Video Games and Violence (moral, blood, moral)

[ladyhawke]

HUH... no way....eddy i will agree with you he was rubbish..

[ChrisP]

Wow look... another thread successfully derailed!

WOoooooHOOooo!

[Scarlett Wampus]

Much eagerness to look to violence in video games & movies as a link to real life violence. The slightest evidence of a correlation that could be construed as supporting that view gets plenty of media coverage. Its a scapegoat. Targetting it is a obviously an indulgence for those who enjoy the rush of populist hysteria.

I saw this yesterday and totally agree with this guy (click this sentence but be aware there is bad language).

Plenty of real life violence where I grew up. The video games of choice amongst the worst perpetrators? Super Mario Brothers, Pacland and Mario Kart. I think those games should be carefully examined for their link to violent pathology.

Of all the well known gangs that existed in my hometown I can honestly say the one I 'belonged' to was the least likely to go in for vandalism, real fighting and crime in general. By least likely I mean it was virtually unheard of, and we disapproved of carrying weapons unlike most of the other gangs. We listened to gangster rap all the time, watched martial arts movies and other violent movies, used to fight each other for fun a lot & had our own version of fight club every saturday after we all got back from Snooker and our favourite video games were Street Fighter 2, Double Dragon, Final Fight, stuff like that. So, why were we the gang least likely to go around bashing other kids?

Perhaps it had something to do with getting enough exercise and expressing competitiveness through that. We played football a lot. Every day at school lunch break, and most days after school too. If it wasn't football then it was the beach. There were all sorts of places to swim out to, climb up and jump off. That was pretty much all we did during the summer days when not at school. Teeny-bopper discos were available to us too so we'd go to them a lot. Dancing was a big thing for us and we took a lot of pride in it (as well as simply enjoying it). Another helpful thing was a club ran by sympathetic locals every Friday night. They rented out a large stripped out hall where we could play football, fight (friendly fighting), and generally be as energetic and wild as we wanted to be. Their reasoning was that it was better for us to be going crazy in there than out on the streets causing michief. That's exactly how it worked out too. Looking back the other gangs were nowhere near as physically active as we were.

Perhaps it had something to do with not having an obvious divide when it came to class, sex or race - a reflection of the main school most of us went to. Being white middle-class I could hang out with that gang or the middle-class white only gang, and they were so boring, edgy and spiteful I couldn't stand it. Though the girls almost never joined in with the football in everything else they were included, fighting too although it was usually male & male, female & female, and not often male & female. One of the biggest factors in me wanting to stay in that gang was all the romance and sexual playfulness going on. I remember a common thing was to be busy kissing or chasing girls while out at night alongside the two closest other gangs who were on friendly terms with us; one male only, the other female only (they were mostly from two single-sex schools). We'd sometimes watch them with a little confusion as they vandalised things or went out of their way to get into real fights. Even then I realised that their sexual segregation had much to do with their aggression.

That we were so mixed racially eased things between us and other gangs for the simple reason that racial tensions went over our heads. We weren't going to let anyone attack someone from our gang for racial reasons and we weren't going to attack anyone else for the same. In fact, we used to absorb people from other racially distinguished gangs because it was safer to be with us. One such person was a notoriously violent skin-head. He was trouble to begin with but after a while chilled right out, and as if to make up for what he'd been like, continuously preached the stupidity of his family's affiliation with white pride. And what do you know he turned out to be gay too. I'm not kidding!

Perhaps it had something to do with the amount of freedom we had. Admittedly some of that came from parents just not caring about what their kids got up to, but here's the thing: Without the parents of some people allowing us to hang out together to be raucous in their basements, front rooms, etc. we would've been much more trouble. We also needed things like pool tables, money to get into discos, music, bikes to zip around on, etc. Where some kids came from very poor and broken families they could get these things from other kids via their parents. For example, within reason we were allowed to do pretty much anything at my house. Having that space and access to movies, games, bikes and surprisingly popular: a piano. All this helped keep us busy. Having seen (some) teachers, police, other residents, etc. treated with outright animosity & contempt by people in my gang I was always surprised at the authority they gave to my parents. If they said, "don't do [such and such]..." then these kids, especially if they came from broken homes, would be tripping over themselves to prove they could be trusted. A little respect and sympathy goes a long way.

Ok, I think its clear enough what I'm trying to convey here. If violence as entertainment in the media & video games did have a negative effect on kids it is insignificant in comparison to frustrated physical/mental energy, lack of freedom to be wild & silly as kids naturally want to be, treating kids as terrors to be supressed without any care or respect for them, and divides between people due to attitudes about class, sex and race. We should be worrying about these things. Scapegoating is dangerous because it deflects attention away from real problems. Also IMO if anything, violence in movies, games, etc. helps exorcise demons.