The Adventurous Archaeologist and the Discovery of the Hellenistic Statue: An Archaeogaming Excavation of the Japanese Video Game Site La Mulana

Abstract

Taking the 2012 Japanese video game La Mulana as a case study, this thesis investigates the contemporary reception the popular culture idea of 1.) an adventuring archaeologist who finds 2.) an artifact in a moment of 3.) discovery. I work within the paradigm of contemporary reception theory, as well as performance studies as a means to better understand and parse the aesthetic experience of video games as a medium. Further, I employ the concept of kitsch, looking at how ideas of what is authentic and what is reproduction inform how we are receiving the ancient world within pop culture. I appeal to the game studies theory of procedural rhetoric, arguing that games persuasively—if fictionally—convey the ancient world into our contemporary moment. Ultimately, I argue that this game presents us with an example of playable kitsch, a reproduction of an original reality constructed via performance and play.