Red Dead Redemption 2 was released seven years ago this month and is still Rockstar’s most successful satire. Sure, Rockstar hasn’t done anything novel since 2018, so it’s not like that Red Dead has some novel competition. But with Grand Theft Auto 6 just over the horizon, I remember how good it is Red Dead 2 deals with criticism of American society. He has something to say about the emptiness of American ideals and how threatening they can be in the hands of the wrong people, and he’s not afraid to say it.
It’s true that the GTA series revolves around similar ideas, but it never ends up implementing them. Yes, Franklin is aware of the trajectory of his current life GTA5 it is unsustainable and faces the challenges of making something of itself under capitalism. Yet the struggle against poverty and the emptiness of the American way of life have been the subject of cinema and literature for over a century. The way GTA deals with them isn’t anything novel or particularly profound, and what it says tends to get lost in a crime drama that has more meaning anyway.
Technically, stuff Red Dead 2 he says they’re not that creative either, but Rockstar built the entire game around them instead of making it a lightly comic afterthought. People moved west (v Red Dead and real life) in hopes of finding a land of opportunity. The American government and bad faith actors spent decades in the 19th century convincing people that they could recreate America as it should be if they moved west. It was a chance to escape the corruption of the cities and the wealthy classes and to unleash pure democracy on the land cultivated by hard-working (white) landowners. This didn’t happen.
What do they find instead (in real life and in Red Dead) is a life that is neither good nor bad, neither one nor the other. They find a life that is almost the same as the one they (or their families) left behind. Some of Red Dead 2 The main character Arthur Morgan’s companions are shitty people, some of them not. Arthur sometimes does shitty things to get by, and sometimes he’s a pretty decent guy. There’s a lot that can be explored about how well Red Dead 2 portrays moral gray areas, but the point is that everyone here was counting on more than just doing the best they could. They do these things because restrictive, exploitative social and political systems have not given them good choices. Yes, racism and disenfranchisement meant that others had it much worse and we see glimpses of that in the article Red Dead 2too.
The the border is closedand with it a dream of possibilities. The West is becoming “civilized” and still no one has found the promised land. Dutch van der Linde, a champion of individualism, democracy and All Things American, says he can fix it and that his path leads to a different future. It’s just another version of the same ancient patriotic lie, but given the alternative options – penniless agriculture, penniless factory labor – it’s no wonder Arthur and the rest fell under his spell and became his not-so-merry band of outlaws.
Even if Dutch’s gang is a crap community, at least he’s somewhere he belongs. And hey, you might end up in a better place one day. Meanwhile, you own the prosperous wherever you can and defend yourself – or so you think. The problem that no one addresses until it is far too delayed is that behind Dutch’s clever words and grand promises there is nothing but self-serving selfishness. (And even if they did, what good would it do? They’d just get kicked out.)
To the end Red Dead 2Dutch’s plans came to nothing. Everything is falling apart around you, and all of Arthur’s efforts have been in vain. Tomorrow won’t be brighter. There are, of course, broader reasons why this group and others like it suffer. But the immediate cause, the single thing behind the ruin that is the end of Red Dead 2? They believed the sweet words of a charismatic liar who promised them the American dream. The man who said that idealizing a set of cherished American values would usher in a novel era, that this group had your best interests at heart and that the other group would only bring ruin, that if you just believed and followed, you would have a better life, no matter who had to suffer for it.
If this sounds familiar, that’s the point. Red Dead 2satire is timeless, an impassioned, slow-burn attack on powerful people who operate rhetoric for their own purposes, and a sustained critique of rhetoric itself. Arthur’s Tale is certainly a tragic Western epic. It is also a reminder to consider the truthfulness of what is being promised to you and how it will benefit the person making the promise.
