In ”Romancing the Empire”, Amy Kaplan observes how the American historical adventure romance of the 1890s revolved around a “spectacle of masculinity”. The heroic male adventure protagonist’s ritual performance of violence in these texts serves the dual purpose of metaphorically enacting and encouraging the expansion of the borders of the empire and establishing their masculinity. In this way, Kaplan argues, “swashbuckling romances about knights errant offer a cognitive and libidinal map of US geo-politics during the shift from continental conquest to overseas empire”.

Kaplan’s observations constitutes a vantage point from which it is possible to understand the contemporary and ubiquitous First Person Military Shooter, a genre of games that includes the Medal of Honor, Battlefield, and Call of Duty series. While these military adventure games have been understood as a “crucial space of articulating American empire, providing a vehicle … where U.S. efforts to secure power is normalized and justified”, as argued by Leonard and King, the way in which they make the gamer enact a combined spectacle masculinity and whiteness has not been discussed. This paper explores Call of Duty: World as War (2008) as a space where white masculinity is ritually performed. 

Kaplan, Amy. “Romancing the Empire.” American Literary History 2, no. 4 (1990): 659-690.

King, C. Richard, and David J. Leonard. “Wargames as a New Frontier.” In Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games, edited by N. Huntemann and M Payne, 91-105. London: Routledge, 2010.