Bitter Pill
One of the unfortunate tasks for supporters of the First Amendment is that occasionally they’re obliged to stand up for it. Sometimes doing this doesn’t feel very good. Because sometimes it involves supporting creators and distributors of icky and odious ultra-violent movies and video games, which serve a termite-like function when it comes to diluting social-behavior standards that any morally decent society would want to stand by.
This is one thought, at least, in the wake of the Supreme Court having invalidated a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The court said in a 7-2 ruling issued earlier today that the 2005 law violates the First Amendment.
“The State wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children,” the decision reads in part via TheWrap‘s Tim Molloy. “That is unprecedented and mistaken. This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the Supremes essentially saying that no venal video- game content can be legally kept out of the hands of children? And in rendering this decision aren’t they basically stating that even the disgusting and unconscionable Japanese video game RapeLay needs to be protected from moral guardians of the state?
I agree that the state can’t and shouldn’t mandate moral content in entertainment and art, but there’s something sickening about courts and lawmakers giving a free hall pass to the makers of this grotesque diversion.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer dissented. I can’t believe I’m siding with Clarence Thomas.
“The law called for fining retailers up to $1,000 per game sold,” Molloy reports. “It covered games ‘in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being,’ if the violence is presented in a way that a ‘reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.’
“The law never took effect because lower courts in 2005 and 2007 also said it violated free speech rights. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an enthusiastic backer of it, appealed it to the Supreme Court.”
Does this mean kids can buy R rated movie tickets too?
To be pithy and reductive, you can use the law to keep pornography out of the hands of minors, but apparently you can’t ban anything else.
Riiiiight.
Then again, the Justices looked at video games as comparable to movies– where restrictions exist but have no force of law (you can’t go to juvie for seeing an R-rated film, for instance). Private companies and organizations like the MPAA can prevent minors from accessing their material, but you can’t use the law to restrict those materials. Between those restrictions and the obligations of parents to, you know, parent, I don’t see a problem with that arrangement for video games.
Every time we ask the state to protect us from ourselves, we give up our protections from the state. This stuff should be our job, not theirs.
Does this mean kids can buy R rated movie tickets too?
No– commercial agreement, not a law.
Wells to Rashad: What’s your point? Are you snarking or being sincere? Not the latter, I assume. This is a difficult issue. Don’t fart around.
I can not believe I am siding with Clarence Thomas.
The Supreme Court is wrong on this. There are massive restrictions put on what minors can and can not do.
Once again, the prurient-challenged court forbids sexual pornography but not violent pornography. We have got it all backwards.
How am I farting around? It’s a serious question. Videogames have ratings, and they’re not supposed to sell to minors already if they’re not applicable. How is this any different than movies?
“Once again, the prurient-challenged court forbids sexual pornography but not violent pornography. We have got it all backwards.”
Because we know violence is wrong. We’re raised to think that and we don’t act on those urges. It’s looked down upon in society and is a highly punishable offense. It’s an escape – unreality. Sex isn’t wrong, and everyone ends up doing it. So naturally the more sex one watches it influences them more than watching violence does. This has even more effect on younger people, who are increasingly having sex at younger ages.
Since this is unfortunately going to go off into the usual Kirby Dick “MPAA hates sex but okays violence” TIRED arguments, at least let me ask: You guys would REALLY be cool with letting kids watch like full-on Sasha Grey type porn, instead of like some Grand Theft Auto cartoon gunfire?
Jesus. I can see sitting there watching Friday the 13th with your kids… Violence is cartoonish and silly and a part of drama dating back a thousand years. But to sit there watching Evan Stone launching off on some chick is teaching them the majesties of human relationships? Bullshit.
I saw every violent movie under the sun starting at age 6. All it kid was make me more creative.
Well-adjusted Lexie watched countless violent movies from an early age? Shocking….
And fuck that straw man argument that says that we are talking about hard core shit that would make Hef uncomfortable. Pretty much all depictions of sex involving even semi-nude couples gets an R-rating, which for the sake of this discussion means it’s pornography.
So, hell yes, I’d rather my children watch two people having consensual sex opposed to them seeing people brutalizing each other.
As usual, you can easily see those who don’t have kids and don’t understand how hard it is in this age to control what your kids have access to.
The interesting thing about this court is that it has almost always come down on the side of the First Amendment. And in this case, they made the right call. Video games are already rated. It’s up to parents to determine what the kids can see, not the state.
It’s a shame that so many parents abrogate their responsibility in matters like this, but I’d still rather it be up to them, than some bureaucrat in Sacramento, or wherever.
Hard to believe it’s been almost 50 years since Lenny Bruce observed, “In America, you can show someone cutting off a breast but you can’t show someone fondling it” or words to that effect. We must want to program the young to be desensitized to violence and homicidal urges, otherwise how do you explain this weird-ass double standard? Protect the young from sex, but immerse them in interactive murder and destruction? Beam me up, Scotty, this planet sucks.
All I know is, when I was a kid, “sex and nudity” was referred to by my mom as “the evil thing.” We’d watch Halloween or Alien or The Shining or Dirty Harry together, and be all YEP YEP when motherfuckers were getting smoked, but then like in Dirty Harry where Eastwood’s peeping on that chick (HAHAHAHA I forgot how AWESOME that is till just now), my mom would BOLT OUT OF HER SEAT and go OH MY GOD DON’T LOOK AT THIS PART, IT’S EVIL, and flip the channel for two minutes, then invariably come back to it w me having missed tons of plot and exposition and whatever the next great scene was.
I was allowed to watch any violence I wanted from age 6, but no nudity or sex (that she knew of) till I was 15 or so. Not even a quick flash of boobs– it was EVIL and the actress was a WHORE who wasn’t being MODEST like the Bible says.
I think it was a little ridiculous, but I get the theory– violence in movies is fake, but those are real tits and asses up there, and that’s kind of EMBARRASSING to watch with your kids. Plus violence is a fact of life, and especially if you’re East Coast Catholic, violence is like a “people need to be punished,” eye for an eye, fire-and-brimstone thing that’s not just an accepted fact of life, but part and parcel with your uber-violent religion that’s ALL about seeing the evil people PUNISHED.
I grew up on Road Runner cartoons. Violent as all shit. Did that desensitize me to acts of mayhem?
I’m with Lex here. I loved violent movies when I was a kid. As I got older, some of those same movies started to disturb me (in fact, when I saw Bonnie and Clyde at 11 or 12, that bothered me – tho I liked it, too — and it was rated the equivalant of PG!!!).
The issue of sex vs. violence is complicated (esp when they overlap), but on some level sex and nudity are real and violence is unreal.
Appropos, I just watched Harry Brown, which is pretty awful – stupid, cliched, badly written, indefensible, but goddamn if I didn’t enjoy it. And yes I went “Cool!” when he shot the guy in the head and blew out the big screen TV behind him (uh, spoiler). I mean, that movie is full of cool violence, but is so morally questionable that you couldn’t have made it in the States (I’m convinced).
It would have been like if in Gran Torino Clint Eastwood started gunning down every punk kid in the neighborhood. And however much you liked GT’s meditation on masculine archetypes and the legacy of violence, tell me you wouldn’t have enjoyed that version.
Harry Brown is just the old man equivalent of The Brave One.
You do realize that violent video games are sometimes funded, designed, and marketed by the US military for purposes of innoculating children against the idea that killing is wrong. Some games are specifically intended to glamorize military service and to create the idea that killing the enemy is “fun.”
I sometimes wonder what would be made of a film in which graphic acts of penetration/sex occurred, but the producers went way out of their way to publicize that they had used phony genitals. Like if something as good as Boogie Nights featured penetrative acts, but everyone went out on the stump and talked about how hard it was to pretend to be having sex while kneeling under a table and leaning all the way back while fake legs thrashed about in orgasmic ecstasy.
I imagine it would still be the same old shit storm, NC-17 rating, blah blah blah. So, while I think there’s merit to an argument about violence=inherently fake and nudity (or graphic sex)=inherently real, and, also, therefore a fundamental difference in exactly WHAT is being presented (though this starts to get into graduate level notions of whether or not one can consider anything interpreted through a lens, “real,” and as someone who only has an undergrad degree, I run out of words or thoughts to fully come to grips with this) and thereby a different way of LOOKING at the two things… I still think that you can point to a very real puritanical streak when a man or woman being eviscerated gets an R, but a man or woman getting pounded gets an NC-17.
The whole fuckin’ things about property.
Well, Schwarzenegger is once again a hypocrite, given his own resume, especially since he vetoed a resolution for us to leave Iraq. Though you do have a point about the issue, given that I remember hearing ages about a banned video game which involved killing Jews in a concentration camp. Of course, you could argue that American History X and I Spit On Your Grave would encourage the same behavior…So I guess the only answer is to write letters if it goes beyond acceptable taste. For example, I remember Konami was forced to drop a planned sim based on Fallujah. I do know how you feel, though, because I don’t believe for a damned second that those Westboro fucks have a 1st Amendment right to essentially stalk and harass random people, just because they hide behind political speech doing it. And that decision will inevitably lead to more “surprise” nut-jobs-akin to that Holocaust museum shooter-joining the mix. As for exposure to sex vs. violence, they kind of had both in Schindler and Munich, and at least one social value film I saw in high school. And if kids don’t see it live, they’ll read or hear about it eventually. Especially with the Internet. Hell, didn’t Rihanna and Britney just basically act out a lesbian bondage scene a few months ago? Not to mention all these shows with pregnant teens cashing in on Juno. So while it is awkward enough just discussing the topic, to pretend it doesn’t exist is just delusional, and probably a major reason why it’s taken gay people this long to get the same rights as straights. And frankly, there *is* a bit of a double standard where it’s somehow ok to watch actresses slut around in revealing outfits on film, but seeing shots of them naked means you have a dirty mind.
bob: And how is that different from military propaganda in general?
Does that mean I have to see The Brave One now? Does she shoot a guy in the neck?
This is the best Supreme Court ruling in a goddamn long time, refreshing coming from the same court that basically strangled democracy and class action lawsuits. There’s an ugly tendency among parents and “children’s advocates” (who are nothing of the sort) to support fascistic and totalitarian measures in a move to “protect the children”.
I don’t play violent video games myself (not out of a weak stomach, but a rubbish reaction time and visual disorientation from change of camera angle), but I will defend people’s right to play them. It is the parent’s job to teach that real violence is wrong, and teach them that fictional depictions of violence are healthy ways of venting our primal violence instincts into something harmless.
I remember being very disturbed when I saw my first real anvil. That wouldn’t just give the coyote a bump in his head, that would crush his skull and kill him!
Any place I go that sells or rents video-games has a parents-permission policy for games rated M. And if they don’t, they’re probably catering to the Future Juvenile Deliquents Club. So with this ruling, the people have other avenues. If an establishment sells RapeLay to minors, get the petitions and picket signs, the news crews. I’d be mad if some place tried to sell it to my kid, but then I would feel like I screwed up somewhere back there if my kid tried to buy it.
Rashad, you do realize that, of the overwhelming amount of films (and television shows, for that matter,) to which young children have access, and to which they are ACTUALLY EXPOSED…. an extremely tiny amount describe or go any amount to “instruct” how sex is performed and virtually none actually portray sexual acts.*
Whereas a huge percentage actually instruct and/or portray how to critically injure or kill another human being.
And yet, murder rates are down…. and no one would make a “causational” connection with violence in films either way. Yet some idiots will still try to make a such a connection with sex in films. Its an entirely hollow, long-debunked argument, ESPECIALLY in the age of the internet with tons of such “instructional” material readily available to kids like Rashad (which, now that I think of it, may be the root of his problems…)
*When children are exposed to pornography or “sex instruction” videos, that is an entirely different matter. (Obvious point, but Rashad likely needs to read it.)
You think kids are dumb? They know how to have sex. It’s the suggestive nature of the show. It’s permeated from popular culture down to the programs for kids. Hell, the Disney Channel basically instructs young girls to dress like a slut and act rowdy. The exposure is the biggest issue. In my experience, it’s why so many black kids are sexually active. The music, and videos all inform them at an early age, how to act and how to speak about sex. I remember picking up my cousin, who was in the 5th grade at the time, and you could only imagine some of things I was hearing those kids say. I was disgusted.
And the problem is, people like you and everyone one else who’s all “free love” get all permissive about this sort of thing, remove all boundaries, then it becomes a widespread issue. But hey as long as they’re not bashing each other’s skull in that’s just fine.You people make it sound it’s such a crime against humanity, to not encourage kids to have sex until they’re later teen years.
Even in movies, sometimes it’s like what’s the point? Most love scenes are superfluous, and nudity is just a bonus to tantalize the majority of moviegoers – males.
What is the difference between Sean Penn sucking on Naomi Watts’ nipple and Peter North doing it? That’s not acting
There has NEVER been a reliable study showing. 100% causitive link between violent art of any kind and violent real-life action. Thusly, there is NO legal basis for restricting the sale or viewing of “obscene” or “violent” material to ANYONE.
The only people who should have any say over what kids see is their parents, and it is not MY or anyone else’s problem if restricting your precious dumplings entertainment is “hard” – nobody forced you to have the kid in the first place, so nobody else should be inconvenienced by your decision simply because its “hard.”
Boy Convicted of Murder in Wrestling Death
By DANA CANEDY
Published: January 26, 2001
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A 13-year-old South Florida boy who said he accidentally killed a 6-year-old girl while imitating professional wrestling moves was convicted of first-degree murder today and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The boy, Lionel Tate, was 12 when he lifted 48-pound Tiffany Eunick into the air and dropped her onto a table in his living room in July 1999. He was tried as an adult in Broward County Circuit Court and will be sentenced on March 2. The jury of 10 women and 2 men deliberated about three hours.
The boy, who will turn 14 on Tuesday, showed no emotion as the verdict was announced but cried as he was led handcuffed from the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies.
”He understands that it is the worst possible verdict he can get,” said his lawyer, James Lewis, who plans to appeal.
The victim’s mother, Deweese Eunick-Paul, a single parent, did not come to court to hear the verdict, on the advice of her minister, the prosecutor said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/26/us/boy-convicted-of-murder-in-wrestling-death.html
Teen Said ‘Dexter’ Inspired Brother’s Murder
A 17-year-old murder suspect has told authorities he identified with Showtime serial killer “Dexter,” according to ABC News.
Indiana youth Anthony Conley, who is charged with the murder of his 10-year-old brother, Conner, reportedly told authorities the TV show inspired him.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/entertainment/television/Authorities__Teen_Said__Dexter__Inspired_Brother_s_Murder-78658257.html
Thailand halts Grand Theft Auto sales after murder
(Reuters) – A Thai video game distributor halted sales of “Grand Theft Auto” on Monday after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the controversial game.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/04/us-crime-thailand-grandtheftauto-idUSBKK22888820080804
The sex vs.violence argument is a false choice, and really kind of irrelevant to why this was such an important and correct decision by the supreme court. Had this law been retained, it would have caused a chilling effect that would have reverberated thru the film, recording and publishing industries as well. There’s no way any of the mass market retailers, theatrical chains or what few remaining record stores would risk a per violation $1000 fine for someone under 18 getting ahold of content that was voluntarily labeled for adults. Any book, film, or sound recording defined as being for adults would have enormous difficulty getting any distribution or sales from gun shy vendors. It would been massively damaging to the creative community. You should be thanking the games industry that this was fought to the high court.
Ham radios?
“Ham radios?”
He’s on a roll.
Ham radios aren’t kosher.
“Don’t you blame the movies, Sid. Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
This ruling is political. And because the majority of the judges in the Supreme Court are Republicans–it reeks of Republican propaganda. Republicans = The Military = Violent Video Games. The Republicans are such hypocrites. Some of them–including the last president–claim to be Christians yet they do nothing to stop the violence in our sociiety. They’re against gun control. They’re against minors buying violent video games. Will they be against another Columbine incident? Because if they are–they have no one to blame but themselves.
“aren’t the Supremes essentially saying that no venal video- game content can be legally kept out of the hands of children?”
Not at all. They’re saying that the government can’t legally ban specific classes of video games from being sold to children. It’s exactly the same reason that local film censor boards were banned and replaced by the “voluntary” (wink-wink) use of the MPAA.
“And in rendering this decision aren’t they basically stating that even the disgusting and unconscionable Japanese video game RapeLay needs to be protected from moral guardians of the state?”
It is actually legal to sell RapeLay type games. But the First Amendment extends to the thousands of people you’d get protesting you in this country if you tried. No store wants to try because there’s very little interest here.
[Actually, as far as I understand the game, "RapeLay" itself would be illegal because it involves simulated sex with minors. But since the game has never been legally sold in the United States, there's no case there.]
Jeff – you should actually read what Thomas said before you side with him. He makes the claim that children have NO protection under the First Amendment. I suppose it’s possible you’d agree with him, but it’s certainly a far cry from what the precedents say.
Will they be against another Columbine incident? Because if they are–they have no one to blame but themselves
trollicious!
@Prager,
With as must restraint and respect as I can muster… Fuck right the hell off with that nonsense. Sociopaths, psychos and other mentally defective wastes of humanity have been blaming the influence of art and entertainment for their actions forever and a day. Anyone who says they believe that pro-wrestling or dexter or whatever else was anything more than incidental to those tragedies is either a fool or a liar with an agenda.
I am on a FILM blog, watching some so-called film lovers take up rank with the censors and the morality police and all manner of Neo-McCarthyites because this time they’re turned on a medium they either do not care for or do not understand. Fucking disgraceful. Hang your heads in shame.
You all should probably know the case before you argue whether the decision was good or bad.
The California law was so broad that games even games rated “E”, the lowest actual rating possible by the ESRB, (the MPAA of video games) could possibly get banned. “Any violence to an image of a human being” is in almost every game. Most, if not all, games use a “life” system in which your character is killed, whether comically or realistically (but according to the law, either one would fall under the ban). We’re not just talking ultra-violent games here; we’re talking basic, simplistic games designed for children under 12.
And what defines an image of a human being? To me, Mario is pretty damn cartoonish, but others may feel he’s human enough to fall under the ban. No where in the law does it define what the image of a human being looks like, even vaguely like saying “humanoid facial features, 10-fingered hands, 2 feet, etc.”. Of course, we can always just Justice Stewart this and say “I know it when I see it”, because, you know, that is a pipe, Rene.
Just like movies, the video game industry is a self-regulated business, with retailers imposing self-regulation based on industry-standard ratings. How you feel if a similar law was passed on films? Suddenly, you’re left with many Kubricks, Hitchcocks, and Bergman’s are gone or severely compromised because of censors. Yes, yes, there’s an inherent difference in video games as they’re an interactive art. However, the ESRB is much more strict with their ratings; I’ve seen things in R rated films that would get an Ao (adults only) rating from the ESRB (which, given general retailer policy, would effective ban it’s sale).
Look, when tragedy strikes, people like to point the finger at whatever form of media they don’t understand. Rock and roll, rap, metal, movies, books, and video games all have been blamed for some horrific action. But in reality, not only do studies show that violent media has no direct causation to violent behavior, but they show that already violent people are drawn to violent media. On top of that, many times it’s a variety of forces that cause the event, not just 1 thing. For instance, Columbine wasn’t done because the kids played Doom (which, ironically, wouldn’t get banned under this law). You see the signs just by looking at their social status as outcasts, the school’s lack of security, the parent’s inability to provide adequate counseling, and the mental stability of Harris and Klebold.
Blaming media for our problems is the cowards way out, and to think that this law wouldn’t just force kids to go to Nevada or Washington to get their violence on is stupid. It’ll hurt the industry’s path towards being considered an art form, and stifle creativity. And, as a film critic concerned with substance in a medium, you should be happy this law passed.
When the Supreme Court, the country’s ultimate arbiter of social decorum, sides with violent video games for kids, you know the game’s over.
We confuse social constructs with immutable laws.
“Supreme Court”, “First Amendment”, “free speech”…these are made up social constructs, subject to higher principles of morality, intelligence, and behavioral science.
All 3 of these principles agree: Society must protect minors from violence as entertainment, just as we protect them from guns, booze, and cigarettes.
Now the “Court” of arbiters rules in favor of unrestricted minor access to video game violence, saying in part, “This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence.”
Well then, START ONE, damn it! That’s your fucking job!
The made-up social construct “First Amendment” does NOT protect all “free” speech: Not verbal threats face to face, not yelling “fire” in a movie theater, not racist/terrorist verbal provocations.
Nor does “free speech” apply to corrupting the cognitive growth of children by subjecting them to incessant video game & movie violence.
Look, if this country’s come to a point of allowing a RapeLay-or any other violent video game-to children under 18, we’re lost…as a society, a civilization, and a culture. It’s all over.
When those in charge of interpreting our laws for the betterment of our society abdicate their responsibility by approving “Felony Grand Theft” for kids, the “thin veneer of civilization” just got thinner.
As the economy worsens, signs abound of a collapsing civilization and thinning veneer all around us. Hang on, the rides gonna get rougher & more violent.
Society will become one big violent video game.
Older folks will be culled.
But the younger ones…they’ll survive, and perhaps even thrive in America: The Video Game.
Maybe the Justices were right, after all, in allowing violent video games for kids under 18.
Preparing them for their future.
“The California law was so broad that games even games rated “E”, the lowest actual rating possible by the ESRB, (the MPAA of video games) could possibly get banned.”
That’s a serious stretch, although it is true that the other majority view paper (the main one was written by Scalia, I forget who wrote the second) just said that the law was too vague as to what it was actually banning.
Nobu – here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of things you’re wrong about:
Behavioral science
Minors’ access to guns
The Supreme Court’s fucking job
First Amendment protection regarding racist language
This decision [more specifically, it does not forcibly subject children to violence]
Anybody in this country, let alone children, having legal access to RapeLay
Causality
America
Well, nobu gets points for ranting, but George is plumbing some pretty serious depths of stupidity here. It’s neck-and-neck.
Still waiting for D.Z. to follow on his ham radios comment. They had movies back then as well, didn’t they. And newspapers, 78s, plays, novels, lectures, vaudeville, bearded ladies, carnivals, etc. The dissemination of `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ definitely led to the Holocaust.
“The dissemination of `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ definitely led to the Holocaust.”
That is at least a semi-valid point, even if it is based on greatly overstating the correlation, conflating anti-semetic propaganda with fiction, and treating 1930′s Germany as a vacuum where only one book had any impact at all.
But let’s put all that aside and pretend your statement is true — you’d *still* have to explain why ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is legal in the USA and yet we haven’t Holocausted anybody.
Because Henry Ford when presented with the evidence that it was forgery, said so and apologized. Meanwhile:
The exception to this is the Middle East, where a large number of Arab and Muslim regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic, including endorsements of The Protocols from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, one of the President Arifs of Iraq, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. The 1988 charter of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group, states that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion embodies the plan of the Zionists.[68]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion
“Boy Convicted of Murder in Wrestling Death
By DANA CANEDY
Published: January 26, 2001
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A 13-year-old South Florida boy who said he accidentally killed a 6-year-old girl while imitating professional wrestling moves was convicted of first-degree murder today and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.”
@george prager
Tate got out of prison, and almost immediately committed more violent crimes. He’s back in prison for the foreseeable future.
Who does he blame the later crimes on? Or was he just a bad seed that had a creative defense attorney?
George – your point has gotten extremely muddled, and bringing up Muslims in this context is kind of ridiculous. Like I mentioned above, there is a context to these things, and I’m pretty sure that the thousands of years of bad blood between Muslims and Jews has more to do with the current level of Islamic anti-semitism than the Protocols.
Antisemitism caused the Protocols, not the other way around.
Nobu: “Society must protect minors from violence as entertainment”
Then, for starters, how about prosecuting corporations which profit off of war?
“Society must protect minors from violence as entertainment, just as we protect them from guns, booze, and cigarettes.”
Actually, we define minors differently in different countries when it comes to booze and cigs. Hell, why is it ok to start getting lung cancer at 18, but you’ll still be carded if you buy a six-pack?
“Well then, START ONE, damn it! That’s your fucking job! ”
No, it’s not. They just interpret law, not write it.
“The made-up social construct “First Amendment” does NOT protect all “free” speech: Not verbal threats face to face, not yelling “fire” in a movie theater, not racist/terrorist verbal provocations. ”
No, but these are all fictional depictions of said situations.
“Nor does “free speech” apply to corrupting the cognitive growth of children by subjecting them to incessant video game & movie violence.”
Yes, let’s just expose them to “wholesome” comedians who advocate stabbing homosexuals and an anti-Semitic Jesus movie.
“Look, if this country’s come to a point of allowing a RapeLay-or any other violent video game-to children under 18, we’re lost…as a society, a civilization, and a culture. It’s all over.”
Yes, because a society in which an actual cheerleader who was raped and was forced to pay her attacker is still more civilized than one where some kids can pirate an offensive game.
Also, if you care that much about children, what about these poor bastards? Oh, wait, “save the children” only applies to ones which aren’t victims of war crimes.
George: “They had movies back then as well, didn’t they.”
Yeah, but I’ve seen people defend Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will as having “artistic” merit. So why is Splatterhouse any different? Still, again, they didn’t have specific visual cues to help them in sending people to the gas chambers any more than we had to napalm the Vietnamese.
“The dissemination of `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ definitely led to the Holocaust.”
It led to it, but again, so did the Bible.
Lupo: “and yet we haven’t Holocausted anybody.”
‘Cus we hated Indians and black people more than Jews.
“Because Henry Ford when presented with the evidence that it was forgery, said so and apologized.”
Yes, and there are a lot of people who haven’t apologized.
As for those fundies in the Middle East, it’s pretty obvious that the people there aren’t buying their bullshit any more. And the ones who were probably grew up in a culture which was backwards enough without the Protocols.After all, look at female circumcision.
Amber… I live in this world. I don’t like violence anymore than you do. Violence is bad thing. But when you see violence in films.. its.. you know… if movies, films caused violence, we’d be able to wipe out violence tomorrow. Boom. No more films, That’s fine with me. I’ll find something else to do. I’ll fuck on my on time, you know? I’ve got other interests, i’m a magician, and you know hopefully you know that will be something I focus on in the future because you can’t fuck forever, I realize that. Anyway… violence is something that plagues us as a society.
Can we make a video game that glorifies suicide and then send it to DZ?
When I was a boy, we only had spam radios.
“Can we make a video game that glorifies suicide and then send it to DZ?”
I can get with that, but perhaps he can still be saved (he says foolishly).
What about a Ludovico-like simulation that only allows a user to comment on a blog in which they have at least a passing interest in the subject matter being discussed?
“This ruling is political. And because the majority of the judges in the Supreme Court are Republicans–it reeks of Republican propaganda. Republicans = The Military = Violent Video Games. The Republicans are such hypocrites. Some of them–including the last president–claim to be Christians yet they do nothing to stop the violence in our sociiety. They’re against gun control. They’re against minors buying violent video games. Will they be against another Columbine incident? Because if they are–they have no one to blame but themselves.”
- 400Blows
Holy hell, where to begin?
The problem with pornography is one of hyper-reality. I don’t think most people recognize it as such, but pornography is not actually sex, it is a simulacra of sex.
As a 14-year old with no point of reference for human sexual behavior, exposure to pornography can be confusing and detrimental. You lack the basic life experience to contextualize the extreme actions in a hardcore porn film. The breasts are fake, the lips are fake, the hair is fake, even the cum shots are fake (that’s pina colada mix), but as someone lacking even the most basic of carnal knowledge (pun) you can’t tell.
The problem is the same one that Jean Baudrillard discusses in Simulacra and Simulation. Big Thunder Mountain is a ride designed to evoke the Grand Canyon. When we see it, we are reminded of real natural beauty. However, Disneyland is a place designed to entertain children, most of whom haven’t seen the Grand Canyon. As a result, the simulacra becomes the initial point of reference, so if and when these children DO see the Grand Canyon, they end up comparing it to Big Thunder Mountain as its antecedent. The artificial becomes more real than the real.
VIdeo games and narrative films can have similar effect, but are less problematic because we are introduced to them under the guise of fiction. Pornography is made up of sequences that ostensibly recreate reality and function in a manner designed to cause the viewer to more wholly identify with the “protagonist” (the woodsman). Our interactions with pornography are significantly different than they are with other forms of fiction.
All of that said, I am 100% against censorship, excepting hate speech in the form of specific calls to violence and unsimulated depictions of rape, which would include all forms of child pornography. We don’t need the government to tell us what media is “safe” and what media is “dangerous”. You know damn well that the most censored materials would not be the prurient, but rather the profound.
Hey Rashad…are you a self-loathing African American, or are you just a bigot with some serious sexual hangups? This is the second topic in a week where you’re ranting incoherently about how all the children are having sex because of the insidious specter of black culture.
For the record, teen sex, teen pregnancy, teen abortion, and teen STD rates are all DOWN nationally over the last decade. And, every state with real, comprehensive sex ed instead of bullshit abstinence only has a lower rate of all of these social ills than do the latter states.
When I had sex in high school, it sure as fuck wasn’t because of MTV or the Disney Channel or internet porn or peer pressure. It was because sex is friggin awesome and you’re evolutionarily designed to really, really, really wanna screw when you’re 14 or 15.
Also, every single one of you is completely and totally wrong about every single thing you’ve said regarding Columbine. It wasn’t a school shooting about Jocks and Goths, it was an act of domestic terrorism designed as a response to the Oklahoma City Bombing and Waco.
Harris, the mastermind of the attack, planted bombs out in the woods to distract police and fire. Next, He and Klebold set large explosive bombs in the school cafeteria, set to go off during the 5 minute passing period between lunch shifts when over 500 students would be in the room. Meanwhile, the duo would wait outside and then make their assault on the main doors at a 45 degree angle from one another, killing any students who managed to escape the burning building. Then, before the police even knew who the shooters were, the killers would commit suicide in the building. After this, they would make their final statement. Both boys had loaded their cars full of explosives. The parking lot would be the natural triage and media area after the attack. The boys set their bombs to go off at 5 pm, just in time to explode live on national television for the nightly news.
Fortunately, Harris couldn’t wire his bombs properly. But it was NOT about jocks or geeks or goths or bullying at all.
hunterd: There’s no way you can compare the actual Grand Canyon to a generic roller coaster ride. That’s why it still holds up as a tourist site.
“But it was NOT about jocks or geeks or goths or bullying at all.”
I highly doubt that,. They were nuts, and clearly had problems before they even went to that school, but they *were* pushed. And the fact that even a governor who sucked the political cock of a bully who later became President has acknowledged it as an issue in TX-a state where they think they can solve all their problems with guns and pollution-means that it’s gotten out of control in recent years to the point that they can’t sweep it under the rug like they did in the past.
“You think kids are dumb? They know how to have sex.”
1. No, no – I think “kids” are smart. They happen to get the actual mechanics of sex from sources OTHER than that movies we discuss on this blog.
2. I think YOU’RE dumb.
“Even in movies, sometimes it’s like what’s the point? Most love scenes are superfluous, and nudity is just a bonus to tantalize the majority of moviegoers – males.”
3. You are seriously unqualified to post here.
“What is the difference between Sean Penn sucking on Naomi Watts’ nipple and Peter North doing it? That’s not acting.”
4. See point #2 above. And that particular scene in “21 Grams” you cite? It also underlines & bolsters *my* point, not yours.
(In one – not the least – way: Yes, so very many kids are introduced to sex by foreign art-hose films. D.Z. – you may have met your match!)
Kakihara
It’s an entire book of philosophy, an entire life’s work, actually. I was just giving one small example. The Matrix is pretty much an action movie about Baudrillard and Foucault’s work.
Bullying did NOT cause Columbine. Period.
And by the by, there might not be much of a difference between Peter North sucking on a nipple and Sean Penn sucking on a nipple, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for either of them to be doing it in the first place.
“And the fact that even a governor who sucked the political cock of a bully who later became President”
This is the DZ I prefer. When he’s spouting shit that’s so nonsensical, it becomes almost a haiku.
“What about a Ludovico-like simulation that only allows a user to comment on a blog in which they have at least a passing interest in the subject matter being discussed?”
I’d settle for a game that just simulates the Internet, so he can post to his heart’s content and get into all the arguments he wants, but the computer will handle the other side and nobody else will ever have to read them.
And this would make NO DIFFERENCE to his life.
You people fucking depress me. I hope none of you are parents, or ever become parents.
Don’t worry MechanicalShark, I for one never plan on replicating my shitty genetics. Self-selecting Eugenics is the only thing that will save our species.
“I’d settle for a game that just simulates the Internet, so he can post to his heart’s content and get into all the arguments he wants, but the computer will handle the other side and nobody else will ever have to read them.
And this would make NO DIFFERENCE to his life.”
LoL. Growing up, there was this program my parents bought for me and my sister called ELIZA (it was actually quite old at this point and was just bundled in with much more traditional “games”). It was basically written as one of the very first attempts at replicating human language and interaction as a form of artificial intelligence (you’re a sharp guy, so I’m sure you’ve probably heard of it).
I think the big Inception-like twist to all of this would be that D.Z. was actually computer programmers’ modern incarnation of ELIZA (right down to re-registering similar names when banned so he can continue his ridiculous trolling). He seems almost inhuman in a lot of subtly weird little ways.