The Rapture at the World’s End: Non-optional Choice and Libertarian Idealism in New Media

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Published: May 1, 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.16178
Stephen Joyce
Abstract

Central to the experience of new media is the idea of interactivity, even though this dovetails problematically with both arguments for grassroots agency and neo-liberal economic philosophies alike. This paper examines the 2007 computer game Bioshock in relation to its thematic employment of the ideals of market libertarianism as depicted in the novels of Ayn Rand and its strategic use and withholding of agency at critical moments in the gameplay. It argues that Bioshock not only uses the techniques of traditional narrative forms to address the culturally significant issue of the impossible alliance between traditionalism and libertarianism under a conservative banner but also uses the interactive medium to generate a genuinely new aesthetic experience in which the logic of free choice in the narrative, ideology, and medium are simultaneously brought into juxtaposition. This moment marks a landmark development in digital narrative and opens new possibilities for the art form.

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Author Biography
Stephen Joyce

Stephen Joyce graduated with a PhD in American Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Bielefeld in Germany and has previously published articles on postmodernism, tragedy, cultural hybridity in contact zones and Asian American literature. He currently works as a lecturer in aesthetics and communication at Aarhus University in Denmark. 

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