Presenter Information

Orazio Marie Gnerre

Event Website

https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm

Start Date

8-6-2023 12:00 PM

End Date

8-6-2023 12:50 PM

Description

Gears of War is a series of video games born for the Xbox platform in 2006. These are set on a planet very similar to Earth and in approximately the same age as ours. As in the case of the ukronic tales, however, the political organization of the planet Sera (as the world of this narrative is called) is partially different from ours. Humanity on this planet has federated into a progressive political world government. There is no longer any internal enemy to humanity, but despite this society is managed in a highly organized and disciplined manner. From the depths of the soil, however, monstrous entities emerge, called the Locusts, which it turns out that they have always inhabited the heart of the planet. Between the emergence of these entities and the “descent into hell” to fight them, the world loses the distinction between what is below the surface (and which is obviously represented with any traditional infernal symbolism) and what is above. With this speech we want to propose a political interpretation of this fantastic narrative. If in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as in other science fiction narratives, the alien enemies represented what was external to Western society, but with this type of infernal representations we pass to the greatest fear of a globalized society, namely that the worst enemy lies in the depths of our unconscious.

Comments

SESSION II
12:00 Noon—12:50 PM Eastern
11:00 AM—11:50 Central
10:00 AM—10:50 Mountain
9:00 AM—9:50 Pacific
4:00 PM—4:50 GMT

COinS
 
Aug 6th, 12:00 PM Aug 6th, 12:50 PM

The Videogaming Hell of Gears of War as a Political Parable

Gears of War is a series of video games born for the Xbox platform in 2006. These are set on a planet very similar to Earth and in approximately the same age as ours. As in the case of the ukronic tales, however, the political organization of the planet Sera (as the world of this narrative is called) is partially different from ours. Humanity on this planet has federated into a progressive political world government. There is no longer any internal enemy to humanity, but despite this society is managed in a highly organized and disciplined manner. From the depths of the soil, however, monstrous entities emerge, called the Locusts, which it turns out that they have always inhabited the heart of the planet. Between the emergence of these entities and the “descent into hell” to fight them, the world loses the distinction between what is below the surface (and which is obviously represented with any traditional infernal symbolism) and what is above. With this speech we want to propose a political interpretation of this fantastic narrative. If in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as in other science fiction narratives, the alien enemies represented what was external to Western society, but with this type of infernal representations we pass to the greatest fear of a globalized society, namely that the worst enemy lies in the depths of our unconscious.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.