University of Twente Student Theses
Polished, primitive, or sophisticated: What videogame graphics can tell us about colonial and postcolonial aesthetics
Willems, Afra (2024) Polished, primitive, or sophisticated: What videogame graphics can tell us about colonial and postcolonial aesthetics.
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| Abstract: | This thesis contributes to postcolonial games research by exploring colonial bias and colonial values in videogames from a visual lens. It applies concepts from aesthetic and decolonial literature to investigate specific cases of videogame graphics and scholarly evaluations of these graphics. The thesis argues that the colonial dichotomy of 'superior' Western people versus 'inferior' non-Western 'others' impacts the aesthetic evaluation of videogame graphics. Seemingly unproblematic adjectives such as 'authentic' and 'sophisticated' may signal underlying assumptions that link back to a colonial appreciation for modernness and Westernness. Based on Jacques Derrida's (1998) concept of the 'monolingualism of the other', the thesis argues that 'mainstream style' videogame graphics are monolingual in a similar way to the monolingualism of many European languages in the (post)colonial world. Like these European languages, mainstream style videogame graphics signal a 'superior' technological Western culture and dominate other visual styles that appear less technological. The thesis applies Frantz Fanon's (2001) notion of 'violence' to propose a solution to the monolingualism of mainstream videogame graphics; game designers can appropriate mainstream style elements or introduce new visual languages to disrupt or 'violate' the dominance of mainstream style visuals. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 08 philosophy, 20 art studies |
| Programme: | Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society MSc (60024) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/99030 |
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