WWF Smackdown: Northern Ireland Edition
Sectarian Tribalism is on the rise in Northern Ireland, and the support is coming from younger, disenfranchised people who didn’t live through the civil conflict of the 1970s-90s. WWF Smackdown: Northern Ireland Edition uses custom characters from an old PlayStation game to shine a light on the players, idols and tribes of the divided cultures in Northern Ireland. There is a level of absurdity in the matches, pointing toward the memetic nature of political exchange in 2024 and the objectification of people in power. The machinima video plays through a number of computer-controlled fights, recording the bouts, blow by blow, as if it were a pay-per-view event from a Saturday night back in the 1990s. Viewers can watch their favourite wrestlers like Sinn Fein, RUC Man, The Ra and King Billy fight it out in various Hell in a Cell, Table and Tag Team matches. The use of retro video games as a medium is partly ethnographic: I found it brought communities together as a child, but perhaps it is also highlighting the modern issue of extremism developing in online gamers.WWF Smackdown: Northern Ireland Edition
