As video games grow ever more violent and realistic, the latest sign
"progress" is the arrival of female characters you can take into combat
in the latest version of the war game "Call of Duty."
You may watch a hundred commercials selling this product, but no one
tells the audience what’s really in it. There’s a reason: You’d be
shocked. A panel of young pundits on the gaming website IGN.com recently
pondered the question "How does it feel to have a woman get stabbed in
the face?"
One young man admitted with a bit of shame that "I’m so, for the lack
of a better word, numb to always stabbing dudes in the face" in games.
But women? "It is kind of like, wait a second, it does kind of give me
pause."
The others on the panel thought he was all wrong. The lone female
treated him as if he was lamely holding women’s progress back. Another
man claimed to see the future: "I’ve certainly become desensitized to
violence in games, violence in movies, violence as a whole. This is just
the next step. I wouldn’t be surprised if in five or six years, there’s
going to be kids [inside the war game] in ‘Call of Duty.’"
And let’s guess: when that happens, the gaming pundits will briefly
consider – and dismiss – the shock of virtually stabbing children in the
face.
It’s absolutely necessary that every step in the coarsening of the
culture be accompnied by pundits insisting that raising moral objections
is the mark of the fuddy-duddy. When the new game "Grand Theft Auto V"
was released in September, New York Times reviewer Chris Suellentop
spoke for the "guardians" of pop culture, insisting "as sex and violence
have permeated prestige television, the controversies that once
surrounded the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ games have begun to seem like
sepia-toned oddities from another age."
Rockstar Games, the makers of the perennially amoral "Grand Theft Auto"
series, can claim the high ground of commercial success. Guinness World
Records just announced "GTA 5" has smashed six world records, including
the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours
and the fastest entertainment property to gross a billion dollars. They
sold over 11 million copies in its first 24 hours and hit a billion in
sales within three days.
"GTA
totally deserves to be recognized as an icon of modern British
culture," oozed Guinness World Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday.
(Add American culture, as well.) "Gaming is no longer a niche hobby, as
GTA 5 has proved, and how exciting that it's taken on the might of
Hollywood and won."
But after the hundreds of ads selling “Grand Theft Auto V,” fooled by
the news reports gushing about its sales, what do we know about its
contents? Again, no one really wants to address what’s inside the
wrapper.
Suellentrop of the Times explained the plot. It's "still an action game
about hoodlums and thieves; we start with an extended bout of cop
killing and proceed to a series of increasingly ambitious heists." There
are three villains you can choose to become, including "Trevor, an
oddly lovable psychopathic meth dealer and gun runner."
Another villain, Michael, announces the game’s cynical amorality:
"Movies are about telling the same lies over and over again. You know,
good beats evil, things happen for a reason, attractive people are
interesting."
It’s quite obvious this game is going to be opened on Christmas Day by
12-year-old boys, who will then be able to not only (virtually) slice
policemen to ribbons, but buy and smoke marijuana, snoop on celebrities
having sex for a paparazzo, and attend a strip club and buy a lap dance.
They can go online and check out the "GTA 5 Prostitutes, Sex, Strip
Clubs, and Booty Calls Guide." This inspired Suellentrop’s one criticism
of Rockstar Games: the women were all sexpots. "One of the only young
women in the game not oversexed and under-read is sucked into a jet
turbine."
When many of us were young, we could wander the neighborhood for hours
unsupervised. Sadly, parents today are too concerned for their
children’s safety to let them play outside. So many of these children
spend these same hours inside playing in a much darker world of
techno-mayhem their parents can’t even imagine.
Someone, somewhere will someday find himself desensitized and numb
enough to endlessly stab some girl in the face. And we’ll shake our
heads wondering what might have been done to prevent it.
