The Man Within: Blackness and Simulation in Injustice: Gods Among Us
Peter Spearman
PETER SPEARMAN is a PhD at Tufts University in Medford, MA. In 2015 he received his BA in English and Theatre Performance from the College of Charleston. While in Charleston he worked as an actor and director for the College of Charleston, Spoleto Festival, and Village Rep. at Wolfe Street Playhouse. He was also a founding member and director of the arts management group, Pop-Up Charleston. His most recent conference presentation at the International Conference on Romanticism was entitled "Always Becoming Never Being: The Monsterless Gothic in Joanna Baillie's Count Basil." He received his MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts in Spring 2018. His MA thesis explores depictions of blackness in superhero film, television, and video game adaptations. At Tufts, Peter served as assistant director for the staged reading and workshop of Jamhil Khoury's Obstacle Course, and he served as director for the 2018 production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins. His scholarly interests include architecture as performance, British Romantic theatre, comics, film, television, and video games.
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Abstract
In this essay I dissect the physical design, narrative, and in-game mechanics of Cyborg, a black superhero within the superhero fighting game, Injustice: Gods Among Us. Cyborg’s overall aesthetic is caught between the history of black experience in the United States and an Afrofuturist vision for what could be. Experiencing the world of the game with him as their avatar provides players with a potential opportunity to learn more about and empathize with the double-ness that permeates Cyborg’s worldview.
I extend Alison Landsberg’s theory of prosthetic memory past its original focus of film to video games. This distinction highlights the unique relationship between performance and memory that operate within video games as a medium. In particular, I explore the viability of video games to create a prosthetic experience that addresses race. I examine Cyborg’s overall design in relation to other not-quite-human performances of the African American body, like Jim Crow. Performance holds open a space for Cyborg to resist many of the pitfalls that accompany attempts to depict black experience. The space held open in Injustice: Gods Among Us results from the interactivity of video games— namely, the extension of the player’s body through the avatar.
In this essay I dissect the physical design, narrative, and in-game mechanics of Cyborg, a black superhero within the superhero fighting game, Injustice: Gods Among Us. Cyborg’s overall aesthetic is caught between the history of black experience in the United States and an Afrofuturist vision for what could be. Experiencing the world of the game with him as their avatar provides players with a potential opportunity to learn more about and empathize with the double-ness that permeates Cyborg’s worldview.
I extend Alison Landsberg’s theory of prosthetic memory past its original focus of film to video games. This distinction highlights the unique relationship between performance and memory that operate within video games as a medium. In particular, I explore the viability of video games to create a prosthetic experience that addresses race. I examine Cyborg’s overall design in relation to other not-quite-human performances of the African American body, like Jim Crow. Performance holds open a space for Cyborg to resist many of the pitfalls that accompany attempts to depict black experience. The space held open in Injustice: Gods Among Us results from the interactivity of video games— namely, the extension of the player’s body through the avatar.
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