I really wanted to avoid jumping into the whole violence in videogames/media debate, but I just have to get it off my chest. We all remember the infamous Hot Coffee mod for GTA: San Andreas. And we all remember the various senators who were outraged that such filth could be placed in a game that children play. But somewhere, everyone forgot that said game is all about being a criminal. It’s about stealing cars, shooting cops, going on dope runs, screwing prostitutes in cars to regain health and then robbing them, chopping heads off, and generally causing mayhem. It’s damn fun too.
They also forgot that the game already had an M rating, meaning stores can’t (or perhaps, shouldn’t) sell it to anyone under the age of 17. But of course, that rarely happens, as usually the child in question will go whine to mommy or daddy, who will promptly berate the staff until the game is sold. The parents will probably go home, happen to glance at their child looting/shooting/stealing, and return, outraged, to the store and demand why they would sell such a product to their child. There appears, to me at least, to be a glaring flaw in this whole chain of events. The parents aren’t, well, parenting. Don’t buy something for your child that you don’t want them to use. If you won’t let your child watch Saving Private Ryan, A Clockwork Orange, or Schindler’s List, why would you buy them a game that contains just as much violence? The Passion of The Christ is too violent and gory to watch, but Mortal Kombat is all right. Is anyone else as confused as I am? Moreover, why do we rely on the government to parent for us? Why are we banned from reading books written about Southerners in the 1800′s because they contain the N word? Were people not discriminated against because of their color? Is Mark Twain a liar? Or do we simply wish to avoid demonizing ourselves, to erase the cultural memory of all the terrible things that our society has done in an effort to cancel out their existence?
I think we have been, for quite some time now, determined to view ourselves as the ‘good guy,’ like Superman. Superman would put some pretty bad hurtings on criminals, but since he never killed them, it was ok. It’s eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, in which the job of the title character is to rework history to match the government’s line. If Big Brother said production of food was up 300% last month, then he has to go through every newspaper and recording to make sure that they all say that food production was, in fact, up 300%. The problem, at its core, is that we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to have the right to say absolutely whatever we please, but we only want people to say things which we agree with, things that won’t shock and disturb us. But that is impossible, for the same right that allows me to say “Our President is stupid” is the same right that allows people to say that a certain race is biologically inferior, that women have no business in the workplace, that Hitler was right, and a million other heinous things. Like when former Secretary of Education William Bennet said “If you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”
What’s needed is an addendum to the First Amendment. One that says that speech is free, so long as it is nice and clean and decent. Of course any proposal to that affect would be met with the fiercest of opposition, even though that’s really what so many people are asking for. Nobody wants to just come out and say it, but that’s what all of the insinuations are. Nobody wants to admit it to themselves that they’re really asking for it. But they are, and there are those out there that do see it. I’m sick and tired of hearing these endless debates about why videogame companies need to stop publishing such violent content because our children are accessing it. If you don’t want your child playing the game, then be a parent. Because the cold truth of the matter is, this a terribly violent world we live in, and whether we would like to admit it or not, it will always be that way.
