4.26.2008

Thinking of the children

FYI, this post probably won't have a logical flow or come to a conclusion.
Grand Theft Auto IV comes out on Tuesday. I am extremely excited; it looks amazing, Rockstar is said to have fixed the crappy aiming system, and everything I've read says it's superawesome. Syd is not; she doesn't think there is a story, and doesn't like all the prostitute killing, and would rather I get Mario Kart instead. Before we all mock her for her love of Mario Kart's finely crafted narrative, I think her complaint stems from my habit of driving around blowing shit up if I'm stuck on a mission. The ability to do this was what made GTA different and great, but apparently it is not so great for the spectatin'. Anyway, it's got me thinking about mores and generational differences of perception and so on, so here are a few random thoughts that came to mind.
  • GTA San Andreas came out while I was at guitar school. I was watching this guy Cameron who was a few years younger than me play, and one of the other guys was like, Dude, do that one thing! So Cam obliged and stealth-snuck up behind a random pedestrian on a crowded sidewalk and slit their throat. Everyone thought it was hilarious but it just seemed a bit too much for me. Of course, my roommate and I in college thought the greatest thing ever was cranking up the enemy endurance in GoldenEye and turning off their threat detection, and then shooting them in the butt over and over to watch their agonized, but comical, animations.
  • One of Syd's brother Aren's friend's favorite activities was gettin' it on with a hooker for the concomitant health boost, then killing her and getting his money back. There isn't really a penalty in the game for that; I'm surprised Rockstar didn't throw in vengeful pimps.
  • I clearly remember that while driving back from some lake in Missouri when I was 11ish, an impromptu sing-along to GnR's Mr. Brownstone broke out with my sisters and the kids from the other family.
  • The Paris Hilton South Park was on the other night, and it struck me how bizarre it is that the fact that at the end Mr. Slave crams Ms. Hilton entirely up his butt doesn't bother me at all, and aside from a significant surprise the first time I saw it, has neatly settled into my concept of the world.


So yeah, the game's rated M, but plenty of kids will play it, including any kid in my class with the means, because ultimately it's the responsibility of the parent to regulate what kids are exposed to and my students have bad parents. I don't think it'll adversely affect them, just like Aren's friend doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, frequent prostitutes and then kill them for his money, Cameron didn't walk the streets of Nanaimo throat-slashing, I've never shot someone in the ass to see them clutch their buttocks and dance around, and my sisters aren't riding the White Horse. I don't know about the Atkinson kids. And if Cam is cutting citizens' carotids, I'm sure he would be with or without the game's influence. I guess my point is that I don't think video game violence is a big deal, but I'm really more interested in this huge shift in what is and isn't socially acceptable. Is it a linear progression? Will our kids think nothing of their virtual reality vivisection game? Maybe it's logarithmic, and there's some indecency asymptote we can never quite reach.
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3 comments:

Joe Streckert said...

San Andreas was one of the most brilliant games ever, if only because you can dress up the main character like a pantsless pirate and then go wild with a chainsaw. Also, there was a jetpack.

I've never found GTA's violence to be all that disturbing, because it's just way too cartoony. It's too absurd to be disturbed by. But I'm not really all that disturbed by movie or video game violence. I actively enjoy horror and action movies, and it doesn't really disgust me at all.

But something like that photo of the Vietnamese soldier shooting a Vietcong point blank in the head- I've always been freaked out by that picture. It's not especially graphic or gory, though there is blood, and the executioner really isn't doing anything to prolong or expand on the violence- he's shooting the guy and giving him a quick death, not torturing him.

So, the content and impact of the violence seems to be divorced from the graphicness or gross amount of blood. The reality of suffering and death (and though this picture is real, it would still be disturbing if it were a convincing fake) seems to figure far more as to whether something is truly violent or not.

GTA's comical red geysers and piles of dead hookers can't really approximate the bit of gore of the dead Vietcong's face.

Anyway, GTA IV. Wish I had a PS3. (Damn you, regional encoding!) Here's hoping for a return of the jetpack.

Eric said...

I agree with Sonic. There's always been a big break in my head about what's violent in games/movies/music versus real violence. I mean, horror movies have been around for a long time, but I don't think there are that many more serial killers per capita now than there were in the 70's. But when I'm confronted with actual violence (like that picture Sonic brought up), it's really moving and powerful and disturbing all at once in a way that pretend violence never will be. Hopefully that never changes.

Seph said...

Agreed with the previous two. It's the realism of the violence that matters, not the scale of it. I remember when the movie Tears of the Sun came out a few years ago (forgettable movie about the Rwandan genocide, starring Bruce Willis). Apparently the movie contained documentary footage of the massacres in some of the opening scenes. Just the thought of using real violence in an entertainment movie disturbed me far more than any of the graphic gore I've seen in a horror movie.

That being said, GTA definitely did weird things to me. After I played the game for a while, I had to make a conscious effort to remember that I shouldn't use my handbrake while making turns, or that I couldn't steal random cars on the street if I liked them. Obviously, these weren't particularly strong urges, but there was a definite (if slight) effect on my behavior. Not enough that I'm bothered about it, but it was interesting to realize.