The fact is, Presidents are scary - it's just that most of us haven't often been on the receiving end of the harm they can cause. But Barack Obama's legacy (just to name one) is very different depending on whether you're a financial executive being shielded from the effects of an economic collapse you helped cause or if you're an Afghani villager about to become a "collateral damage of done attacks" statistic. Go back further to see internment camps, forced relocation, open genocide... I'm sure the list of atrocities committed by our current administration will only grow between me typing this and anyone reading it.
Weirdly, if I think of any President in a game that inspires the appropriate sense of unease and dread, it's George Sears, AKA Solidus Snake from Metal Gear Solid 2, swordfight and Doctor Octopus arms not withstanding. A man of secrets and hidden identities, able to mold himself into what he needs to be, and utterly ruthless. This is a (former) President who commands (cyber) ninjas, not one to be abducted by them. And, unlike many characters in the series, he never pops up again, so much of his past and methods are left to the audience's imagination, but the little bit we do get in MGS2 indicates it's a bloody and vicious one.
Solidus's multiple identities suggest another aspect of the Presidential role: its malleability in the public consciousness. It's easy to take for granted how many different ways we think about these figures at any given time: from the sacred vows of office to manifestation of the American Imperialism to the kind befuddled assemblage of quirks we always see on Saturday Night Live. And so the most powerful individual on the planet can also be skirted away as easily as any of Carmen Sandiego's various acquisitions. It's also how we can underestimate the damage one can do to the world, to any of us. They have to be avatars, of course, elections wouldn't be possible if we weren't able to distill likelihoods and proclivities into comprehensible forms - I've talked before about how easily nestles into a "hero" archetype. Which brings us back to games. A President who's kidnapped represents the stability of our everyday, the safety of the status quo whose absence implies unending and incomprehensible chaos. When a game asks us to rescue them, they're transferring that role to the player. We are asked to be Bad Enough Dudes to maintain order, if not stasis. Not that we're thinking about internationally-enforced cultural hegemony as we bash our way through armies of ninjas, we just to keep things from falling apart. With the President absent, we are the only thing keeping the world from descending into chaos.
All of that makes it hard to contextualize a President who embodies chaos, who actively creates it. The American Mascot's Scooby-Doo mask, which had always been hiding something, is pulled off to reveal a howling void. No matter how things shake out, I don't think we'll be seeing many more Presidential Rescue games in the future... nor do I do think many of us will even want to. The truth is, and always was, that the real Bad Dudes are those trying to rescue us (or at least, those of us who aren't ninjas) from the President.
- B
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