Philosophical and Archetypal Imagery of the Visuals in the Game Series “Assassin's Creed”

Abstract

The article explores an array of philosophical connotations, metaphors and mythologems found in the promo content (trailers) of the Assassin’s Creed game franchise as a specific form of visualized text and a mode of narration realizing the concept of mythmaking in audio-visualized media space in the era of information revolution.
Turning the spotlight on defining the role of ad material, the author focuses on the fact that the game franchise’s trailer and teaser as a specific cinematic tool (as demonstrated in the article) have an extensive imagery bearing the “philosophy” of the project, which gives the game action meaning and point. While retaining its promotional function, a cinematic trailer is not only an independent production, but also a carrier of various and numerous archetypal constructions that form mass consciousness (which now, rejecting the classical rationalistic principles, once again tends towards mythmaking). This, in turn, gives rise to “the new mythology” actively drawing on “classical plots and imagery”, thus suggesting continuity in the spiritual evolution of human civilization.
Being a distillation of the basic features of a certain area of the mass culture information space, the trailer can be interpreted as a techno-artistic hybrid phenomenon, indicative of the transformation of media industry in terms of the historical discourse. Thus it proves the modification of a complex of stereotypical mental constructions of the social organization, which in the globalized world grows into an international category.
The author argues that this phenomenon manifests itself in a surge of mythmaking within the modern multicultural tradition, which in turn leads to the formation of a new cultural paradigm based on the concept of providentialism, which in its turn acts as a tool for analyzing the historical and cultural process, based on the instrumentalization of the previous experience, mutating in the global discourse