The British government, in a fit of righteous indignation, has condemned the depiction of North Korea in the latest Call of Duty instalment. According to the Ministry of Culture, the game ‘glorifies’ a rogue state, thereby promoting dangerous propaganda. One must admire the sheer absurdity of this complaint.
We are talking about a franchise that has, in previous iterations, allowed players to mow down legions of virtual Russians, Cubans, and Middle Eastern insurgents. But North Korea? That, apparently, is a line too far.
The modern intellectual is a delicate creature. He frets about representation in a medium whose primary function is to simulate the kinetic thrill of combat. He sees propaganda in every pixel, forgetting that Call of Duty is to geopolitics what a Punch and Judy show is to domestic violence: a grotesque caricature, not a serious commentary.
The game’s narrative is a cartoonish fantasy, and its North Korea is a mustachioed villain straight out of a Cold War fever dream. To treat this as a genuine diplomatic incident is to infantilise both the medium and the audience. Indeed, it reflects a deeper cultural malaise: the tendency to mistake entertainment for reality and to police thought as if it were a border.
In the Victorian era, we worried about penny dreadfuls corrupting the youth. Now we fret about digital simulations of war, as if the average teenager cannot distinguish between a video game and an actual act of aggression. The real danger is not propaganda in a game but the fragility of a society that feels it must protect its citizens from make-believe.
Perhaps we should focus on the actual warmongering of the Kim dynasty rather than its cartoon representation. But that would require a seriousness of purpose our cultural commissars seem to lack.
