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From SeeingBlack.com Family/Youth “Thailand halts Grand Theft Auto sales after murder”
To illustrate to these classes of 50-plus students -- who always represented a significant diversity of races and ethnicities -- how much U.S. culture had shaped them all, I would ask a series of questions: How many women have never owned a Barbie doll? How many men have never owned a toy gun? And finally, how many men have never played the computer game, “Grand Theft Auto”? Over a period of at least a half-dozen years, as you might guess, I never had more than two students who had not owned the popular gender-intended toys, and never had a single male in class who had never played GTA. Then, to play devil’s advocate, I would ask the males: “Isn’t GTA the game where your easiest chance of gaining points and staying in the game is to have sex with a prostitute and then to kill her?” And, as many of the females gasped in horror, the guys would sheepishly admit that, indeed, this was true. They would quickly add, however, that it was only a computer game. “But don’t you sometimes have to bludgeon her repeatedly with a club, in order to make sure she’s dead?” I’d ask with mock naiveté. And, again, they’d reluctantly admit that this, too, was true but, again, that it was only a game. Now comes word that a game distributor in Thailand has halted sales of the super popular game after an 18-year-old high school boy in Bangkok said that he robbed and stabbed to death a 54-year-old taxi driver because he wanted to “find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game.” The murder was an accident, he said, that occurred as a result of the driver’s resistance. For readers who’ve been strangely unconscious for the past 10 years and haven’t heard of GTA, it’s been around for just over a decade and recently released its fourth edition. In its first week of sales in April 2008, six million copies flew off shelves, at a cost of $60-$90 a pop, depending on how advanced a version was purchased. Worldwide, GTA has sold more than 70 million copies since its inception. If you have a male child in the house there’s probably a copy of GTA in your household. And even if he doesn’t own the game, odds are that he’s played the game before, and “killed” a few prostitutes! Gamers can also engage in other interesting virtual activities in GTA. A teenage boy in an Atlanta suburb, for example, said in August 2008 that he learned to make seven Molotov-cocktail devices by playing the game. He and two of his buddies were arrested on 57 felony counts, including first- and third-degree arson for firebombing two Mercedes and a Honda Accord. The local police chief said the boys thought the fire bombings would be fun. Their parents, the chief said, were shocked. GTA also allows players to mug bystanders, steal cars, get tattooed and kill cops. I’m told, however, that cop killers gain a lot of points but won’t stay in the game long because all of the cops will come after the gamer and hunt him down. Now this isn’t a diatribe calling for mass censorship of an extremely violent videogame; GTA’s parent company Rockstar North, and its affiliates, have already been attacked with hundreds of millions of dollars in mostly unsuccessful lawsuits. And there are news reports that cab drivers in Spain and a consumers group in Malaysia are calling for bans on the game. Nor am I trying to make a cause-effect relationship between violence exposure and violent behavior. But how about a heads up for parents and guardians to know what it is their children are being exposed to in our brave new 21st century. How else can we engage them in appropriate discussions on right, wrong and morality? Because many adults today are not tech-savvy, or find themselves unable to keep up with the latest technological innovations that their kids handle with ease, they have abdicated their parental responsibilities. As concerned parents we should answer or find ways to answer most of these questions: Do we know whether our children have an Internet presence on facebook, myspace or some other carrier? Do we have access to this presence? Do we monitor this presence? Do our children own cell phones? Do we check to see how many phone calls text messages, photos, or videos they make or send to others? Do we know whether any of these are made during school, homework or bedtime hours? Do we know how many of these communications our children receive on a daily basis? And what about the hardcore lyrics of popular songs that get censored on radio and TV, but are downloaded directly to Ipods and mp3 players by our kids? We’ll revisit these issues in future essays. Meanwhile, note this interesting discovery I gathered from those cultural queries I noted at the beginning of this essay. In the last two years I taught the class, I noticed that the female gasps of shock at the murdered prostitutes were significantly lessened. So I asked them how many had played GTA. And guess what? Several hands went up -- the first time. The last year I asked, about a third of the women, too, had played the game. Playing with their boyfriends, they said. What a brave new world we live in. © Copyright by SeeingBlack.com |
