The Silver Fox of Video Games

Questions of Aging and Masculinity in CD Projekt’s The Witcher Series

Abstract

New media has become one of the lenses through which we perceive and consume our lived social realities. Video games, as part of the new media (r)evolution, offer perspectives on our socio-cultural realities by engaging us with their (at times fantastical) worlds, not far removed from our own. Herein, games are a valuable addition to further an understanding of how bodies are performed on screen and what this implies for socio-culturally informed imageries of peoples off-screen. This paper specifically looks at the depiction and performance of age and gender as societal categories in CD Projekt’s The Witcher video game series (2007-2021), and discusses their implication for characters inside the games as well as players outside. While focusing on The Witcher series’ protagonist Geralt of Rivia, interlacing issues of heteronormativity, able-bodiedness, (hyper)masculinity, and the progress of successful male aging will be analyzed. Here, the medium of video games plays a pivotal role in comprehending the series’ presentation of heteronormative male aging as both a dynamic performative act between character and player, and an act of spectatorship with Geralt’s aging male body as a body to be consumed. Moreover, as the games turn to present their hero as an ambiguous figure, fluctuating between rogue “silver fox” and socially empowered patriarch, this paper will also consider what happens to the (fictional, digital) aging male body if he is actualized as a successfully aging body. Finally, this paper draws upon discourses in aging studies, gender studies, as well as disability studies, and aims to broaden the discussion on aging male bodies in new media onto video games.