The Call of Duty games
The Call of Duty franchise is the only thing more American than answering the IRL call of duty and joining the Army at your high school grad fair after they largely targeted marginalized groups for recruitment. Though there’s slightly more nuance in more recent iterations of the guns and war franchise, there’s a reason the Marines hosted a Call of Duty: Warzone tournament a few years ago—these games present the military industrial complex as big and bold and full of personality, and definitely not a problem.
How could you question the fictionalized (though not off-base) tactics of Call of Duty’s armed forces and their international allies when one of the characters plotting secret assassinations wears a cute little bucket hat and smokes cigars? Why worry if it’s a good idea to have an in-game killstreak that features a chemical substance banned from use against civilians because it can melt people’s skin off when you can buy a skin that makes you look like Snoop Dogg?
There’s nothing more American than the bizarre juxtaposition of Call of Duty’s gritty campaigns and its ridiculously absurd multiplayer experience. While it can sometimes force you to question the ramifications of large-scale war, Call of Duty mostly wants you to turn your brain off and blow shit up. Hoo-rah.—Alyssa Mercante
