{"id":1089,"date":"2024-08-28T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/?p=1089"},"modified":"2025-01-16T20:55:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T20:55:14","slug":"peer-reviewed-article-published-in-european-journal-of-american-culture-a-far-cry-from-greatness-christian-fundamentalism-liberty-porn-and-the-good-people-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/2024\/08\/28\/peer-reviewed-article-published-in-european-journal-of-american-culture-a-far-cry-from-greatness-christian-fundamentalism-liberty-porn-and-the-good-people-of-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Peer-Reviewed Article Published in European Journal of American Culture – \u201cA Far Cry from Greatness: Christian Fundamentalism, Liberty Porn, and the \u2018Good People\u2019 of Trump\u2019s America in Far Cry 5″"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The European Journal of American Culture<\/em> published Dr. Mike Piero’s \u201cA Far Cry from Greatness: Christian Fundamentalism, Liberty Porn, and the \u2018Good People\u2019 of Trump\u2019s America in Far Cry 5<\/em>,\u201d<\/a> in a special issue edited by Dr. Marc A. Ouellette on “Games, American Culture, and the Trump Presidency,” vol. 43, no. 2, 2024, pp. 109-125. Special thanks to Marc Ouellette, John Wills, and Christopher Lloyd for supporting this important piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract:
This article offers a close reading of Ubisoft\u2019s\u00a0Far Cry 5<\/em>\u00a0(FC5<\/em>) (2018) in the context of apocalyptic rhetorics and evangelical Christian nationalism during the Trump Era. Building upon my previous work with video game chronotopes (2021) and S\u00f6ren Schoppmeier\u2019s analysis of the retrotopic, \u2018nostalgia time\u2019 in the game (2022), I analyse the doubled temporality of nostalgia time and apocalyptic time as deployed spatially in the game in combination with the game\u2019s wanton use of \u2018liberty porn\u2019: undisciplined appeals to liberty and freedom through narrative, iconography and cutscene to instil respect and favour for the largely imagined plights of the right-wing inhabitants of the game\u2019s fictional Hope County. Drawing heavily on examples of right-wing violence, attacks on civil rights and Christian fundamentalism during the Trump Era, this article draws concerning parallels between\u00a0FC5<\/em>\u2019s rhetorical achievement and Trump\u2019s embrace of white supremacist narratives \u2013 like \u2018replacement theory\u2019 \u2013 and militia groups, fashioning them as \u2018good people\u2019, a rhetoric similarly deployed throughout the game. Ultimately, this article argues for more corporate responsibility among game studios when it comes to deploying right-wing narratives and a bolder refutation of such reactionary games by game studies scholars, especially when parodic value is limited or largely absent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European Journal of American Culture published Dr. Mike Piero’s \u201cA Far Cry from Greatness: Christian Fundamentalism, Liberty Porn, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[49,29,51,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultural-studies","category-game-studies","category-publication-scholarly","category-technology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mikepiero.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_8627.jpeg?fit=1153%2C1637&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}