my mea culpa
-or-
grand theft plot-o
maybe it was my knee-jerk feminist leanings, or maybe it was the propaganda on video games i’d been subjected to since my mom banned DuckHunt from the house, but either way, by the time it was released, i’d decided that i was anti-Grand Theft Auto IV.
but sometimes, you get so wrapped up in an identity or a cause, that you stop thinking critically. though, i was probably only able to come to the aforementioned conclusion because i hadn’t rotted my brain on Sonic the Hedgehog.
so let’s start from the beginning:
feministing.com, a blog which i mostly agree with, but sometimes disagree with, posted an angry, and seemingly logical post about the terrible misogyny of GTA IV.
“ok,” i thought, “killing prositutes is bad. therefore, GTA IV is bad. therefore i am anti-GTA IV. ta da! i win! give me a beer!”
but then i started to hear dissenting opinions from people i trust.
“do you really think that more violence in videogames creates more violence in real life?” X asked me over and over.
“sure!” i said. “some poor lonely socially-maladjusted dude is sitting in his bean-bag chair playing GTA IV, he kills a prostitute and then he thinks it’s okay to do that in real life.”
X rolled his eyes. i sputtered out something about misogyny.
i wasn’t very convincing.
and in the days following, other very reputable sources started making compelling arguments for GTA IV. last weekend, NPR’s On the Media did a great segment interviewing a harvard scientist who had just completed a study of 1,200 middle schoolers and concluded there was no relationship between video game violence and real-life violence. there goes my argument.
and then my favorite sites started giving the game incredible reviews. slate, waxed poetic about how GTA IV is a “living, breathing place” and salon called it a “dark urban masterpiece.”
i mean, basically, now i kinda want to play it. i’m still not going to shoot me any prostitutes, but i am going to make the new argument that videogames are art. and i’m also going to give more credit to that guy in his beanbag chair, for being able to tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Couldn’t it be that the response is proof of how deeply rooted misogyny is in modern American culture??