Pastiche and Parody in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II
by Robson BelloAbstract
Red Dead Redemption (2010) and Red Dead Redemption II (2018) are two of the most ambitious historical representations of the American West, in terms of the scope and size of their narrative and space. This article argues that there is a tension between parody and pastiche between these representations. Parody is a form of satiric comedy, while pastiche is a juxtaposition of elements without the comedy. In the first RDR parody is preeminent, while in RDR2 pastiche is more pronounced. Nonetheless, both games mediate the American West in a new interactive form that pays tribute to the Western genre and develops their own uniqueness.
Keywords: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption II, representation, pastiche, parody
Introduction
Possibly the largest and most detailed digital representations of the myth of the American frontier and the West reside in two electronic games from the 2010s: Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar, 2010) and its "prequel," Red Dead Redemption II (Rockstar, 2018). Both games represent the end of the mythical "Old West" through the arrival of civilizational progress. To do this, they adopt American iconography of westward expansion, spaghetti western filmography, as well as historiographical and contemporary debates about the frontier and "Manifest Destiny." This set of representations forms the basis for each games' narratives, from their historical virtual spaces to the possibilities of interactivity offered to the player.
Red Dead Redemption was published by Rockstar Games, and developed by Rockstar San Diego and Rockstar North, located in California and Scotland respectively. Rockstar Games is responsible for controversial titles like the famous Grand Theft Auto [GTA] series (1997-2016) and Bully (2006). Regarding the representation of history, Rockstar’s publishing branch has released several highly profitable games beyond Red Dead Redemption, such as its less ambitious predecessor, Red Dead Revolver (2004). Representations of the United States run throughout Rockstar’s repertoire of games, such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), which simulated a city akin to Miami in the 1980s, and L.A. Noire (2011), which tells the story of a police detective in the 1940s in Los Angeles.
The past, myths and historical memory of the United States are used in several Rockstar games as structuring elements of their games’ narratives, scenarios and forms of interactivity. Moreover, the use of space and violence in GTA can be traced throughout these titles, including the Red Dead series’ representation of the "Old West." In terms of gameplay and representation, the transition from "barbarism" in the urbanity of the 20th-21st centuries in GTA to the spaces of wilderness in RDR seems to occur in continuity: both series deals with the uncivilized.
The original Red Dead Redemption, puts players in control of John Marston, a former outlaw hired by the federal government to capture, dead or alive, the members of his former gang of outlaws -- the gang of Dutch van der Linde. Red Dead Redemption II is set several years before the events of the first game, putting players in control of Arthur Morgan during the time of the gang's decline. The second game focuses on how the gang =breaks apart while struggling for survival in an increasingly modern and interventionist civilization. Both games provide, from the perspective of an individual character, a plausible experience with the past, allowing the player to explore diverse terrains, capture wild horses, collect plants, herd cattle and -- of course -- rob trains while gunning down adversaries.
One of the writers of Red Dead Redemption, Christian Cantamessa, stated in an interview that the Rockstar team intended to move away from the "myth of the West" as seen in John Wayne films. To move toward a perspective of the "death of the West," the game's producers drew inspiration from such works as The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, Warner Bros, 1969), High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1973), Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, Warner Bros., 1992), The Proposition (John Hillcoat, First Look Pictures, 2005) and the literature of Cormac McCarthy (Cabral, 2010). In an interview about the original RDR in 2010 for the French magazine Les Inrockutibles (2010), Dan Houser (writer of the game and the person responsible for most of Grand Theft Auto since the 1990s) provided several comments of what was understood in the series’ creation. The first is that, in his opinion, it would be "difficult" to find something "new" to say in a Western, as so much had already been done. What was new about RDR for Houser was interactivity. A second point is the choice, as in GTA, of a position of "moral ambiguity" in the narrative. It is worth mentioning that the producers sought to create a "system of values of their own," which allowed greater decision-making by the player in relation to violence. Finally, when asked if he believes that RDR "reflects society," the author responds that this was, in fact, his intention. He believes that the main constituent elements of today's American society can be found between the years 1910 and 1920. This was the reason why 1911 was chosen as the initial year of the game, as revisiting the past prompts reflection about the world today (Higuinen, 2010).
As I argue, these visions also point to a shift in direction in how each game represents the past: while the original RDR seeks to satirize the tropes of the Western genre, RDR2 uses them to create a much more believable narrative. Esther Wright (2021) points out that the RDR brand uses an “authenticity” strategy; however, this is done in different ways. Also, the game’s developers were aware that the game was not a faithful historical representation, as Houser acknowledges: "It may be a work of historical fiction, but it's not a work of history. You want to allude to that stuff, but you can't do it with 100 percent historical accuracy. It would be deeply unpleasant" (Houser as quoted in White, 2018).
These representations can be analyzed as a swinging pendulum between modes of parody and modes of pastiche. I read the first RDR as bringing more parodic elements and satire to its depiction of the "Old West" and the historical myth of progress. Meanwhile, I read RDR2 as more of a pastiche that takes its own premises seriously, treating the van der Linde gang’s disintegration as something of a failed utopian community where aspiring freedom fighters tragically disband. To make these readings I will first present the debates and key concepts differentiating parody, pastiche and Western genre elements. From there, I offer an analysis of both games in their order of release. There is a historical change in representation and tone between RDR (2010) and RDR2 (2018) in terms of parody and pastiche, not only in “style,” something that has not been addressed in the intense debate around the series. This article emphasizes the importance of the articulation between representational storytelling and gameplay rules for analyzing ideology in video games. In the case of RDR, there is a discrepancy between the game’s parodic and critical portrayal of the Western genre in its narrative and the reinforcement of stereotypical ideas through gameplay. Conversely, in RDR2, both the pastiche narrative and gameplay contribute to reaffirming archetypical myths of the frontier. The production of both RDR and RDR2 occurred at a time when myths of the West and civilizational progress were already in decline, to the point where the clichés of aesthetic, imagery, narrative and mythic construction could be satirized and criticized with great force in a high-cost cultural commodity, without the creators and investors fearing negative repercussions. On the other hand, the high investment and commercial success of RDR and RDR2 indicate the strength and permanence of the American West as a reified myth -- one that offers high profitability in popular media. For the Red Dead series, such high-budget Western productions allow millions of players to explore and interact with narrative tropes of the period and genre.
Debates and key concepts
The concept of Frontier and the Myth of the Frontier
The so-called "frontier" of the American West as a geographic and mythological space, and its importance for understanding American history, were widely discussed throughout historiography, and the concept gained academic status in the late 19th century (Limericik,1987). In 1893, a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the advancement and occupation of the frontier were the determining factors in the formation of the history of the United States. For Turner, the "first period" of US history ended in 1890, at the moment the Census Bureau declared that the frontier was over. But Turner (1996) also provided a more elaborate, more "elastic" definition:
The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier -- a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the "settled area" of the census reports. (Turner, 1996)
Richard Slotkin argued that historical memory and the ideology of the American West formed an ideological framework that he called the “Myth of the Frontier”:
The Myth of the Frontier is arguably the longest-lived of American myths, with origins in the colonial period and a powerful continuing presence in contemporary culture. Although the Myth of the Frontier is only one of the operative myth/ideological systems that form American culture, it is an extremely important and persistent one. Its ideological underpinnings are those same "laws" of capitalist competition, of supply and demand, of Social Darwinian "survival of the fittest" as a rationale for social order, and of "Manifest Destiny" that have been the building blocks of our dominant historiographical tradition and political ideology. (Slotkin, 1998)
To John Cawelti (1999), representations of the ideology and myth of the American Frontier in the Western genre are guided by a series of conventions and formulas that normalize a certain narrative experience. Starting in the 1970s, there was a noticeable change in how people remembered the American West, something Slotkin (1992) named “crisis of the myth.” The previously dominant themes of "progress" and Manifest Destiny were replaced by newer social representations and scholarly investigations focusing on class, gender, ethnicity and race.
Pastiche and Parody
It is necessary to distinguish between parody and pastiche for my analysis of these games. I begin with Fredric Jameson's definition:
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs: it is to parody what that other interesting and historically original modern thing, the practice of a kind of blank irony, is to what Wayne Booth calls the "stable ironies" of the eighteenth century. (1991, p. 22)
Pastiche is the de-historicized copy of the past that becomes the rule of narratives. Jameson sees in this process the transformation of psychic experience now dominated by spatial categories, replacing temporal categories. For Jameson, space and spatial logic has become increasingly dominant in culture in late capitalism, or postmodernism. The category of pastiche consists of what, according to Jameson, historians of architecture called historicism: the cannibalization and random use of styles and stylistic allusions from the past. This is due to the Platonic conception of the simulacrum: the identical copy of something that never existed.
Hoesterey (2001) agrees with Jameson that pastiche is a central mark of postmodernism but disagrees about what he considers a symptomatic fatalism of late capitalism. Thus, Hoesterey posits that there is a positivity in the use of the genre itself as a stylistic tool in art. The author recovers the origins of the concept in Renaissance pasticci, according to which works of art were copied or amalgamated and sold as authentic works or by "true" masters.
In the seminal work of Linda Hutcheon (1985), pastiche is also the counterpoint to parody. “Both parody and pastiche not only are formal textual imitations but clearly involve the issue of intent. Both are acknowledged borrowings” (p. 38). Ironic “trans-contextualization” is what separates pastiche and parody for Hutcheon. Pastiche stresses similarity rather than difference, it is imitative. Parody, however, is “is transformational in its relationship to other texts.” However, Hutcheon qualifies this by saying, “this is not to say that a parody cannot contain (or use to parodic ends) a pastiche” (Ibid.)
Turning now to parody, Matthew Turner defines Western parody as follows:
The Western parody mocks the codes and conventions of a distinctively American cinematic genre while commenting -- directly and indirectly -- on the cultural and social issues of its time. Nevertheless, in the act of subverting those conventions and calling attention to their constructedness, the Western parody creates its own set of conventions that are closely allied to, and often rely heavily on, the conventions of the Western itself. The Western parody admits that the paradox of a code that is arbitrary, but nevertheless binding, is inherently humorous. This parodic attitude, however, does not let it stray too much from its generic model. Whether the cowboy rides off into the sunset on a horse or in a limousine, he still rides off into the sunset. (2005)
Thus, in this sense, I argue that RDR is more parody than pastiche (though it does use pastiche) while RDR2 is more pastiche than parody. This indicates that there is a transformation in the way the American West is thought about, perceived and represented across games.
Debates about RDR and RDR2
The debate about games that represent the past and the American West is vast. In this section, I intend to bring the most relevant arguments that contribute to the overall understanding of the rest of the article.
Bullinger and Salvatti (2013) argue that elements like characters, dialogues and incidents in historical games aim to impart a general sense of the past, but their authenticity is selective, focusing only on specific aspects to create a semblance of reality. Chapman (2016) makes a distinction between "realism" as an artistic style and accuracy as a fidelity to historical facts. In both RDR and RDR2 there is a selective authenticity, where certain elements of the narrative are made to be authentic and realistic, while others are made to be pure entertainment. To Wills (2008), games about the American West “offered ephemeral escapes to a simpler world of six-shooters, wagon trains, and iron horses,” thus reproducing old stereotypes and cheap fictions, and ignoring the social criticism and complexity of the national and filmographic debates from the 1970s onwards. To Heikkinen and Reunanen (2015), “video games had to reinvent and remediate the Western thematic in their own terms.” In both RDR and RDR2, tropes are reproduced, but also reinvented, in their own terms. Regarding Rockstar’s games, Chris Pallant (2013) discusses how the mechanisms of interactivity in RDR, Grand Theft Auto and L.A. Noire express the idea of the gangster through gameplay. Coloumbe (2015) argues that "shooter games" depict and defend the American ideology of the right to bear arms. Sarah Humphreys (2012) argues that RDR "rejuvenates" the hierarchy of national identities and naturalizes loss, suffering, and technological advancement as "part of life." Mary Elston (2014) sees it as a continuation of an expansionist "topos" in American visual culture, where ideas and images from 19th and 20th centuries of conquest continue to be done in the 21th century. Finally, for David Murphy (2016), this game is structured by a "neoliberal discourse." In its narrative and gameplay mechanics. While all these arguments have a certain truth, it will be argued that RDR also satirizes many of these concepts, so there’s a tension between these elements and their deconstruction.
Regarding RDR2, many scholarly texts emphasize the accuracy and authenticity of its representations and how they can be useful for education. Donald and Reid (2020), for example, points out how the "factual use" of "organizations, events, constructions, clothing, and objects" is fundamental in constructing a believable gameworld for the player. Westerside and Holopainen (2019) call “gameplace” the virtual environment which generates affect, emotional response and player identification in RDR2. Pietsch (2022) elaborates on the authenticity of the landscape of the Frontier, it’s an important idea since verisimilitude is a central point in understanding the representation these games realize. The space of the game is an important element to understand realism and the American West tropes that are reproduced in both games. Many times, they challenge and or affirm certain ideologies present in the proper narrative cutscenes and dialogue.
In turn, Locke and Mackay (2021) analyze many ways in which representations of the fictional West in RDR2 engage with present problems and issues, such as criticism of capitalism or resonance with identity politics. Francesca Razzi (2021) addresses the long duration and permanent force of the Western in contemporary culture from RDR2, whose "aesthetic of excess" appears as a performance that reenacts the past. Vanderhoef and Payne (2022) argue that the “slow game time” of RDR2 challenges hegemonic play tropes of fast-paced action and pleasure immediacy, and in this sense, contradictorily, counters hegemonic capitalist ideology. All these arguments about ideologies, identities and temporality resonate with some arguments in this article.
About both games, finally, there is the important work of Esther Wright (2021), who argues that these games try to be “authentic” while relying on Eurocentric and colonialist ideologies of progress, civilization and white supremacy. This is something I agree with overall, but I also understand the necessity of differentiating the meanings and representations of RDR and RDR2. So, while Wright is right in her argument, there are nuances as to how this is done in the franchise, which I will further analyze in this article. There is also the recent book edited by Wills and Wright (2023) about many interesting topics regarding both games.
Such extensive debate demonstrates how both RDR and RDR2 are an important part of the game studies’ debate today. Most of them tries to understand the ideology in these games, and this article will try to contribute by analyzing them in terms of parody and pastiche representations, arguing that the difference between RDR and RDR2 is significant and have social and historical significance.
Narrative in Red Dead Redemption
In the introduction scene of RDR, the camera centers on a cowboy character who is being escorted by well-dressed men to a departing locomotive. This opening cutscene establishes the type of cinematic language that will be used in the non-interactive narrative sections of the game. Wide-angle shots are more frequently used to give a sense of place and present the game world. Throughout the game, this type of shot is used to present new locations.
This opening cutscene presents dialogue between two pairs of individuals (Mrs. Ditkiss and Mrs. Bush; Jenny and the priest) representing conservative social groups defending the progress of civilization:
Mrs. Ditkiss: Well, I for one am grateful Mrs. Bush, that they are finally bringing civilization to this savage land!
Mrs. Bush: I could not agree with you more, my dear. My daddy settled this land and I know he'll be looking down on us, pleased at how we helped the natives.
Mrs. Ditkiss: Yes they've lost their land, but they've gained access to Heaven.
Jenny: But Father, do you mean unless an innocent receives communion, they're destined to go to Hell? That hardly seems fair.
Father: What I mean to say, Jenny, is that there is a great deal of difference between an innocent and a savage.
Jenny: I never thought of it that way.
Mrs. Ditkiss: Yes they live like animals. But they're happier now. Aren’t they?
Jenny: Not only do people now have motorcars, father, but I heard pretty soon we will be able to fly.
Father: No, only angels can fly, Jenny.
Jenny: No, no, apparently people can fly. Didn't you hear? Out in Kansas a man even got a car to fly.
Father: I hardly think so, Jenny.
Mrs. Bush: Apparently, Mr. Johns wants to run for governor, which is why he's so concerned with cleaning up the state.
Mrs. Ditkiss: Nate Johns?
Mrs. Bush: Yes.
Lady: His family is nothing but hillbilly trash that came here after the war. I don't want to be judgmental, but this state should not be ruled by such a disgusting family. A family without class.
Mrs. Bush: Apparently the Johns family have made a lot of money, and he has a lot of friends in politics.
Mrs. Ditkiss: Mrs. Bush, money isn't everything. There are many things that money cannot buy.
Mrs. Bush: It seems that money can buy voters, though.
Father: What you must remember, my dear, is that we have been brought here to spread the word. And the word and civilization, they are the same thing. They are the gifts. It is the opportunity we have, the chance to live among people who are decent and who do not kill each other, and who let you worship in peace.
Jenny: It's so confusing, Father. Sometimes, I find it impossible to make the distinction between a loving act and a hateful one. I mean, they often seem to be the same thing.
Father: Yes, Jenny, it is confusing, but you only have to ask me if you need help.
Jenny: Indeed.
Mrs. Ditkiss: Well, here we are, Mrs. Bush. Armadillo.
Right from its opening, this conversation sets the tone for RDR’s narrative. The dialogue, which is not meant to be naturalistic satirizes the Myth of the Frontier as a civilizational process: terms and phrases like “savage land,” “helped the natives,” “yes, they live like animals. But they're happier now” contrasts with today’s discourse about the Native Americans, on how they are victims of conquest and colonization. All the conversation about civilization intends to shock and make the modern audience uncomfortable, or made to laugh.
The game begins with a chapter entitled “Exodus in America.” This title has a double meaning when read in relation to the images that follow. The first meaning is literal: the protagonist, John Marston, is taking a train headed West together with several other people. The second meaning is a parody of the Biblical lexicon, which will be revisited in various episode names throughout the narrative. The parody thus satirizes one of the central Puritan values of the founding myths of the United States. John Marston’s objective is to hunt down the former members of his ex-gang led by Dutch van der Linde. He fails at first, and ends up working on a farm to make a living. Players partake in several quests running errands or doing labor on the farm run by Bonnie and Drew MacFarlane. The MacFarlanes advise Marston to be wary the Federal Government: “I mean, alright, Williamson is a menace and men like him are the plague, but isn't a government agent a worse menace? In all that symbolizes, I mean.”
After meeting with the local law force, and completing several missions on their behalf, the town marshal recognizes Marston's dedication but warns that he will need help. Across missions like these, the player encounters and assists three different -- and caricatured -- individuals. The first is Nigel West Dickens, a charlatan "quack doctor" who needs help getting back into the business of tricking people with his "magic elixirs." The second is Seth Briars, a grave robber obsessed with dissecting bodies in order to find a treasure map stolen by his former partner. The third is the "Irish," a shady gun for hire who promises the protagonist an automatic machine gun in exchange for help with his dubious business. This trio of characters points to the parodic sarcasm that RDR builds around the diversity of characters and stereotypes present in movies about the Old West. Instead of a doctor, a quack doctor. Instead of a treasure hunter, a grave robber. Instead of upstanding citizens that hold arms for their property protection, someone that deals in shady business and machine guns.
Eventually, Marston hunts down his fellow former gang member Bill Williamson and moves away from the MacFarland farm to continue hunting the rest of Dutch’s gang.
In the second act, John Marston ends up in a parody of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a conflict between common people that take up arms against an oppressive dictatorship. Marston participates in both sides of the conflict, since his goal is not political, but is rather to capture his fellow former gang member Javier Esquella. Over a series of missions, Marston ultimately sides with revolutionaries, almost by accident, since his objectives align with theirs. The first mission of this second act leads the player to the Mexican dictator's residence, the local Porfirio Diaz named "Colonel Allende." At the same time, Allende is indeed represented as a recognizable archetype: a paternalistic "tropical dictator." In the first mission there, the player receives a quest from Lieutenant Vicente de Santa ironically called "Civilization at any price," the objective of which is to combat the rebels of the government.
In the side of the rebels, there is Luisa, a “common” woman representing the Mexican people, and Abraham Reyes, the romantic revolutionary, full of contradictions, which are made clear to both Marston and the player. For example, the following dialogue demonstrate his personality very well:
Abraham Reyes: How do you know my young lover, Laura?
John Marston: It's Luisa. I saved her life awhile not so long back.
Abraham Reyes: I will not forget this, compadre. You will be rewarded. Money, women. Luisa, if you want her.
Eventually, the dictator Allende falls and a young revolutionary named Abraham Reyes rises to replace him. The narrative journey in Mexico ends with the implication that Reyes will become the future dictator, replacing Allende. Thus, dictators and revolutionary leaders are put in the same key as paternalistic individuals who use ideas to rise to power and manipulate ignorant people, as if the difference between dictators and revolutionaries were interchangeable -- the only difference being a matter of who happens to be in power at any given moment. Perhaps, in the producers' social imaginary, the figure who embodies this role par excellence is Fidel Castro, still alive at the time of RDR. Thus, in Mexico, the satire shifts its focus and begins to question other ideologies. Despite their will, the player enters and intervenes in the conflict, resolving it. Imperialist and interventionist thinking persists throughout these scenes, continues onward as a foundational ideology throughout the game.
The third act represents the pinnacle of progress achieved in the frontier, reinforcing the "end of the Old West" theme that runs through the game’s story. The narrative of this act is driven by two government agents, Ross and Archer, who have discovered an alliance between Marston’s former criminal boss, Dutch van der Linde, and a group of Indigenous resisters in the region. Ross promises to reunite Marston with his family in exchange for his help. John Marston's situation here is like that of 1930s noir film protagonists, where despite his individual strengths, he is nonetheless subjected to the forces of a grand conspiracy.
The agents introduce Harold MacDougal, an anthropologist from Yale. Harold is a caricatured representation of a 19th or early 20th century ethnographer: addicted to cocaine, he openly discusses the sciences and practices of understanding the biology of peoples, particularly "savages." His first question to Marston is about his "Norse stock" ancestry, a type of noble white man with a wild spirit. His propositions about civilization and savagery are intentionally parodic and ridiculous, meant to provoke humor and discredit his character. The opposition between his academic knowledge and the oppression of natives is also made very clear in the dialogues that oppose the harsh reality of his Indigenous friend, Nastas, with his complacent and unrealistic view. One such example of dialogue is:
Harold MacDougal: Would you, like to partake of a syringe of cocaine? I've quite enough for two.
John Marston: Not right this minute, no.
Harold MacDougal: It's a remarkable drug. It entirely restores the ego. Takes one back to a primal state. Helps my thinking enormously. Oh, Nastas! Come on. Come in, sir. Would you like to take off your slippers? Or skin a rabbit? I know we cannot see the stars, but still my heart is pure, and we meet as equals! These savages must be spoken to simply in metaphors.
The dialogue makes out Harold as a caricature of late 19th century, early 20th century intellectuals. This can be seen in his extreme usage of cocaine, or his use of terms like “primal state,” along with how he claims that “savages” must be spoken to in metaphors.
The government agents Ross and Archer are manipulators, and embody deep hypocrisies of civilization. They represent the loudest voices against utopian alternatives to American civilization like Dutch’s gang. Indeed, they are the people who put up Marston to hunt down Dutch’s former gang; coercing him to do so by abducting his wife and son. In what I consider to be the most expressive dialogue of the game (along with the introduction), Agent Ross says the following to Marston:
Agent Ross: You like Dutch. He's a charming fellow. He makes sense. He's like one of those nature writers from back East. Only he gets things a tiny little step too far. Rather than just loving the flowers and the animals and the harmony, between man and beast, he shoots people in the head for money. And disagreeing with him.
Agent Archer: He's a goddamn killer.
Agent Ross: Now, I'm not a great intellect, but the metaphysical leap from admiring the flower to shooting a man in the head because he doesn't like the flower, is a leap too far. So, I know it's easy. You see we, me and Archer, we're the bad guys. We enforce the rules. Now, while the rules may not be perfect, they're really not so bad.
Agent Archer: Exactly, what's the alternative?
Agent Ross: Yeah, see I'll tell you what the alternative is. It's not complicated. It's about one man and his gun versus another man. Sure, civilization may be dull, but the alternative, Mr. Marston, is hell.
John Marston: And, the way you enforce this civilization, this freedom for men to like or not like flowers or whatever in God's name you were just talking about, is to kidnap a man's wife and son?
Agent Ross: Well, I know there's contradictions. I'm not going to lie to you. As I said, I'm not a great intellect.
Ross compares Dutch's rebellion and positions himself against the "metaphysical leap" of going from an "Eastern writer" (harmless, idealistic) to armed guerrilla action. Again, there is a position against utopian, revolutionary or idealistic ideologies. As Abraham Reyes was a false revolutionary, Dutch is also a false idealist. This is shown not only by Ross’ dialogue, but by the narrative itself: Dutch is a mad man. Ross defends civilization, but at the end, his betrayal demonstrates that he is also a violent man with his own ideologies.
By the end of the game, Marston kills Dutch and comes back to his family, where, in the epilogue, he lives in a utopian American Dream of his own creation: his farm. But, Agent Ross, who promised to return Marston to his family, ultimately betrays him, and sends troops to execute Marston. In a desperate moment, players live out an interactive execution scene where they can try helplessly to fight back before inevitably failing. In the last part of the epilogue, John Marston lies dead, and the credits roll as the game comes to an end. After the credits, players take control of Marston’s son Jack several years after Marston’s death. Playing as Jack, they can avenge his father’s execution by killing Ross. In conclusion, as a particular narrative construction, the game satirizes the hypocrisy and lies of different ideologies, like the revolutionary, the idealistic and the civilizing one, which hide and justify shady interests and power struggles and the use of violence. In fact, in all the satire, the only violence not seen as proper ideology, is that of the common man, like the MacFarlanes and local law force, that use violence to defend their own lives and property against menaces like animals and outlaws.
Narrative in Red Dead Redemption II: Pastiche and Multiculturalism
In an interview about Red Dead Redemption II, Dan Houser demonstrates how the Myth of the Frontier continues to be present and shaped the design team’s understanding of the 19th century American West: " we wanted to illuminate, in a way that was interesting for a contemporary player, the late nineteenth century as this period of flux. This conflict between society and savagery, between civilization and industry, and the American wilderness" (Houser as quoted in White, 2018). All these elements are but a confirmation of the main tropes in the Myth of the Frontier. RDR2 presents a critique of the West that not come from a cynical, satiric or parodic perspective like the first game’s critique does. Instead, RDR2 offers an updated pastiche of what Slotkin (1992) calls the “cult of the outlaw,” as depicted in movies like Jesse James (Henry King, 1939): a progressive, left-wing interpretation of Frederick Jackson Turner frontier thesis, where the outlaws represent the common people and are oppressed by the forces of law and civilization.
RDR2 starts off with a tragic tone, which marks a significant change compared to the first game. The game’s first line of introduction makes this change in tone clear: "By 1899, the age of outlaws and gunslingers was at an end. America was becoming a land of laws… Even the west had mostly been tamed. A few gangs still roamed but they were being hunted down and destroyed." Thus, RDR2 begins not with parody, but pastiche: it imitates older narratives, in a serious way.
Through pastiche, RDR2 tries to imitate the experience of the perceived American West: it’s a representation that follows Western tropes and reification. The game’s immersive and interactive qualities combine with its characters and setting to become fundamentally distinct than the first RDR. The more serious tone of the narrative puts the player in a space in which interactions are more detailed and elaborate, producing a sense of verisimilitude with what is happening around them. For example, as Vanderhoef and Payne (2022) argues, RDR2 is “slower”: the animation takes time to show details of what’s happening, for example, the skinning of an animal takes time and shows the whole process of doing it. But also, the player has to take care to not lead the horse into a tree. Pointing a gun to someone, even when it’s not intended, will have a reaction, and so on. This approach to the reconstitution of the virtual space and immersion in the digital past setting has consequences for the game's narrative structure. The narrative of RDR2 is much closer to bourgeois melodrama and psychological romance, and to pastiche as an art of imitation of old tropes and stories, than it is to the satirical and allegorical view of the Frontier Myth as seen in RDR.
One of the key differences between John Marston's individual journey in RDR and Arthur Morgan's in RDR2 is the presence of Dutch's gang. This group is formed of people who all occupy marginal perspectives in society. In a sense, the van der Linde gang establishes itself as a multicultural family, representative of a microcosm of the United States. Within the group, there is a predominance of white, mostly male characters, but there are also black, European immigrant and Latino characters. The relationships with the various members of the gang become an integral issue for constructing meaning within the gaming experience
One of the most interesting and important characters in the narrative is Charles, the son of a black father and an Indigenous mother. The multicultural team is presented as a pastiche continuation of significant films from the crisis of the Frontier Myth, such as Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), but above all in a tone of diverse superhero composition, as in Magnificent Seven (2016). The demarcation is not race or gender, but individual morality.
Arthur Morgan: So… what happened to your tribe?
Charles Smith: I don’t even know if I have one… least not that I can remember. My father was a colored man. They told me he lived with our people for a while, a number of free men did, but… when we were forced to move from our lands, the three of us fled. I was too young to really remember much. All life I’ve been on the run. A couple years later, some soldiers captured my mother, took her somewhere. We never saw her again. We drifted around… He was a very sad man and the drink had a mean hold on him. Around thirteen… I just took off on my own.
Such multicultural representation is discussed in an interview with the developers:
All our games, as far I can remember, have featured multiracial, diverse casts, like the worlds they are depicting,” Unsworth said. “I don’t think we approached ‘RDR2’ remotely differently in that regard. However, since John had spoken at length in the last game about how, for all his flaws, Dutch was equitable in his approach to the gang, we already had this precedent and opportunity to create a diverse and multifaceted group of characters within the gang. (Crecente, 2018)
Multiculturalism is expressed as an association of “individuals-synthesis” of various social groups and ethnicities within the van der Linde gang. In this manner, multiculturalism reinforces epistemological individualism, while simultaneously presenting the gang as a political microcosm of the US. It is as if all the inherent contradictions of socio-historical collectives and individuals could be synthesized into a liberal utopia.
From the “crisis of the myth" onward (Slotkin, 1992), what can be observed in representations of the American West is a shift from narratives that celebrated the Myth of the Frontier and the ideology of progress, which shaped a particular idea of the American nation, to narratives that question this identity and instead advocate for multiculturalism. These newer narratives aim to empower marginalized sectors of society presenting them as the new bearers of the cowboy spirit. In this context, it is worth highlighting that the game’s producers proposed to emphasize multiculturalism in the Crecente interview quoted above. They chose to do so in the midst of intense cultural disputes in society and popular online discourses.
However, I tend to agree with Žižek (1997), for whom the new ideology of global capitalism at the end of the 20th century is multiculturalism. He interprets multiculturalism through Herbert Marcuse as a "repressive tolerance," wherein identity alterity lacks substance and contradictions. This alterity is only valued to the extent that it is profitable for the Culture Industry (as defined by Adorno and Horkheimer, 1985) and does not threaten the structures of power and domination over the Other -- in this case, social minorities. The concept of Culture Industry here is understood as the side of late capitalism in which culture is made to be a fetichized commodity.
The gang’s multicultural perspective occurs thematically together with the issue of Native Americans. For this reason, it is essential to carefully reflect on the representations that the game makes about the theme. While Wright (2021) is critical of Indigenous representation in both RDR games, she does not differentiate between the two games. It is worth noting that the allegorical representation of Native Americans in RDR2 is more complex than most other games with Indigenous characters. In RDR2, Native Americans are represented as a collective full of internal conflicts and contradictions, while also being victims of disrespect and institutional capitalist violence from US settlers. The solutions to the land problem are also represented as multiple and in debate, as demonstrated by the plot arcs of characters like Rain Falls (who wants peace and dialogue to solve the conflict) and Eagle Flies (who understands that violent conflict is a necessity). These different takes are demonstrated in different missions: for example, Arthur accompanies Eagle Flies to steal some documents, and the later explodes an oil well. Nevertheless, these Indigenous representations fall into common stereotypes of Indigenous agency by depicting the tribe as manipulable and dependent on external agents.
After a failed bank robbery attempt, when the groups try to escape the US during the fifth chapter, they end up briefly marooned on the fictional tropical island of Guarma. Here, the gang joins the rebels to help them make their way back to the mainland. This narrative segment repeats a trope the first RDR depicted in the chapter set in Mexico, where Marston joined the fight against a tropical dictator. It is notable how chapter five brings no new elements to the overall narrative and simply repeats the common trope of an American elite soldier intervening in a Latin American setting. This narrative choice demonstrates the persistence of this representation in the social imaginary and memory tropes that figure the Myth of the Frontier within the Culture Industry. Moreover, there is something noteworthy in Rockstar’s choice to dedicate an entire narrative segment and a complex three-dimensional environment. (to the fictional island of Guarma, -- which is an area that is only explorable during this brief period of the story., unlike other game spaces).
When Arthur is marooned on Guarma, RDR2 retells an old trope seen throughout the Western genre: an elite American warrior, because of his military superiority, is able to liberate destitute Indigenous locals. I use the terms “soldier” and “warrior” here interchangeably to describe the cowboy protagonists of these games as the symbol of a pastiche: they imitate tropes and ideas without recognizing them. Sanctioned by the state, and by society itself, these characters are fighters who embody certain values of US culture. American imperialism, as a value, is thus subsumed in an apparently harmless representation. This exemplifies what Serrano (2023) argues about Latin American representation in most popular video games: “Video game designers ultimately perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Latin America that are violent, untrue and un-nuanced. They rely on centuries-old stereotypes (exoticism, tropicality, cannibalism, etc.) due to their marketability for Western players.” The apparent contradiction of multiculturalism is evident, as the same game that values the cosmopolitan microcosm sees no problem in reproducing an imperialist trope regarding Latin American countries.
Returning from Guarma, Dutch becomes more and more mad, siding with an explicitly racist, antagonistic member of the gang, Micah Bell. Dutch’s alignment with Bell leads to the gang’s downfall. The game has two endings: an official ending to Arthur’s story, and an extended epilogue where player’s play as John Marston. Arthur dies of tuberculosis, saving John Marston’s family from Dutch during a dramatic escape scene. Afterwards, the playable character shifts perspectives to follow John Marston, where he tries to become a family man and acquires his farm as seen in the first game. In these sections, players mainly see the American Dream portrayed once again, where a homesteader begins his more peaceful life, taking legal loans from the bank, and building his house with his own hands. But ultimately, we see Agent Ross spying on Marston, which leads ominously to the events of the first RDR.
Narrative, space and player agency in RDR1 and RDR2
Gonzalo Frasca (2007) recognized that the ideological essence of games can be grasped not solely through their visual and auditory components, but also through the regulations that define and steer gameplay. Ian Bogost (2007) proposes the concept of procedural rhetoric to understand interactive and “rule-based” representations, not only words and images. Hence, the visual and auditory representation, the structure of rules, and the player's engagement with the game environment all reflect ideological decisions. The historical world depicted in both RDR and RDR2 is a simulation of a mythic past within a game space with its own rules, goals and programmed behaviors. This dynamic creates a tension between narrative and gameplay, shaping the representation of history not just chronologically but also spatially.
Fundamentally, RDR1 has a dialectical contradiction in how it satirizes and criticizes both the Myth of the Frontier and the use of violence in its narrative. While the criticisms are enunciated in its filmic scenes and written dialogues, there is a continuity of these ideological tropes in the construction of space and gameplay. RDR2, however, has less of a cynical narrative towards the narrative tropes of the American West, and thus the design choices that push a sense of verisimilitude construct a thematically coherent, pastiche experience.
The series’ spatial representations -- both of cities and of wilderness -- in portray mythical spaces, inspired by a certain notion of memory about what the American West was like. To some extent, building a digitally explorable world functions much like the design of an amusement park, where spatial elements combine to reenact a mythical past. Unlike other historical games, such as those in the Assassin's Creed series, RDR and RDR2 do not attempt to reproduce a "real" space of the past, but rather create completely new territories based on what consumers imagine the frontier experience to be like.
The conquest of space in the march to the West brings with it a civilizing ideology, which in the Red Dead series can be perceived in how cities are portrayed as peaceful islands of civilization amidst vast wilderness, where violent men and animals run wild. In this sense, despite criticizing civilization, these games reinforce this idea, making civilized spaces the only safe ones. In the "wild" world, the player can be attacked at any time by NPCs, animals, etc., whereas in any of the cities, only the player can initiate violence. This representation reifies this vision of the Old West by procedurally reproducing old understandings of 19th century America.
Bailes' (2018) analyses the Grand Theft Auto series, which operates on some of the same principles both RDR games do, especially regarding the exploration of space:
For all the cynical satirical commentary, the game would barely be worth playing if not for the enjoyment of its myriad distractions. As a huge sandbox game, it is filled with all manner of easily accessible activities for its characters, including playing golf, tennis or darts, parachute jumping, visiting strip clubs, illegal street racing, or joy riding and high-speed pursuits with police. So, as much as GTAV distances itself from the “earnest” hedonism of SRIV, a good portion of our time in the game will likely be spent on these frivolous pursuits. Second, however, it is not only the consumerist side of the neoliberal demand that is embraced, as the game’s structure in fact recreates a kind of work-leisure cycle. (Bailes, 2018)
Many parallels between GTA, RDR and RDR2 are present here. For example, there are many "accessible" and "frivolous" activities in the RDR games as well, including horseback riding, helping people, board games, etc., all of which contribute to a similar circuit of work and leisure. In this sense, the game itself has a discourse about free time: it must be executed with the efficiency of a machine -- and of the world of work. However, most quests are treated with a military mission-like look with precise orders -- the player is given command to do something, like steal a document or kill a group, and must do it, with the available weapons. The centrality of violent action defines the relationships between the player-character and nature -- as well as between the player-character and other avatars -- all of which end up reinforcing the very discourses that each game’s narrative aims to criticize. Players participate in their missions mostly facing crowds of unnamed and faceless enemies. Such enemies are rendered by the game’s violent mechanics as amorphous Others -- caricatures of alterity meant to be destroyed and dominated. The player’s excellence in weapons of war moves the plot forward; the solution to narrative problems, as a rule, is provided mechanically as aestheticized conflict and justified armed action. There is a dissonance here between the critique of violence and the and some of the basest forms of gameplay.
The tension between the game narrative and the gameplay options reveals many of the ideological choices of the game's producers. These tensions can be analyzed in the terms proposed by Žižek (2008): "the prevailing ideology is that of cynicism; people no longer believe in ideological truth; they do not take ideological propositions seriously." Such cynicism is why both Red Dead games can be productively read as critiques of idealistic “utopias” like that of Dutch’s gang -- this ideology necessarily justifies violence.
RDR and RDR2 present different meanings of player agency -- differences that become clear when comparing both endings. Even though both games’ endings are tragic, in RDR1 the player is given a (futile) agency in an interactive scene to try to fight the hordes of federal agents while Marston is shot down: the treason of Ross confirms the cynical and satiric understanding of the government power.
In contrast, in RDR2, the ending depends on the fact that in the beginning of the game, Arthur contracts tuberculosis by beating a man with the disease, for money extortion. Narratives of the 19th century often punished their characters with tuberculosis for misdeeds, and RDR2 reproduces this trope. The game forces the player to beat this man to advance the story, and thus, in this way, robs the player of their agency. Arthur’s fate, thus, is intrinsically tied to this pastiche that reproduces old notions.
One of the things this article has tried to convey is that analyzing ideology in video games must take in account the relationship between representational narrative and rules of play. In RDR there is a contradiction between the parodic/critical narrative of the West and a host of gameplay devices that reinforce stereotypical notions of the West. In RDR2, the Myth of the Frontier is depicted in the game’s pastiche narrative and gameplay.
Conclusions
Most historical games are pastiche, and try to represent and simulate the past as closely “as it was” -- or at least, the most closely possible to it. This is often because game developers emphasize “realistic” verisimilitude in their representations of history, frequently yielding positivist ways of thinking about the past. Such historical games imply that it is possible to reconstruct the past, not that such representations are always the product of selective authenticity, a product of memory, or of how we, as society, imagine the past.
The GTA and Fallout series are mostly parodies. The Assassin’s Creed and Civilization series are mostly pastiches. Parody makes social commentaries through the deconstruction and satirizing of tropes, thereby transforming the game world’s context. Meanwhile, pastiche takes itself seriously; it imitates what it represents through a sense of verisimilitude. But this does not mean that GTA does not have pastiche (it is a homage to gangster movies) or that Civilization does not have parody (its national leaders are mostly caricatures). As I said at the beginning of this article, most representations swing on a pendulum between pastiche and parody, inclining one way or another.
Red Dead Redemption presents a story that is marked by parody, satire and criticism of the very idea of civilization. In contrast, Red Dead Redemption II takes its premises much more seriously in an immersive experience of a tragic narrative, and through pastiche, imitation and multiculturalism, updates the Frontier Myth and Western genre as a positive possibility: it tries to show it can be read multicultural narrative, not only a colonial one. So far in scholarly discussions, both games are regularly treated as generically identical. There has been an overall change in what feelings are expressed about the Old West in popular culture. In my understanding, the commodified past profits more from a non-critical perspective. If representations are understood as interventions in the political scene of society, the American West is redeemed and updated in RDR2 through multiculturalism. Parody, as a satirized and critical take on the myth, is overcome by a celebration of memory.
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