Thu 26 Jun 2003
The concept of a blog post on fantasy versus reality has been brewing in my head for the past several weeks. And, each new bit of news regarding violent video games adds more fuel to the fire.
Is it just me, or do statements such as the following just not make sense?
“…our state law is narrowly focused on the compelling state interest of protecting the safety of law enforcement officers and firefighters.”
- Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (in a Reuters news story)
Protecting their safety? How? Goodness, buying them better gas masks or stronger bulletproof vests, and paying for more/better training will do loads more than restricting access to games. Bottom line, there is zero proof that any game has caused real world violence. Zero. Sure, there’s some research that shows under certain conditions that a child may hit a bobo clown slightly more often (and other such silly research). But, projecting that onto truly violent and/or deliquent actions is highly questionable.
There’s a whole section on this notion of fantasy vs reality in Gerard Jones’ great book, Killing Monsters. It has been a while since I read the book, but the relevant part here is that as children grow/mature they are quite adept at determining what is real and what is not. However, adults’ uneasiness around make-believe violence (eg, play sword fights or cops&robbers), works against a child’s natural filters. Say your son is pretending to be a knight and is jumping around with a stick as a sword (he knows it is really a stick and he is not trying to hurt anyone, he’s just make-believe playing, etc). But, then walks in the parent and scolds the kid, gets mad at him for being dangerous and so on. The kid’s confused because he knows it was just a stick and he was just pretending - why would dad be so upset… Anyway, long story short, these natural grown-up tendencies mess with kids more so than any form of media consumption.
Jones goes on to discuss symbolic vs literal interpretation. It seems that most of gaming’s opponents simply cannot “read” beyond literal interpretations of games (or other media for that matter). When a politician _looks_ at GTA, they only see violence. They have no sense of what is really going on, the mechanics of the game, the moral choices being made, what that means to the player, how the player explores the possiblity space, what the themes mean, how they might be interepreted in different ways, etc, etc, etc.
When someone like Daphne White states:
“The cult of the Matrix pretends that there is deep spiritual meaning to the story. Yet the driving theme of the trilogy involves the Mother of All Battles (to save the Earth, of course), and “Matrix Reloaded” just treads water with vacuous dialogue and highly choreographed martial arts scenes. I shudder to think what kind of understanding of life kids will take into adulthood if we allow Tinseltown to market the ultra-violent “Matrix” to them as a spiritual epic.”
(from a Washington Post article)
I am dumbfounded. How ignorant can you be? There have been several books written on the very subject of interpreting the symbolic meanings and messages of the Matrix.
I’ve gotten a bit side-tracked, but I see this ability of symbolic interpretation as a key element of understanding games (and other media), let alone living a normal life. Further, I see this as part of the same kernel that relates to interpretations of what is “real”, or not.
Among other sources, the recent book on games and learning talks about this to some extent (and in general, puts games in a very positive light).
It would be interesting if our opponents ever read any of the books - let alone played any games…
June 26th, 2003 at 3:55 pm
While I agree that Matrix has a great deal of philosophy layered in amongst the extraneous fight scenes, bad acting, and convoluted dialogue, just because it has many books written about said philosophy does not mean this point of view is new. In fact, I would care to offer that what the Matrix brings up, philosophically, has been done to death.
To expound upon my point here is a portion of a blog post by emma (http://www.caoine.org), who’s page I visit form time to time. She has said, essentially, anything I might say, but has crafted it more artfully.
“Amazon tells me there’s also Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, to be released in April. I wouldn’t be surpsised if either had something to do with it, but let me save you some time: if you want to know what The Matrix has to do with philosophy, get yourself a book on Cartesian skepticism. You could go straight to Descartes himself, or for something a little more current I’d recommend Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader (which includes an excellent Hilary Putnam essay, and papers by NYU professors Thomas Nagel and Peter Unger). There’s even a copy of ‘Brains in a Vat’ (from Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History) on the web. Either way, you’re probably better off than you’d be with that impish Keanu as your skeptical introduction.
(Incidentally, I can’t help pointing out that the author of Taking the Red Pill has also produced ‘a nonfiction anthology of essays about Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ according to the Amazon review.”
-http://caoine.org/mt/archives/2003_03.php
June 26th, 2003 at 4:11 pm
Thanks very much for the additional info and pointers. You go further to show that a movie like the Matrix has more to “say” than how to make a slowmo dropkick. Alas, the rabbit hole does go deeper than what media opponents, like Daphne, wish to see or admit to.
(I was not trying to suggest that the Matrix was breaking new ground in this respect, it is just a good example of subjective/symbolic interpretation).
June 26th, 2003 at 5:38 pm
Quoted from STLtoday:
“To make her point, White took an action figure based on the game “Duke Nukem” to testimony on the issue before a Senate committee. Action figures are toys marketed for children, she noted, while the game is rated M for mature players.”
You can get action figures for Hellraiser, Hammer Horror and many other mature sources. This is again people disbelieving that toys (and quite frankly, games are toys in the broadest sense) can be for adults too.
Again, from STLtoday:
“For example, playing the game “Doom” didn’t make people start shooting at Columbine High School, Fischoff said, but it could have influenced participants to wear trench coats like characters in the game. ”
What trenchcoats??? There are no trench coats in any of the Doom games. In fact, don’t you play as a soldier (uniformed officer) trying to save the world from characters that don’t resemble real people in the slightest?
The only game I can think of with a character in a trench coat is …Enter The Matrix …but that’s only to copy the film. Until now, flappy clothes were too hard to do in real time at such detail.
June 26th, 2003 at 8:22 pm
What our friends in the media are missing are a resident geek who’s job it is to play and scrutinize games. You see, when a new movie or book or eminem cd comes out, its simple enough to insert into the DVD, your hands, or the cd player, and observe the content yourself. To save time, the newspapers and various media outlets hire people they call “Critics” to observe the content and make a decision about the quality and any deeper messages that can be infered. With gaming, the media outlets don’t have anyone who knows how to play games, let alone the ability to pick up the game themselves. Jimmy and Mike get some guns and blow up a Seven-Eleven in Nebraska, the Feds happen to find a copy of Half-Life in one of the youngster’s rooms, and Sam Anchorman accuses Valve Software of producing terrorist training manuals. Soccermoms listen intently, ratings go up, game sales go down, programmers get laid off, apply for unemployment, and Sam Anchorman hosts a piece on the declining state of the economy.
I think it’s time for the ABCnews and the N.Y.Times to get a “Entertainment Software Critic.” Someone to tell us that its no more real then Keanu Reeves pretending to be Christopher Reeve.
June 27th, 2003 at 9:50 am
“Soccermoms listen intently, ratings go up, game sales go down, programmers get laid off…”
Since when has controversy over a piece of entertainment with violent / lurid / subversive content kept it from selling?
June 27th, 2003 at 3:22 pm
Kids will still get adult games the same way they get booze, cigarettes and porn mags. They’ll just get an adlut to buy it for them.
That said, unlike the mentioned products above, computer games can be bought from very naughty people with DVD writers. With this in mind I foresee a bit more work going into piracy provention.
January 18th, 2004 at 6:10 pm
Screw the bastards who like to create reality and simultanesouly blame us for our unpredicted intent on escaping!
August 11th, 2004 at 2:20 pm
Indeed I wish to have more messages in my Box.
Reality with Fantasy can make life meaningful.
Reality without fantasy is not proper.
Reality in Fantasy is unavoidable.
Tell me more.
April 25th, 2005 at 9:47 am
I am doing my third year university dissertation on the subject of violent games and their effect on children. I think a game is just a game and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Parents of vulnerable children should be responsible for their child’s actions if they react badly to a game.