Outrage comes easy at the sight of 15-year-old Disney Channel billion-dollar phenomenon Miley Cyrus — known to screaming 8-year-old girls as Hannah Montana — appearing barebacked with a come-hither smile in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Did no one understand how the slinky satin-sheet photo would be greeted by the eyes of teenage boys — or men twice her age? Parents are covering the eyes of their Disney-drenched little girls while their role model has a train wreck. Do we need another Britney Spears Show?
But teenage boys are going wilder this week over a more dangerous cultural low: "Grand Theft Auto IV." The new video game from Rockstar Games is flying off the shelves, and all the early reviews are glowing. GamePro magazine calls it "the pinnacle of interactive entertainment and game design." Why is it so good? "It never makes concessions in the name of being politically correct, living up to its M-rating with gusto — there's tons of swearing, violence and sexual innuendo."
Yes, young lads, you can visit strip clubs and get lap dances, pick up prostitutes, go on assassination missions and conduct gangland-style executions. The New York Times applauded the game's "winsome procession of grifters, hustlers, drug peddlers and other gloriously unrepentant lowlifes."
Game-lovers can protest that just because a game encourages you to kill cops and exploit prostitutes, it doesn't mean you become violent. But that argument isn't helped by the news report that a San Diego man doused video-game store employees with mace to steal the game. Or that a man standing in line in London was stabbed in the head and neck. As the Times of London reported, "Onlookers thought initially that the stabbing was part of a stunt by the store to whip up excitement" about the game. The victim went to get his own knife for a revenge attack, but collapsed and was taken to the hospital. "It was a scene straight from the game itself," gushed one witness.
In 2004, Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, co-founders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, undertook a $1.5 million study funded by the Department of Justice on the effects of video games on young teenagers. "Grand Theft Auto" is the most popular video game series among young teens.
In their surveys of seventh- and eighth-grade kids, 44 percent of boys reported playing a "Grand Theft Auto" game "a lot in the past six months" — far more than the next most popular game series, Madden NFL. Even among girls, it was second only to "The Sims." One in five girls routinely played it.
WhatTheyPlay.com is a resource site for parents, and interviews with children find they like the series for its wide-open play, particularly the vicarious experience of the thug life. "I'm never going to be a car-jacking, whore-murdering gang member," said one, "so I guess it's very interesting to see what your life could be like, if you chose that path. It's amazing to become so immersed in the game experience and really be able to feel like a criminal."
I don't know the answer to this, but out of curiosity, I have a question: What percentage of car-jacking murdering gang members were committed to this life as children?
The violent content also attracts children as a way to vent anger or stress. One boy explained: "Last week, I missed homework and my teacher yelled at me. When I went home, I started playing [Grand Theft Auto] Vice City, and got a tank. I ran over everybody. And I smashed a lot of cars and blew them up."
So it's a good thing Rockstar Games hasn't invented the game yet where children get a tank and drive it back to school and blow up teachers.
There's something odd about our culture when we try to prevent children under 17 from seeing violent or sexually overt material in a two-hour R-rated movie, but we're cavalier about selling the same experience — actually, a more offensive experience since it's entirely non-judgmental — in an M-rated video game that will be played every night for months.
There's only one word to describe parents who would buy this game for their children: Disgraceful. But retailers, too, must be pressed to check ID before selling the game to children who most assuredly will seek to purchase it. Legally, stores cannot sell children pornographic magazines or handguns — but they can legally sell video games to children that contain pornographic content or that teach children how to gun down cops.
They can choose to line their pockets with the proceeds of the sale of this cultural poison to youngsters. They can join the chorus of consequential deniability, too. All they have to worry about is their conscience, in the dead of night, something the P.R. wizards can't touch.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Once again we hear from Professor Harold Hill from "The Music Man," aka Brent Bozell. Dime novels, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, rock 'n' roll, horror comic books, "gangsta" rap -- so far, the youth of America have survived unscathed through all the "cultural poisons" that were accused of turning them violent and anti-social. They'll survive video games too.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Scot Penslar
Fri May 2, 2008 10:33 PM
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i don't know how you sleep at night. you use false information to spread your hatered of video games.
i play grand theft auto, manhunt, and several other violent games, and not once have i ever attempted to try anything i do in these games. according to your studies i should have shot a cop, stole a car, robbed a store, or gone on a killing spree.
thats not the case. games like these are played to escape reality, i agree that parents should be held responsible for the games their young children play but to think a video game creates killers is just far fetched.
assuming that a child is that affected by these games the parents need to have the child checked for any mental disorders.
point is movies, games, and music DO NOT CREATE KILLERS.
Comment: #2
Posted by: jason
Tue May 6, 2008 3:56 PM
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You are comparing apples and oranges. Miley Cyrus is packaged, aimed at, martketed to, and in every way designed for the consumption of children. GTA is designed for adults. Hence the MA and AO ratings. GTA is not aimed at the 20something gamer market, not the 15 something. I agree that the content of GTA is not suitable for children. In fact many game selling locations have policies about selling MA and AO games to children, presumably it is parents who are plunking down the money to get these games for their fifteen and sixteen year olds.
You also seem to assume that videogames are inherently children's fare. This has not been true for a long time. The average gamer is not 15. The average gamer is 27. Therefore games with levels of violence unacceptable violence for children are created. Because there is a large market of consenting adults who do enjoy violent entertainment.
44% of teens have play one of the most popular video game franchises ever. They don't play Madden Football because honestly it sucks. Besides that it's a different game entirely This argument is equivalent to railing against the violence inherent in real-life football, when there's a perfectly good baseball game you can watch. They are different games enjoyed for different reasons.
As for violence associated with the purchasing of the game? You attempt to draw a cause and effect between the violence of a few and the violence in the game. This is a logical fallacy. There were 6 million units of the game sold in five days. Of the 6 million units sold, you give us 2 acts of violence associated with the game. That's 5,999,998 people who did manage to make the transaction without causing bloodshed.
Violent games do not make violent children. Research shows that video game violence has increased dramatically in incidence and in realism. However violent juvenile crime has gone down in the same span. It would be irresponsible of me to suggest a causal relationship, but it is quite clear that video games are not causing violence.
Video games are by and large played for stress relief. Sometimes that takes the form of lining up blocks or controlling the lives of virtual people. Sometimes it takes the form of blasting away zombies and controlling large armies. Similarly, movies are frequently watched for purposes of stress relief and again, sometimes people watch cartoons, sometimes they watch Steven Segal snapping necks. You seem ro propose that it is the simulated murder the young man quoted finds relaxing. I argue that it is the ability to vent frustrations and aggression in a safe environment as well as the fact that a well-designed game will let you forget about the real world for an hour or so.
From jazz music to comic books to Elvis' shaking hips, people have been quick to use pop culture as the scapegoat for the ills of modern children. A specific item that one cn point to and say "yes, that's it. That's what's wrong." with the idea that if that is just done away with, all will be well and children will suddenly become perfect angels. It never has worked like that and it never will.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Elle
Wed May 7, 2008 2:09 PM
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I think if there was an intensive study that tried to pin down a relationship between violence (such as stabbing somebody in the neck) and violent video games such as GTA, you would find that these people who lack the conscience to say "Hey, maybe I SHOULDN'T stab this guy" would have done so WITHOUT the influence of violent games.
You MIGHT even find that these people are LESS violent in their non-video-game life. After all, this guys stabs a guy in the head and neck, and what's the other guy's response? He goes for his OWN knife. Ha! :) He had a knife on him?
I have a feeling that deeper investigation would show that these guys didn't just randomly try to stab eachother. They probably had an altercation of some sort. I bet you would also at least find that the first knife-wielder has a criminal record dating to long before any involvement with violent video games such as GTA. Even if not, you can't deny the influence of a child's upbringing.
What about this, though? "[Miley Cyrus] appearing barebacked with a come-hither smile in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Did no one understand how the slinky satin-sheet photo would be greeted by the eyes of teenage boys — or men twice her age?" Or men three or FOUR times her age?
It sells magazines, and I believe the claim that it was intended by the photographer as a simple artistic shot meant to convey innocence. And once again, any girls that would be influenced by this, probably don't actually need to be influenced to be sexually active or to try to be attractive to the opposite sex in the first place (not that this behavior is inherently "evil," but then, for all I know, you may think masturbation is wrong).
Besides, anybody who's ever been interested in the opposite sex knows: "they want it as much as we do." It's not as if all of the skin and scandal in Hollywood mysteriously triggered an as yet unknown sexuality in the world's youth. You know this, Brent. You were a teenager once.
Maybe everybody should worry about the bigger fish, like, I don't, maybe implementing serious studies into how we might achieve some sort of a sustainable world society instead of waiting for a savior to come back and clean up the mess for us. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Holier Than Thousands
Thu May 8, 2008 4:25 AM
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