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The essay examines genre discourses in the action
game Max Payne (2001). It draws attention to
notions of space, time, and bodies by positioning
the game in relation to Hollywood action movies.
This entails an examination of the technological
specifity of the cinematic and game apparatus
respectively. Aesthetic and narrative properties of
the action genre are then being related to a
parallel construction prevailing in the complex
aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful, a
theory which foregrounds gendered power relations.
I argue that gaming technologies mediate presence
in historically and culturally specific ways,
allowing male users to experience their subject
function in distinct ways. Therefore, an
intertextual examination of the computer gaze
allows a reappraisal of computer-generated
environments in terms of cultural constructions of
identity. [Language: German]
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