[Please note: this essay includes images of violence against women and discusses sexual abuse and suicide.]
ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium (2019) and Rockstar’s L.A. Noire (remastered 2017) may appear to be only distantly related as detective fiction and noir thrillers. Yet I argue that they have much in common because they share many genre conventions, particularly in terms of the femme fatale. Both games follow classic conventions that define the femme fatale as a “bad woman” who deserves her fate. I demonstrate how critics and fans resist these conventions, creating new ways to understand this archetypal character.
(she, her, elle) is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Academic and Technical Writing Program and Media Studies at the University of Victoria. As a rhetorical genre studies scholar, Sara is fascinated by the durability of genres and their influence.
She is currently working on a book-length project that expands on the analysis of sex, gender, and genre in her first book. Focusing on a variety of games including Disco Elysium, Stardew Valley, Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of Us 2, and GTA V and VI, she argues that sex and romance in cinematics and gameplay not only inform a shared experience of sexual norms but also persuade players to value genre conventions in specific ways. Put another way, sex and romance in gameworlds (re)create structures of feeling.