On violence in video games

For last week's Diverse Classrooms in a Visual Culture class, Rebecca asked students to bring in some facet of pop culture that could be discussed in terms of some of the issues that we've been discussing over the semester:  stereotyping, representation, identity, etc.  I brought a few Tintin books and a collection of Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics, as examples of colonialist attitudes towards non-Europeans so taken for granted as to be used in children's comic books (this is more the case in Herge's Tintin than in Barks' work).

It was good to get to expose some classmates to some of the best comics in history, I must say.  But Rebecca was clearly more excited about the fact that a few students took her up on her challenge and brought a PS3 into class, so as to demonstrate video games.

Far and away, the biggest event of the night was one classmate playing through the first fifteen minutes or so of a level from Call of Duty:  World at War, a WWII-era first person shooter that basically had every woman (and several men) in the room lamenting the ills of modern society.  The student pointed out that Nazis are pretty much the safest possible "enemy" to have in a game, in that only the absolute dregs of society would have a problem with their deaths being encouraged and celebrated.  Here's footage from the level - imagine this projected on a wall, HUGE, in a dark room, with lots of people loudly bitching about how nauseated they were.



The room was pretty much split between "HOW CAN YOU PLAY SUCH A VILE THING" and "WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL PEOPLE WATCH MOVIES ABOUT WORLD WAR II," with very little recognition of shades of grey.

I guess I inhabit that shade of grey.  This game was physically hard for me to watch, and I couldn't imagine wanting to play it on my own, but I'm currently (slooooowly) working my way through the next game that was discussed:  Grand Theft Auto IV.



(and really, there are a hundred billion comparable clips on Youtube, some of them set to the Benny Hill theme - I only chose this one because it showed up on a search that involved the word "carnage")

Why is it that I've got a weak stomach for a game in which the enemies are actual Nazis, based on historical military campaigns, while I find it to be a pleasant timekiller to play a videogame in which I can fire bazooka missiles into the Holland Tunnel and drop grenades behind me as I run away? 

Why is it that I'm kind of grossed out by the piles of bodies in Call of Duty but have enjoyed shooting zombies in Resident Evil 4, and am currently fairly impressed by the new 'blood' programming in the newest WWE wrestling game?




(the blood from one guy's forehead gets on the other guy's fists!  That's MUCH more moral than shooting Nazis, right?)

I think the issue is that Call of Duty presents itself as a simulation, and in fact the verisimilitude is pretty astonishing/repulsive.  By contrast, GTA4 is cartoonish, almost distant, and that allows for a player to casually dip in and out of ridiculously over-the-top destruction (anybody who trots out the old canard about how you can kill a hooker to get your money back hasn't played the game for very long -- there are many more interesting, even more ethically bleak things to do in the game.  Often while whipping through town on a dirtbike, firing an Uzi randomly).

The wrestling game's distance from actual, real-feeling violence is no accident:  no matter how 'realistic' the blood effects and physics on the figures is, a wrestling game allows the player to re-create a form of theater in which the end results are predetermined.  Roland Barthes wrote in "The World of Wrestling" (1957) that "Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque."  He went on to explain that wrestling was not violence so much as it was a ritualized representation of "justice" (of the "that bastard is gonna get HIS this weekend on pay-per-view" variety).

I've been a fan of pro wrestling for a long time, though lately I pretty much only watch decades-old matches or minor-league live shows.  It's a strange thing to admit that I have a hard time watching boxing but really like watching guys jump around in silly costumes hitting each other with folding chairs.  I couldn't watch it if it actually were 'real,' as it would not only be less dramatic, it would be less (low-)artistic, just a couple of guys getting beaten up.

So perhaps my issue with Call of Duty is that, no matter how artfully designed it is, how dramatic it is, it feels like there's no opportunity for escapism?