Coming back for a second from school killing me because people are truly maddening. If you play RDR (1 or 2!) and you claim the games and the messaging isn’t political…..you have the lowest level of media literacy that can be achieved by a human.
I’ve been increasingly seeing “he’s a cowboy! Not a politician!” In regards to people talking about the politics of the game and how they apply today. First, Arthur is not a cowboy. He is an outlaw. We tend to use the words interchangeably (I also do this! It’s fun!) especially because of the aesthetics and in the game it is used in a sarcastic manner a few times. But, it is important to differentiate especially when talking about the politics of RDR.
Even if he was a cowboy though, he wouldn’t have been called as such widely back then. Cowboy was a derogatory term, combining the words cow and boy to dehumanize freed Black men that were working cattle on their own or other ranches. Being a cowboy or rather for a white man a cowhand was also inherently political because it highlighted the inaccessibility to other, less backbreaking, more comfortable jobs for poor men and Black men.
Outlaws arose post-Civil War, while some were angry at the rebuilding on both sides. Others, like the VDL gang, were angry at exploitation and worked as almost “Robin Hood” figures to get back at large corporations and banks as retribution for their exploitation. Some were so loved that towns protected them. They also were often minorities (gay men, women, Black men, natives, immigrants) because the rigid structures of certain parts of society were harder to apply to the more wild parts of the country. All of it came from one thing: disagreement with oppressive or overly harsh government systems.
Arthur loved the West. You know what the West loved? Progress! In the West, women were allowed to vote in some states as early as the 1870s. Rigid structures didn’t apply because no one had time to, and more importantly, no one really cared. The Pinkertons, one of the main antagonists, were a for-hire government association. Known for busting unions and doing bidding for billionaires. They were picked because it highlights the government protecting the interests of the elite. They fight the army to show the corruption within it in regards to the natives and the people. John himself is killed after doing the government’s bidding!
The games and politics, their political messaging, you cannot separate. They go hand in hand with the franchise as much as the message of redemption does. People take the one time in the game Arthur says he doesn’t vote or engage in politics as law and not the overarching message of the game and what Sean says to him, which is that having no politics is politics.
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