and its Discontents:
American Monomythic Structure
as Historical Simulacrum
C ivilization
The existence o f an area o f free land, its continuous recession, and
the advancement o f American settlement westward explain American
development.
Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
[The Frontier is a sphere] o f ever-broadening opportunity;
capitalistic, free enterprise,... [and] above all else the spread o f progress.
Walter R Webb, 1951
This has nothing to do with the ''progress ” o f technology or with a rational
goal fo r science. It is a project o f political and cultural hegemony, the
fantasy o f a closed mental substance.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, 1983
The packaging for Sid Meier Civilization III tells the perspective buyer to
“Match wits against the greatest leaders of the world in an all-out quest to build the
ultimate empire and rule the world.” And, indeed, that is exactly what a player of
the game, and it’s two predecessors, must do. By estabhshing an empire, expanding
into new territories, building new cities, pursuing technological and cultural
advances, players attempt to create a civihzation that, in the catch phrase of the
first version of the game, “will stand the test of time.” Yet the manner of play, the
options available to the player, the methods of achieving victory, all suggest that
this popular computer simulation game is not presenting a universal narrative of
the advancement of a civilization but is, rather, trafficking in the tropes of 19**'
century notions of geographical, cultural and technological progress. Civilization
presents history to its players as a simulacrum of the idea of history. This very
American historical simulacrum is one of expansion into new frontiers, of achieving
a simulated manifest destiny through cultural and military hegemony, and of
subduing a planet under a single, homogenous society. Thus, Civilization allows
its players to contribute to a very specific version of the American myth of progress,
especially as espoused by Frederick Jackson Turner. This is a myth of the frontier,
of American Exceptionahsm. It is further a myth that is individuahzed to players’
desires, and individualized by those desires, while still reinforcing the very
mythological structure through which it operates.