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an E for Everyone rating all the way to an A for Adults Only, the equivalent of
an NC-17. Many video games called out for their violent content, including
Grand Theft Auto^ are rated M for Mature, essentially an R rating. That being
said, an R rated game cannot be purchased by a minor under the age of 18
without the presence of a parent or a guardian. In my own experience, it is the
policy of my local video game store not only to check ID, but to also verbally
confirm with the customer that he or she knows that a rated M for Mature game
is being purchased. Those safeguards are in place to keep violent content out of
the hands of those who may be too young to be exposed to it. The problem lies
in how these young people, then, are getting access to violent titles. My own
experience again proves useful. A few weeks ago, I was waiting in line to
checkout and in front of me was a mother with her teenage son — he was
perhaps 14 or 15. The clerk asked her whether or not she understood that the
titles she had were rated M for Mature. She gave her son a look, he gave her a
look that said “I want these games,” and she bought them. The overall point here
centers on simple economics: video games are expensive. First run releases of
popular console titles often cost around $60.00 apiece. Most teens and tweens
simply do not have that sort of disposable income of their own. The first line of
responsibility in determining whether or not a violent video game should be in
the hands of a particular teen or tween lies, then, with the parent.
Both academics and the public miss out on the larger richness of
materials found in video games by focusing on the violence in some of them.
That the analytical lens focused on video games should more completely shift to
other aspects does not serve as an argument to sidestep the fact that some video
games are, indeed, quite violent. However, the argument about violence in video
games, aside from being wholly unproven as a predictor of violent behavior in
the real world, becomes unproductively oversimplified. Violence exists in many
iterations in video games, as it does in other story forms including film and
literature. For example, two highly rated, Oscar winning, and critically lauded
films. Saving Private Ryan (1998) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), are both marked
by their use of graphic physical violence. In both stories, the violence is an
essential means by which to convey the emotional gravity of the narratives.
Viewers have to experience the visceral horror of the landing on Normandy
Beach in order to connect to the film’s core story: a moral exploration of the
value of one human life. 12 Years a Slave must depict the utter depravity of
slavery, including the horror of Patsey’s whipping, without flinching or making
it less horrible than it was. However, the conversation pertaining to these films,
or others like them, does not focus on how their violence will cause the decay
and breakdown of society. Violence in novels can range from murder in a hardboiled detective novel, to the depiction of rape in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and
on into myriad examples, most of which are completely different from one
another in form, intent, and relevance to storyline. While some groups regularly
call for the banning of books such as Beloved, this represents a small minority
voice easily overwhelmed by those who take a work in its totality before looking
at any violent content extracted from the whole.