Luca Miranda, Grand Theft Smiles, 2020

Luca Miranda’s Grand Theft Smiles addresses the pervasive societal pressure to be happy, positive, and successful, drawing connections between real-world expectations and their digital manifestations, as he states in the project accompanying text. Grounded in philosophical inquiries and drawing inspiration from Byung-Chul Han, William Davies, and Slavoj Žižek, the project is meant as an ethnography of virtual worlds sui generis, as Miranda meticulously documents the expressions of hundreds of GTA V’s NPCs. Miranda’s more than two hundred high-resolution screenshots are meant to capture the emotional and psychological states of San Andreas’s inhabitants, drawing a parallel to Robert Frank’s The Americans, which candidly portrayed American life in the 1950s. Frank’s work often depicted individuals in moments of solitude, isolation, or quiet contemplation, highlighting the emotional undercurrents of American society and offering a critique of issues like racial tension, economic disparity, and the pursuit of the American Dream.

Miranda’s approach mirrors Frank’s intent to reveal the unvarnished truth of societal conditions. His visual cataloguing reveals a populace marked by anomie and ennui, challenging the notion of endless possibilities that open-world games promote. Consider the images featured in this webpage: one depicts a character standing in a night-time urban environment with distinctive heavy make-up, including dark eyeshadow and bright blue lipstick, short side-swept hair, a dark choker with red accents, and a revealing top. The second image features a character seated at an outdoor café during the daytime with a stern expression, short, slicked-back hair, white-framed glasses, a simple white tank top with yellow straps, and a beige skirt, with arms crossed suggestively in a posture of closure or protection.

Despite the project’s strengths and stated intentions, one notable critique is its limited exploration of the underlying game mechanics and design choices that produce these NPC representations. GTA V is a complex, multilayered game. The NPCs’ behaviours and appearances are crafted to serve specific gameplay purposes, such as enhancing the realism of the game world or providing context for player interactions. Miranda’s interpretation of NPC expressions as indicative of broader societal malaise might be seen as subjective, as it overlooks the intentional design elements created by the game developers. A deeper analysis of these mechanics could provide a more nuanced understanding of how and why these representations manifest within the game, enriching the critique of societal norms. In other words, these characters are not autonomous beings but are designed to react in ways that enhance the player’s experience. Therefore, attributing real-world emotional states to digital avatars may lead to overgeneralisations or misinterpretations of the game’s intent. This subjectivity bias raises questions about the validity of capturing the predefined facial expressions of virtual characters to diagnose real-world societal conditions. It must be remembered that while Frank’s The Americans aimed to capture the essence of 1950s America through candid photography, Miranda’s work with GTA V is inherently different. The game was specifically designed as a grotesque satire of contemporary life in America, characterised by its exaggerated and often absurd depictions of societal elements. This parodic nature complicates the direct comparison between Miranda’s virtual photography and Frank’s real-world documentary work. The latter’s photographs are grounded in reality, offering a genuine portrayal of American life, whereas Miranda’s screenshots are taken from a hyperbolic simulation designed to entertain and provoke. This distinction raises a critical question: Can a collection of images from Los Santos, a parodic representation, truly provide a diagnosis of society as a whole, or are they merely snapshots of a simulation? If anything, Grand Theft Smiles could be interpreted as a parody of Frank’s The Americans.

More by Luca Miranda: unawsome.com