Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city
Authors
Bos, DanielAffiliation
University of ChesterPublication Date
2020-07-16
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Popular culture – in this case military-themed videogames – has been argued to mould and shape popular understandings of the geopolitics of the ‘war on terror’. To date, most attention has been focused on the geopolitical representations of a ‘final’ popular cultural text or object. Less attention has been paid to how popular understandings of geopolitics and military violence have been constructed and commodified prior to, and ‘beyond the screen’. Empirically, the paper examines the marketing campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Through the use of experiential marketing, I show how the game’s launch night incorporated spectacular displays, performances and consumer interactions to sell the pleasures of virtual war by drawing on geopolitical fears of terrorism and military violence within major Western cities. Firstly, I demonstrate how marketing engaged with and transformed urban spaces extending the popular geopolitics of virtual war. Secondly, the paper reveals how experiential marketing targeted and encouraged connections with and between attendees’ bodies. Thirdly, I demonstrate how such events promote geopolitical encounters which extend beyond the temporal and the spatial confines of the marketing event itself. Ultimately, the paper reveals how urban fears surrounding the global ‘war on terror’ were employed to sell the pleasures and geopolitics of virtual war.Citation
Bos, D. (2020). Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(1), 94-113. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420939973Publisher
SAGE PublicationsAdditional Links
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2399654420939973Type
ArticleDescription
Bos, D. (2020). Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(1), 94-113. Copyright © 2020 (Copyright Holder). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.ISSN
2399-6544EISSN
2399-6552ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/2399654420939973
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