Modern parents are strange creatures. They perceive threats to their children in every shadow and seek to protect them from imagined monsters that rival any their kids might conjure up. This bizarre need to shield kids from everything has taken dodgeball off of American playgrounds and made us wary of any toy with a Made in China sticker on it. Outside play is all but impossible when parents believe that if their child steps outside even for a moment, some crazed kidnapper will come snatch him up.
Undeniably, this absurd fear for the safety of our children comes from the maniacal spin that the media places on everything it reports. The media would have us believe that if a toddler plays in his front yard, he will be kidnapped. If a girl makes a MySpace page, she will be stalked and raped. If a boy gets his hands on Grand Theft Auto, he will shoot up his school with his father’s hunting rifle. Of course, when logic is applied, it is clear that responsible parenting could prevent all of these tragedies. The toddler won’t be kidnapped if his mom or dad watches him while he plays. The girl won’t gain a stalker-turned-rapist if her parents monitor her computer activity and control the amount of information she puts out on the internet. And the boy won’t become a murderer if his parents lock up their guns and address his apparent psychological issues. This all probably seems like common sense, and it is. But, where the media is concerned, logic does not apply. Logic doesn’t attract viewers. Logic doesn’t make for interesting and dramatic stories.
To compound the issue, we live in a society where people are encouraged not to accept responsibility. Parents would rather blame their kid’s potty mouth on television for its rampant cursing than blame themselves for teaching their children not to curse. They would rather blame their son’s pornography addiction on the internet’s lack of censorship than blame themselves for not monitoring his computer activity and teaching him not to indulge in such temptations. They would rather blame their child’s violent tendencies on those horrible violent video games than blame themselves for buying their kid M-rated games.
The fact of the matter is, the First Amendment, our most valuable freedom in this country, allows people to say “bitch” on TV. It allows Jenna Jameson to bare all on film. And it certainly allows game designers to make bloody games. It allows me to keep this blog and say whatever I want in it. It even allows the media to constantly shock the world with its dramatic horror stories.
The First Amendment assumes that people are smart enough and responsible enough to decide for themselves what they believe and don’t believe, what they read and don’t read, what they watch and don’t watch. It also assumes that parents are doing their jobs and raising their kids. It assumes that if little Johnny begs for Manhunt 2 this Christmas, and Mom and Dad don’t want him to play a violent M-rated game, they won’t buy it for him. No matter how much he whines, he’ll just have to settle for Ratchet and Clank or maybe a new bike.
People just don’t seem to realize that when they cry out for the government to regulate video games, movies, and music based on their content, they’re asking for their First Amendment, their most valuable freedom, to be taken from them. And for what reason? Because they don’t want to accept the responsibility that goes along with that freedom. Because they’d rather let the government control what we’re allowed to say than decide for themselves what media they allow in their homes.
The point of all this is that parents today believe that things like violent video games are a threat to their children. This may true to some extent. 8-year-olds have no business playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. However, all parents have to do to protect their kids from this threat is not buy them M-rated games. That’s it. What parents don’t realize is that they are the single biggest threat to the video game industry. Politicians would leave the issue of censoring video games alone entirely if their supporters didn’t cry out for them to do something about violence in games. There is nothing people in the video game industry can do to defend themselves from this threat except hope against hope that parents and politicians will stop their senseless war on video games and on the First Amendment itself.
Responsibility is the price of freedom. That is the bottom line, and it is something that people today have clearly lost sight of.
I agree with you on First Amendment rights being a freedom, but the First Amendment IS limited on what you can say. To quote it:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
What this does not protect against is issues such as slander or racist comments. I believe most take the concept of the First Amendment to a level that it wasn’t originally written for, thinking they are able to say anything they want and it is protected. This is not the case.
However, I do feel that as artist, our First Amendment rights in this country are under attack. Specifically multimedia mediums, such as film, television and games. I do believe that the heart of the problem is parenting, since ratings systems have been established for these mediums, unlike other mediums, like printed material. It’s ironic, to me, that a 13 year old cannot rent a copy of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, but there is no problem with them purchasing the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. (Yes, I called a local bookstore to make sure that this statement was accurate. And this was a national chain.)
I guess it just goes to show the power of coercion that moving images have instead of the unlimited resolution of our human mind. I’ve always wondered if a movie that captures the subject of the Holocaust, such as Shinder’s List, wouldn’t be more powerful if the user was forced to take the role of a nazi storm trooper in a concentration camp. Of course, in the current model of censorship of games, this game would never be created with a huge uproar.
[...] 29, 2007 I recently posted a comment on a fellow designer’s blog. She had posted about first amendment rights, and I had commented about the irony of written word censorship over digital medium censorship. To [...]
You can’t sacrifice liberty for the illusion of security. I don’t think many understand why the Constitution is so important.
Unfortunately people like things to be easy and taken care of without any effort invested. Parenting is one of those things that are difficult. No one ever said it was going to be easy, and anything that starts off that painful and bloody probably won’t be easily taken care of. So because parenting is challenging everyone must, for whatever reason, give parents more respect and they automatically know more than you. How many times have you heard “When you have kids you’ll understand.” I already understand raising children is probably one of the most difficult things you could do but that doesn’t mean I should sacrifice anything because of it nor does it give a parent more credibility than I have. But society seems to work against those thoughts and ideas.
One thing we should keep an eye on is the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. It passed in the house as H.R. 1955 and is currently in the Senate as Senate Bill 1959. Its pretty vague and actually quite frightening. Could a video game or any artistic production cause a violent radicalization of the people and become a threat to homeland security? The bill is extremely vague and I could see things getting out of hand as they did during the days where the US Government was hunting for communists.