Since the debut of Grand Theft Auto in 1997, the franchise has become one of the best-selling and controversial video games series of all time. But at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the popular series is becoming a fascinating and historical tool.
Grand Theft America: U.S. History Since 1980 through the GTA Video Games is a new history class taught by Professor Tore Olsson. It uses the games as cultural artifacts that reflect and critique modern American life. The class will explore themes of consumerism, political corruption, the American Dream, and urban decay, tracing how the franchise mirrors social and political changes in the US over the past four decades.
What makes GTA so ripe for study is the fact that it’s one of the most provocative satirical texts of our time. Every game is drenched in parody, from the absurd billboards plastered across highways to the radio DJs who mock talk radio, pop stations, and self-help gurus. Political campaigns are caricatures of real ones. The news stations broadcast warped reflections of American media. Even the commercials in the background lampoon consumer culture, turning advertising into a funhouse mirror.
This is where satire becomes a teaching tool. GTA doesn’t invent new issues. It magnifies existing ones. The franchise exaggerates American obsessions with money, guns, fame, and freedom until their absurdity is impossible to ignore. Students in the UTK course will be asked to examine these satirical portrayals and connect them to real-world cultural and political developments.
Each GTA title builds an immersive world that attaches to a specific cultural moment. It’s a massive history lesson in disguise.
- GTA Vice City (2002): Set in a fictionalized Miami, the game captires the neon glitz, cocaine trade, and consumerist excess of the 1980s. It reflects an era of booming capitalism, the drug war, and the spectacle-driven entertainment industry.
- GTA: San Andreas (2004): A love letter to 1990s West Coast culture, this installment tackles gang life, systemic racism, police corruption, and government conspiracy, drawing on life events like the Rodney King beating and the LA riots.
- GTA IV (2008): Released during the late-2000s financial crisis, Liberty City is a cynical parody of New York. Immigrant protagonist Niko Bellic arrives chasing the American Dream, only to find it hollow, violent, and exploitative.
- GTA V (2013): Set in Los Santos, the game reflects post-recession Los Angeles as a city of hustlers. Its three protagonists chase status and survival in a society where celebrity, crime, and yoga classes all carry equal weight.
Through these fictional landscapes, players engage with real histories: immigration, inequality, economic collapse, the militarization of policing, and the rise of celebrity culture. Professor Olsson’s course will connect these exaggerated depictions to the historical record, helping students see how fiction often reveals truths reality tries to conceal.
Just like novels, films, and TV, video games like GTA deserve the same attention. GTA has long become a training ground for spotting how culture reproduces values, fears, and contradictions. Additionally, many students already know GTA. Using it as a teaching tool bridges the gap between pop culture and academia in a new way, one that will confront the violence and stereotypes in an atmosphere where students can discuss whether satire exposes injustice or reinforces harmful tropes.
The course begins on January 20, 2026.