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Violence, Video Games And Donahue
nsda's deviant writes: "Salon is running an article written by Henry Jenkins, the director of MIT's new comparative media studies program. His article on Salon details blow-by-blow the shrewd tactics of cable TV's nightly debate programs like O'Reilly, Connie Chung, Cross Fire and of course the return of Donnahue. It also sheds lights on mass media's promotion of violence as ratings excitment and actively publicizing violence (ala Grand Theft Auto 3) for more ratings / controversy. The debate over video game violence has been a frequent topic on /. but this gives it quite a different twist. My favorite quote is 'those GTA3 clips seemed a whole lot more bloody when he (Donahue) was watching them before the show.'"
One facet of what he writes struck me as being very obvious, but I've never thought of it before. The activists against video game violence are always described as concerned mothers, whereas Dr. Jenkins, in spite of having raised a kid of his own, is merely referred to as a researcher. In his own words:
"On Donahue, activists are moms and intellectuals are presumed to be childless."
The nice thing about the internet is that you can say all the things you wished you would have said in the first place. Granted, he's reaching an entirely different audience than those who watched the Donahue in the first place, but he gave me something to think about when I see how people are labeled in the media.
I'm pretty sure "concerned mothers" are a greater threat to freedom than terrorists ever were...
I'm Peggy.
Anyone ever try to get news in the morning?
CNN has been taken over by morons doing all fluff. Fox is a pandering channel for Republicans that hide behind the fair and balanced crap (it's neither).
The best time to watch news is when you are out of the U.S. CNN International is a totally different creature than what you see here.
Shame we don't have the option here to get it in the states.
wow, violence sells? controversy sells? way to go salon for horridly covering a moot issue.
games have ratings that classify what age levels should play them. the goverment and parents groups got that done. GTA3 is rated "M". the parents that care won't let their 13 year old play the game.
o'reilly is a brilliant catalyst... he knows his topics very well, and the arguements for both sides. no matter what you say, he'll have the perfect rebuttle ready. donahue, go home. these shows are ONLY about controvercy and it sickens me that they still argue about these topics that were solved a long time ago.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
No kidding. I've never understood why specific parents care all that much - after all, if they're doing their job, as they see it, their kids will never see such games anyway.
The games say Mature on them, mom - if your kids play them, maybe the fault lies in the mirror.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
What really gets me about this whole thing is that people are going to take the 'ultraviolence' that GTA3 offers and figure that it is this violence that made the game popular.
Forget the fact that there are over 70 missions, the ability to do whatever the hell you please at any time, including grab a taxi and play Crazy Taxi GTA3-style (which is really fun, GTA has way better physics than Crazy Taxi), or perhaps do the Emergency Vehicles missions..
Or maybe it is the massive parody that the entire game lays out, from a Mob Boss with Mommy issues, to a pair of troublemaking girls with a flair for S&M. Try listening to the soundtrack sometime.. (All the best pop music.. with lots of cool transition sounds!)
No, no, no, we can't accept that this game gets it all right, presenting the gamer with freedom, as well as an entertaining and engaging story that they want to play out. Instead, the media tells us that this game is popular because it is violent. Well, fuck, if that was the case, Postal would have been the best selling game of all time, or perhaps State of Emergency.
I dunno, that's just my rant on the media attention that GTA has attracted. These 'activists' should be sat down in front of the game, after the main character has already 'obtained' a taxi, and should be asked to play the game, doing fares for an hour or 2. Perhaps they will start playing conservatively, following roads and obeying traffic lights. Or, more likely, they'll realize it's a god dammed video game and they'll have a bit of fun, smash up a car or 2 and drive over the median. Only then, will they realize that it is the best game written since Half-Life. And all the while, I'll bet they won't think it's the same 'ultraviolent' game that they've been up in arms about.
It's obvious that video games play a minor part in the decadence of society. However, games like Grand Theft Auto III, Postal, and Doom should never make it into the hands of minors. Parents are in general a whole lot less effective than they were fifty years ago; while it certainly isn't fair to all of us that we must remove entirely from the public the forms of entertainment that might cause Junior to go haywire, it is probably the first sensible approach towards getting a handle on our run-amok society.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
For a liberal Donahue equivalent, see Rosie O'Donnel. Or Sally Jessie Raphael, or whatever her name was. Jerry Springer can hardly be thought of as pushing a conservative agenda; I assure you that conservatives despise him as much as liberals do. (I'm not wrong in assuming that liberals find his show despicable, am I? I hope not.)
Why did he feel the need to politicize this? I'm very conservative myself -- slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, I believe -- yet I play and enjoy video games and expect my kids will too. So where does that leave me?
The basic conflict here wasn't conservative vs. liberal, it was sensationalism vs. intellectualism. Only someone harboring the basest prejudices against conservatives could make that mistake, IMO.
And the brethren went away edified.
Best Part of Article was at the end when the guy recieved angry e-mails from angry soccer moms regarding his view on computer games:
"You are obviously not a mother trying to raise teenagers you stupid freaking moron idiot."
"I'd like to take that stupid X Box and crack that moron from MIT over the head with it."
Now is it just me or is it a bit odd that most of the bad angry e-mails he got came exactly from the exact same people that oppose violence in video games??
Or another thought... I love all the religious fanatics who want to ban and censor any material which in their eyes promotes violence.. Shouldn't they try banning religious institutions first since afterall it is the religion itself that drastically slowed human progress throughout the history.. Not to mention that religion has been in some way or another a major fact behind most of the wars in world history that claimed millions of lives... Shouldn't they be the last ones to comment on anything? Since if I was one of them I would be too ashamed to show myself in public...
when you get your ass kicked on national television, you just write a nasty article for Salon where you can make personal attacks against the people who made you feel so bad.
The upside: they can't even respond, whereas you they gave you the opportunity on the show and you blew it.
The downside: You'll teach the media never to invite you to appear again.
>No kidding. I've never understood why specific parents care all that much - after all, if they're doing their job, as they see it, their kids will never see such games anyway.
I'm sorry to correct you on this, but my pick would be: if they're doing their job RIGHT, their kids will never be AFFECTED by such games.
Want it or not, unless you are living in a cave, your kids will end up being exposed to graphic violence in movies, tv or games, you can't go around it... now any person with minimal common sense will know that if there's would be even 1% chance per individual to gain sadistic violent behaviour because he/she's playing quake too much, we'd have a LOT MORE serial killers and people shooting with rocket launchers all over the country. This isn't the issue, now if the parent are spending time with their children, they are raising them with good values, and apply the universel concept of good parenting (tm), their kids will be smart enough to know the difference. Of course there are always the specific cases with bad genes or mental disorders, but this is a completely different issue and it's like saying we shouldn't have cars because sometimes some people without permits go take a car and get into an big accident killing x amount of people and blablabla.
On the other hand, a lot of bitching (about violence and all) parents have a lot of things they could fix themselves before blaming everyone else (typical example: rely on TV to educate their children and replace the babysitter), I'd say they are the first people to blame. It's amusing to notice how these specific type of people even in real life are always blaming everybody and everything else before themselves or their own action, but there are so many of these people nowadays and they are whining so loudly that they are taken into account in the system. A true shame because mature people and intelligibile kids looking for a distraction are getting penalized by this.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I believe it comes down to the "Theory of Context" by Gladwell. Pretty much it's the small things that matter. GTA3 is highly realistic. Thus you still have a sense of reality when playing it and so will most kids (they're smarter than you think). Joe Camel was a cartoon character modeled like many a cartoon character at his time.
So long as it looks like a muppet or a ink drawn character, kids will gravitate towards it and worship it. If there was a "Tickle me Hitler" I can ASSURE you, anti-semetism would rise when those kids hit the real world. Yes, kids are smart. If things are portrayed realisticly, they'll know it. But they're still children and if it's delivered by a cartoon character or in a childish manner.(anyone else dive off their furnature after seeing the live action peter pan movie when they were little, I know I did) Yes, I've been playing video games since I was 4 (an Atari 2600 and an NES). I played Mario but I never tried to jump on someones head. Thats where my raising comes in. My parents raised me so I instinctively knew doing that would hurt someone, so I didn't)
Again, all the small things matter. Attacking "violence" in general will solve nothing. But taking care of the small details. How that violence is marketed and represented, and how the parents raise their children are the key factors. And I'm not advocation that V-Chip "Please government, babysit my children for me" crap either. REAL parenting. Like I got. I ever have kids and raise them like that, expecting the government to step in and completely remove all violence so I can go back to sipping my Starbuck grande knowing TV will make my kids "normal" (which is a BAD thing in my eyes), I'll kick my own ass.
Anyways, I hope someone sees this and agrees with me. I did a research project on this exact subject at Rutgers and I'm simply using my findings to add discussion.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
In my experience, when you start getting into a debate about video game violence you have to limit yourself to three topics and just keep repeating those topics over and over:
1. Juvenile violence is at a 30-year low.
2. People serving time for violent crime consume less media than average. Also, the surgeon general's report stated home life and mental stability are the risk factors, not media exposure.
3. Finally, videogames are rated and the violent ones are clearly labeled "M-for-Mature, 17+" and the factors that lead to that rating are also clearly labeled. Mature rated games account for less than 10% of videogame sales.
All of these points were raised in the Salon article. Stay on these three topics and drill them into the other persons head. Try not to become disoriented and/or gag by their arguments of "think of the children" and "but violence makes baby jesus cry".
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
If you choose to use force, you are going to attract the police. The more force, the more cops. Pretty soon, you're going down.
That's the key. While all games aren't nearly as encompassing, I'm focusing on GTA3 here because that's what THEY seem to be focusing on.
I play GTA3 (and has become one of my all-time favorites) not because of the content (and certainly not because I have the option to "do" prostitutes), but because the technology and immersiveness are awesome. The violence and other aspects that depict an anti-social orientation are but merely part of a story. If anything, they demonstrate how scummed out (and snuffed out) one's life can get when they make stupid choices.
The previous post could be rewritten as the following, don't you think?
;)
"Several things disturb me about Liberal rhetoric, but most notably:
* The use of ridicule and ad-hominem attacks to discredit valid ideas. i.e., Calling someone a "conservative" as an implicit insult.
* The assertion of certain lies as universally-known truths. i.e., That the media has a conservative bias. That "conservative" ideas dominate state policies.
It would be truly refreshing to see a debate between a liberal who can restrain these tendencies and a well-versed conservative thinker."
Now, personally, I'd be more interested in seeing discussions where both sides avoid such rhetorical techniques to cloud issues, discredit their opponents, and avoid the facts
Uh moron, exactly how do the "concerned mothers" pass themselves off as genuine researchers? How exactly is their opinion more valid? If a mother actually had a college degree WTF is she doing on a talk show?
For all we know, none of them have kids either; they provided just as much "evidence" as Jenkins did. And for the ones that do have kids, 80% of them are buying these games for their kids. And the ones that aren't, and their kids have them anyway, aren't doing their fucking job as parents.
Mr. Jenkins is.
And your whole statement about media circus and informed debate is actually the point of the article...did you even read the fucking thing? The "Childish Intellectuals" have actually recognized that this type of discourse is horseshit and doesn't accomplish anything useful. You and Phil Donahue haven't realized this yet. It's just a "whupping in a public debate".
Like the Salem witch trials.
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
Fairly simple really. I very much doubt that playing GTA 3 is going to give me lung cancer. Neither has it been shown to cause physical and pyschological dependance.
Comparing children playing video games to children smoking is one of the cheap shots this article is complaining about.
The main reason for all of this concern about the violence of children is this:
Children spend more time at home, indoors than they ever had.
What is the primary effect of this? Put much closer to parental supervision than they ever had.
And the effect of this? Parents now get to see how violent children are.
I forget the study but this ends up being cyclic. Parents are then concerned about who "taught" their child this. TV supplies the answer: the world is now more "violent" (which, in truth, it probably isn't... it is just more visible in this media saturation). So parents force their kids to not go out. But kids still have the same drives. If it wasn't chucking rocks at cars or getting into fights, you now do some Tekken 3 or Quake. But now the activity is well within maternal awareness (unlike before where children were wise enough to stay out of sight).
Mothers now just see more of the activity that has always been going on.
But the assumption is that a) kids are too stupid to try and hide things from their parents so b) they must be getting more violent.
So the best solution for all? Let the kids outside: get them some exercise and they will get into the same trouble although now you don't need to see it. Funny how self-deception seems to be the best course of action (as compared to over-parenting).
What is music when you despise all sound?
Unfortunately, it's not just the "conservatives" who are out to push responsibility for violence on video games. As often as its the "liberals".
Case in point would be Senator Leiberman, perhaps the most visible and high ranking politician calling for censorship in video games.
I just moved from a fairly liberal area to a very conservative area, and just from reading the newspaper here, I can tell that people are much more interested in being able to do what they want than keeping other people from playing video games... which was an obsession with the more liberal newspaper.
Of course, the bars (or rather... bar) here do close at midnight.
Somewhere on that article (or from this one), there's a link to the transcript of the Donahue show.
They keep on harping on two scenarios, killing a cop and killing a prostitute. The "concerned mother" keeps saying, "YOU GET MONEY! YOU GET HEALTH! NO CONSEQUENCES!"
Clearly forgetting that 10 seconds after the scene cop cars were suddenly much more agressive against you, and after more such infractions you eventually had the FBI coming after you with choppers. If you actually managed to survive that, please say hello to the National Guard, tanks and all.
Hello? No consequences? Getting run over by a National Guard tank isn't a consequence?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?