotional weight of fighting on behalf of a deceased commander, as Sergeant Roebuck is killed right at the start of the final battle (note: this may change depending on character actions) who is voiced by none other than Kiefer Sutherland (no cultural explanation needed there). The one exception is the Soviet capture of the Reichstag, which ends with the character placing the Soviet flag on top of the building, ensuring the fall of Nazi Germany.
Many game critics have voiced their displeasure over the repeated use of World War II as the setting of most war games, suggesting that its use is the result of a lack of imagination. I say the repeated use is the way that World War II helps fit the American mythos surrounding war, and this mythos is one that we, myself included (I did buy the game), are all too ready to embrace.
Cross-posted at filibusted.net