Fighting fire with fire: Disco Elysium, hard-boiled detective noir, and procedural (in)justice
Disco Elysium is a video game set in a dark future dystopian universe. The protagonist is a hard-boiled detective who wakes up (when the game begins) with amnesia during a murder investigation. While the plot of the game surrounds a “whodunit” mystery, much of the game’s intrigue and peril are roote...
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
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2024
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| In: |
Video games, crime and control
Year: 2024, Pages: 117-134 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | Disco Elysium is a video game set in a dark future dystopian universe. The protagonist is a hard-boiled detective who wakes up (when the game begins) with amnesia during a murder investigation. While the plot of the game surrounds a “whodunit” mystery, much of the game’s intrigue and peril are rooted in moral dilemmas, self-doubt, and, ultimately, the contradictions of conducting police work in a broken society with a traumatized detective. Does detective fiction derive the archetype of the hard-boiled detective? Or does real-life policing derive the clichés of the hard-boiled detective? In other words, does life reflect art or does art reflect life? Through cultural criminology, this chapter uses latent content analysis of hard-boiled detective tropes and reflects on how self-doubt and police work in Disco Elysium provide a rich venue for conceptualizing contradictions of doing justice in the real world. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 133-134 |
| ISBN: | 9781032388090 |
