#terministic screen

Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption video game exemplifies a complex narrative that combines a video game’s gameplay, story elements, and Western genre tropes. The narrative constructs a masculinity in opposition to social forces not only constructed in the video game world but also found in the physical world. This analysis uses transportation theory in combination with interactivity and identification processes to interpret the effects of the game’s message of masculinity. Specifically, the analysis examines the terministic screen used by the game’s main character. The terministic screen justifies morally questionable actions for the main character and for the player. The persuasiveness of the message is then considered in relationship to the unique characteristics of the video game medium that have the potential to initiate identification and identity management. By using Red Dead Redemption as a case study, explanations as to how and why a game’s narrative and message may affect a player’s value system are posited.

Burke defines the phrase as “that state of affairs whereby one’s very abilities can function as blindnesses”.

- Kenneth Burk, Permanence and Change (1935) p.7; in: Erin Wais, Trained Incapacity: Thorstein Veblen and Kenneth Burke (2005), KB Journal 2(1)

Burke’s use of trained incapacity not only expands Veblen’s use of that term, but provides a fecund concept that probably contributed to Burke’s thinking about orientation, perspective by incongruity, terministic screens, and other concepts that make up Burke’s theory of the symbol-using animal.