Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Playing with cowboys, outlaws, and spacefarers: The remediated American Frontier in video games

2023; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jacc.13481

1542-734X

Juan Francisco Belmonte Ávila,

Digital Games and Media

Myths have the power to imagine and build nations. As many scholars and historians have shown (Carter, 2014; Heikkinen & Reunanen, 2015; Kolodny, 1975; McClancy, 2018; Newell & Lamon, 2005; Rabb & Michael Richardson, 2008; Slotkin, 1973, 1998; Triana, 2015; Wark, 2007), the frontier thesis is among the most influential historical discourses shaping national identity in the United States. As a discourse, the frontier thesis does not need to be based on historical facts. Instead, it simply needed—and still needs—to be consumed as being based on facts for it to function as it is meant to function as a way of imagining, actualizing, and celebrating a mythical past that only takes into account a very limited number of identities and contributions and that erases certain histories that would defy otherwise the overall validity of this discourse. Along with these acts of celebration and erasure, the frontier myth promotes very specific forms of understanding the self and the place that one has in society, which in turn cause certain ideological agendas to flourish and prosper. This article will explore both the survival and evolution of the frontier across centuries and media forms—most recently in video games, my main object of interest here—but also what this continued process of remediation implies ideologically. The most influential discussion of the frontier thesis can be traced back to Frederick Jackson Turner (1893), and his suggestion that American identity was shaped by the unique contact of white settlers with nature as they moved West colonizing the lands that are part of what is now the United States of America. Turner saw the frontier as a liminal space between what he described as a savage and unpolluted natural world—the lands in North America not yet colonized by white settlers—and the civilized and yet somehow tainted world of cities. For Turner, the conquering of this “natural world” inevitably made the settlers face a number of challenges—from very harsh weather conditions to the opposition of the native dwellers of the land—that were unique to this territory. This perceived struggle of white settlers to conquer nature while being away from the problems of the city shaped, according to Turner, the American spirit and gave birth to a nation of expansionist adventurers and bringers of order. Turner's thesis assumed the settler to be the primal agent of the creation of that nation and, in assuming so, also saw the creators of the United States as being white, of European origin, and male, thus eliminating a myriad of other identities that played an essential role in the creation of that nation through their efforts, sacrifice, subjugation, and erasure. It also drew a picture according to which the true American character could only be expressed when exposed to the thrills and dangers of expanding one's borders. Since all forms of narrating history can, and oftentimes should, be contested, many voices have been raised against the validity of the frontier thesis. Burkhart (1947), for example, criticized the soundness of many of Turner's claims, particularly those connected to notions of economic and political freedom and change, while still praising the unifying power of the myth when studying American history. More recent approaches have pointed out the numerous omissions and erasures effected by Turner's thesis, particularly in relation to race, ethnicity, and gender. Washington (1993) clearly states that historians such as Turner “found no place for race and gender in their perspectives on American history” (230). Viehmann (2010) sees Turner's American Frontier as a unifying national history that attempted to heal the wounds of the Civil War, but, in the process, made non-white individuals invisible, women superfluous, and Native Americans mere trail-makers for true settlers to follow. Other scholars such as Walsh (1995) challenge the thesis by pointing at the way Turner's ideas made the role of women during those years invisible. For other scholars, the gendered nature of the frontier goes beyond its—sometimes invisible—dwellers, since nature and the wilderness themselves are gendered and often imagined as female. As Viehmann (2010) and Kolodny (1975) have shown, discourses about the frontier identify this space as a rewarding female body that welcomes and validates the male, white roamer but that also threatens to devour him if deemed unworthy. In practice, this logic genders both ends of the colonization process, where the colonizer is male and not only the land but also the colonized, as a result of their perceived weakness, is feminized. According to this extremely limiting and conservative view of gender, shortcomings at colonizing are then to be viewed as masculine deficiencies whereas the colonized body or territory occupies its “proper” place in the world by virtue of seemingly being or acting female. For Massip (2012), the fact that Turner focused on the westward advancement of the frontier taints his account, as it pays attention to time and space across a single line as lived and explored by white settlers only, forsaking in the process a plurality of histories. Massip claims that the story of the United States is non-linear, not one-dimensional, and definitely multicultural instead of just white. Despite these claims, however, the frontier thesis has played a crucial role in the way the United States has understood its role in national and international fronts. And, even if the validity of this thesis is absolutely questionable from a factual standpoint, people did believe in the ideas defended by it. Before Turner formulated his thesis, the frontier was already the central myth many Americans used to imagine their shared national identity. Richard Slotkin (1998) traces the evolution of the frontier myth in American culture during the 19th and 20th centuries, showing its malleability and capacity to respond to shifts in political, economic, or moral agendas. Slotkin tracks early cultural depictions of the pioneer as a bringer of democracy and prosperity to the savage lands, to then show how quickly the myth changed to accommodate other needs. Improvements in the technologies of printing and distribution helped spread the myth quicky and effectively (126). As Slotkin explains, literary manifestations from the 1840s to the 1870s began to expand notions of the frontier as the site for boundless opportunities for democracy—with the cowboy as its defender—to also include other, far more restrictive, visions of democracy as something only meant for those who truly deserve it: virile Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurs. Outlaws were also common protagonists of some of these texts, often expanding the legends built around real-life individuals, such as Jesse James, and elevating them to the category of myth-dwellers. In all of these literary manifestations of the frontier, Slotkin finds a desire to satisfy the readers' demands for authenticity, even if such authenticity was just another construct built around a myth that kept growing and evolving in a country were cities were increasingly occupying a very significant portion of the American imaginary. Closer to the turn of the century, many of the traits of the cowboy were also transferred to the metropolis to create a new type of American urban hero: the detective. In this transition, what had been the “a man who knows Indians”—a key trait of the dweller of the frontier that allowed him to conquer its perils—changed into “a man who knows the world of crime” (218), which allowed the cowboy-now-detective to keep working as a bringer of normative order. At nearly the same time, science fiction authors such as Edgard Rice Burroughs started to take the frontier far beyond the United States, envisioning in outer space clear equivalents to the colonizers, colonized others, and savage lands. In this way, Burroughs pioneered a trend that continued in later iterations of the frontier in science fiction and also reappeared—in a perhaps less spectacular and oftentimes less otherworldly forms—in the expansionist and interventionist foreign policies of US Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the 20th century or John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan during its second half. Mayer (2019) discusses the frontier thesis and its capacity to articulate itself globally around the actions of the United States during the past 100 years. Political events and actions such as the arms race before, during, and after the two World Wars, the Cold War, or the fight against the spread of communism and anti-American sentiment around the world were, according to Hervé, profoundly influenced by the core ideas behind Turner's thesis. As a result, during the 20th and 21st centuries, the expansionists actions of the United States were and are still justified internally following the main ethos behind the frontier thesis: that American identity thrives when facing and conquering external threats while bringing civilization where there is, according to a self-generated rationale, savagery. In addition to being remediated into the detective story, the outer space adventure, and foreign policy, the frontier survived in film. Slotkin points out that the Western as a genre developed so early in the history of American cinema “that its origins have been confounded with those of the medium itself” (234). In its filmic form, the Western remediated many of the existing ideas about the Frontier to satiate the audiences' need for authenticity. This need was, however, based on the belief that the growing uses, tales, and changing visions constituting the American mythical past reflected a single, original truth. During the first half of the 20th century, Hollywood and Westerns played a crucial role in keeping the American Frontier alive. Westerns, with their lone wanderers and dexterous gunslingers that were capable of navigating the dangers of the wild while not feeling fully at ease in the civilized world, gave another cultural venue to the white, brave, and pioneering settlers Turner had described as iconic examples of what being American meant. However—just like its literary counterpart—the Western film was not a static genre. It—together with the cowboys and frontiers portrayed in them—responded to key developments in American history as well as shifts in the ways American identity itself was understood. Scholars such as Heikkinen and Reunanen (2015) distinguish between two types of Westerns: the early examples of the genre look at the frontier with optimism and see something positive—a young nation emerging as a land of plenty and democracy—resulting, first, from the clash between nature and the white and civilized world settlers, and more specifically cowboys, helped to establish and, second, from the expansion brought by the explorers' actions on their surroundings. Closer to the 1950s, however, protagonists in Westerns started to show a greater degree of distrust and disenchantment with the civilized world they were helping to build. This disenchantment was not necessarily linked with increasing degrees of sensitivity toward human groups that had been marginalized or ignored by the genre until then, but with a growing general mistrust against governmental institutions. In these films, cowboys were not just outliers because they occupied the space between nature and society, but also because they heavily mistrusted, and sometimes were violently at odds with, the social and political structures established in the now civilized world of the cities and the State power built around them. Settlers became as a result disenchanted, highly individualistic, and distrustful, and were quick to raise their weapons against perceived acts of aggression threatening their personal sense of justice. Films such as High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952), The Searchers (Ford, 1956), The Magnificent Seven (Sturges, 1960), or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962) are commonly cited as revisionist examples. In both types of Western, however, the frontier was the place where the true American identity could be expressed. Other classifications of the Western, such as the ones offered by Neil Campbell (2013) and Carter (2014), distinguish between classical and postmodern—or revisionist—Westerns. Like the literary manifestations of the frontier during the 19th century, classical Westerns promote a sense of community and national identity, transform native Americans into a racial other, and represent history as something unequivocal through the actions of their white male heroes. On the other hand, titles that fall into the second category—usually produced from the late 1950s forward—question the validity of the frontier's grand narrative. Carter, however, warns against using this distinction uncritically, as there are some classical Westerns that still challenge some of the central tenets of the frontier, making the myth evolve a bit at a time, while many of the so-called revisionist Westerns still bring many of the most conservative elements of the frontier myth back to life while challenging only some aspects of it. All of these scholars agree, however, that there is a certain, identifiable, point in time during the 20th century—after the 1950s—when the sun started to set on the popularity of Westerns. Scholars such as Mayer (2019) and Jan Johnson-Smith (2005) claim that, as the popularity of Westerns started to wane, science fiction—a genre that already in its literary form borrowed many elements from the frontier, as Slotkin argues—emerged vigorously. Science fiction condensed the fascination with technological progress brought by the postwar boom of the 1950s, the rapid evolution of warfare and means of transport during and after the Second World War, the feeling of imminent danger from abroad caused by the Cold War, and the desire to go further than ever connected to the Space Race. This context kept the frontier, along with all its associated values about national and individual identity, alive. Along with the myth of the frontier, science fiction films incorporated a high-tech update of its image repertoire: horses were replaced by spaceships; trains and railroads—key to westward expansion—were now space cruisers and relay systems; and the immensity of the American wilds had a clear counterpart in the infinity of outer space. According to King (2000), after the decline of the Western, many of the mythic and ideological components of the frontier were kept through new frontiers, both real and imagined—whether territories outside the United States where the United States intervened, or outer space as represented in science fiction. For King, science fiction managed to retain and rearticulate past tensions between what can be defined as “us, Americans” and “them, the other/enemy” that the Western often portrayed, transferring them to outer space. These tensions, I argue, are also found at the core of many US policies and have been part of some politicians' agendas. A prime of example of this is found in President Kennedy's call1 to take American greatness beyond its own borders and beyond Earth, which connected a new frontier (outer space) with the core tenets of the traditional myth and its imperialistic implications. As Jowett (2008) points out, the shared notion of Americanness that the Western promoted through the enemies that protagonists faced is converted by science fiction into stories of “us, the civilized humans” versus “them, the savage—or evil- alien/monster/survivor.” As part of this division, enemies in science fiction embody the otherness that protagonists need to defeat. This sense of otherness is depicted through alien species posing a threat to humans, savage human survivors that have lost all traces of moral sense as “we” understand it, or monsters emerging from the corruption and misuse of technology. As such, science fiction extrapolates many of the values of belonging that are present in the Frontier Thesis and enlarges them, transforming a symbol of Americanness such as the cowboy into a figure that stands in outer space for the entire human race, as a type of Pan-American human, while keeping the very same principle of “us versus them” as the commanding logic behind any understandings of belonging. Gurr (2015) sees the ability that Westerns had—and that science fiction so effectively reproduces2—to create two easily identifiable sides as connected to an American desire of belonging—and of recognizing those who do not—which in turn imposes an urge toward homogeneity; a sense of sameness that the cowboys in Westerns realized through their whiteness and their gender and that spacefarers manifest through their pan-Americanness. This does not only mean that elements of the Frontier survive in a remediated form, but that the colonialist ideas justifying “America vs that which is evil and needs to be civilized” expand beyond the United States themselves, an expansion that globalizes the values behind Turner's Frontier Thesis. Values concerning gender and sexuality that were present in the American Frontier were also remediated by many science fiction texts. This paper has already discussed the fact that Turner's thesis imagined the founding pioneers to be male, a gendering trend that is still present in science fiction, as for each female main character in science fiction there are many more male protagonists. Additionally, as Jowett suggests (Jowett, 2008, 13), outer space and unexplored planets waiting to be conquered and civilized remain in the shadow of the gendered view—and gendering force—of colonization, just like the natural environments in the frontier myth were gendered themselves and imagined as virgin female bodies awaiting the arrival of the white settler. For Rabb and Michael Richardson (2008), science fiction films and TV series are often so influenced by Westerns that they could be seen as space Westerns where the domination and colonization of others has extended from the American Frontier to the entire universe. The ripples of this influence sometimes are felt first internationally and across other genres before resurfacing in science fiction. Richie's (1990) remarks on the influence of Westerns—particularly those directly by director John Ford—on Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, which, in turn, are key sources of inspiration for George Lucas's original Star Wars films (Davies, 2019). Running from 2015 to 2022, the TV series The Expanse—based on the novels jointly written by Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham and published under the name James S. A. Corey—serves as a more recent reference to the frontier in its remediated form on the screen. Despite the diversity present in The Expanse, the main character, James/Jim Holden, is still white, born in Montana, male, heterosexual, and, as a result, a clear callback to the space Pan-American cowboy. Most of the plot in The Expanse circles around the dangers brought by the exploration of space, which humanity needs in order to survive, and the bickering and warmongering among planetary and colony leaders, which reproduces how cities and government officials were perceived and portrayed in Westerns. A more specific example of the presence of the American Frontier can also be found at the end of the third season, when the activation of the ring—an alien-built device with the ability to open warp gates—connects our galaxy with 1300 habitable systems, giving humanity the chance it needs to thrive beyond the limited resources of “the Sol system.” During the opening of these gates, Holden describes the access to these new far away corners of the galaxy as the opening of humanity's new frontier, referencing once again the American Frontier and introducing the exploration of seemingly savage lands to the show. There is, of course, more than outer space to science fiction. In many texts, humanity does not look at the stars with wonder. Instead, humanity looks pessimistically at the radiated post-apocalyptic ruins left behind after human civilization crashes down under its own greed after decades of technological misuse. In these ruinous worlds, small pockets of civilization still subsist, surrounded by expanses of waste and ruins that survivors need to explore and conquer in search of resources or better sites for their settlements. Kyyrö and Panttila (2015) see a clear transfer of the values of the Frontier Thesis from Westerns to other settings and genres, such as gangster and adventure films and, more predominantly, post-apocalyptical narratives science fiction. These texts present for these authors a way of returning to a natural state that existed before the civilization of the American lands. In a rather nostalgic and definitely destructive turn, the end of the world as we know it often makes the land return to a state of savageness deprived of social markers. This new type of savage land offers many opportunities to its pioneers to go back to a newly decivilized frontier and prove through its conquering their post-apocalyptical Americanness. Nayar (2017) sees wastelands and ruins in contemporary culture as spaces designed to retell the stories/histories of the civilizations their fictional remains are perceived to originate from. The act of designing, creating, or imagining ruins for any cultural text signifies the rearticulation of many historical discourses that connect space and time. As it will be explored in greater detail in the next section, when decades so heavily marked by gendered consumerism such as the 1950s are remediated in ruined form, the very same identity discourses that exist around those years are reanimated and brought back to life. For other scholars, radiation itself, and not the radioactive ruins of a fallen American civilization, embodies key identity discourses. As Newell and Lamon (2005) discuss, during the 1950s, and despite the oversea horrors inflicted during and after World War II by the use of atomic weapons, nuclear energy was promoted in the United States as a helpful, clean, and home-making resource with the ability to foster humanity's development. O'Neill (1986) refers to the years between 1945 and 1960 as the “American High,” a time in American history when people were invited to believe that a stable path toward progress, happiness, and prosperity had been consolidated. Part of this depicted progress relied on the representation of households, women, and the result of mass production and consumerism as the quintessential triad of happiness. As part of this discourse, nuclear energy was introduced as an ally of this vision of progress, capable of providing comfort and safety to homes. Just like the frontier had been presented as something nurturing when conquered but castrating when defeated by it, radiation was also discussed as an enabling presence aligned with very specific representations of gender and domesticity that fostered development, but that had the ability to destroy and ravage if misused. Even when misused, however, the potential ruin brought by nuclear energy and radiation is linked to what Slotkin (1973) identifies as a historical narrative of growth and regeneration through destruction that has been part of the frontier myth since its conception. Slotkin asks readers what becomes of the colonizer once the colonizing process is over (556). The answer is easy to find: the colonizer seeks something else to colonize and, I argue, once there is nothing left, either new frontiers are imagined—outer space—or everything here on Earth is destroyed so that it can be occupied and subjugated once again. Hence, in post-apocalyptic science fiction, the ruins brought by an atomic disaster are set against vast expanses of wild wasteland to recreate the most fundamental conditions of the original myth. In these narratives, the ruins host emerging pockets of a newly reborn civilization that is ready to bring back a sliver of American greatness to that which remains—the wastelands—by reconquering the lands. Then, while narratives on nuclear destruction do bring American civilization as we know it to an end, they also provide a new frontier-like setting for individuals to fully realize, once again, the very essence of Americanness. As a result, the pervasive belief that the roots of American identity can only be found in the conquering and dominion of that which is not yet domesticated survives beyond the Apocalypse; guaranteeing that the American economic and political model—which in many science fiction texts causes or accelerates the downfall of humanity due to its inability to provide answers to environmental crises in the first place—survives during and beyond the end it has contributed to create. The transmission of values, tropes, and beliefs connected to the frontier from the myth itself to the Western and, through the latter, to science fiction is also present in video games. Yet, unlike in cinema, video games set in the Far West did not influence science fiction games, as both ludic genres were simultaneously influenced by the existing relations between the myth and their filmic counterparts. As the next section will show, there are, however, ways of reproducing, remediating, and rearticulating the frontier that are specific to video games. While Heikkinen and Reunanen (2015) offer an exhaustive study on the presence of the American west in video games up to the 2010s that is worth reading, the value of studying the presence of the frontier myth in video games depends on something more than questions of iconography and setting. Video games establish their own specific claims on authenticity and didactic value and, derived from the affordances players are granted, are able to animate identity politics in unique forms. As a result, video games expand, distort, and update the ideologies articulating the myth far within and beyond the American West. The Oregon Trail (1971–2021) series represents one of the earliest and most iconic examples of the representation of the American Frontier in video games. The game was text-based and was initially programmed in 1971 as a didactic resource for personal use by high school history teacher Don Rawitsch. With each new iteration of the game, the concept grew to include graphics that could be displayed on a screen, some mechanics commonly found in adventure video games as well very rudimentary shooting mechanics, and sound. Games belonging to The Oregon Trail series became popular in schools across the United States. Despite the passing of time, the core ideas and gameplay mechanics behind the initial iterations remained stable: at the beginning of the game, players are given the task of assuming the role of caravan leaders as they travel with their families to Oregon. The game offers different difficulty settings by letting players choose between several—oftentimes three—people acting as caravan leaders, each with different financial resources that must be used to buy supplies such as food, bullets, or essentials—such as additional oxen or spare wheels—the wagon needs in order to keep going. The 1990 version of The Oregon Trail3 lets players choose between a banker, a carpenter, and a farmer, each with different amounts of money at the start of the game. Money is a key resource that makes the choice of caravan leader a game-changing decision: while the banker has enough money to buy more food, oxen, and spare pieces for the wagon than are actually needed, which allows him to get to Oregon without any significant problem unless players choose very poorly or decide to spend very little, the farmer has barely enough to start the journey, which forces players to choose very carefully, find more resources more effectively, and feel acutely pressed by time. Once the leader is selected, a screen showing what looks like a normative family of white pioneers—a man, a woman and three children—prompts players to write a name for each traveler. Once done, players can spend the money that their selected caravan leader starts with before they start their journey. During their journey west, the game gives players the option to adjust as they play certain aspects of the trip, such as the speed of their wagon, the rate at which the settlers consume their supplies, or when to stop to hunt for more food, which initiates a third person mini game where players control the male caravan leader to shoot at animals in order obtain additional supplies. The journey to Oregon is also filled with obstacles and accidents that force players to choose between more than one option. Examples of this include choosing between diverging paths or how—and sometimes, whether—to ford rivers. Many of these choices force players to gauge the amount of time that the safer options often force the caravan to waste versus the potential deadly risks of more perilous, but less time consuming, actions. As days, weeks, and months pass as the wagon advances, players are pressed for resources and time if they want to avoid the harsher weather conditions of winter, which make the journey more difficult. Random misfortunes, such as some of the food becoming unusable, as well as other problems caused by the players' choices, such as members of the family getting sick and dying as a result of traveling too fast, eating too little, or sheer bad luck, force players to adjust their decisions and plan ahead to address potential misfortunes. Other skills players may need to master are connected to previous choices: hunting and the very wonky controls and gameplay mechanics governing it are little more than a diversion if players choose the banker as the caravan leader, who has enough money to buy enough food for the entire trip from the beginning, but for players controlling carpenters or farmers, learning how to hunt well is an essential skill they need to master to avoid starvation. When, or rather if, players manage to dri