Abstract

This thesis theorizes new, uncertain formations of genre in contemporary digital video games and cinema as an effective approach to mediating the feeling of life during the environmental and anthropocenic crises of the Anthropocene. Employing Gerald Voorhees’ Genre Trouble method of game studies alongside Selmin Kara’s theoretical framework of anthropocenema, this intervention proposes a means to understanding our anthropocenic anxieties through unique generic forms realized within contemporary digital video games and genre cinema. This thesis therefore asks, how has the Anthropocene imaginary impacted genre in contemporary digital media? And how, in turn, has genre been used to mediate the widespread feeling of living through the Anthropocene as we face the widely-recognized likelihood of eventual human extinction? Simply put, what is the generic form of anthropocenic crises? Establishing the ‘anthropogamic’ as a video game category analogous to anthropocenema, this thesis first examines the productive ecocritical potential of video games’ uncertain generic assemblage through the genre-bending extinction game Death Stranding. This thesis then follows the generic logics of the anthropogamic to examine similarly mutative relationships between digital technology and generic form in anthropocenema through the environmental science fiction/horror film Annihilation. Ultimately, this project posits the genre of crisis as genre in crisis to demonstrate how the Anthropocene has affected contemporary cultural production beyond explicit representations of crisis through uncertain and disorienting digital mutations of familiar generic categories. Additionally, through its interdisciplinary approach, this thesis aims to emphasize the productive scholarship that can occur in intersections between game studies and film studies.