The Gutter Press, Witch-Hunts, and Censorship

Once again, a senseless, tragic murder is being blamed on video games, or a particular game, in this case Manhunt by Rockstar North. This really REALLY annoys me for so many reasons I probably won't even be able to get them all out, but here are a few thoughts, spat out as they occur to me.


Let's start with the "videogames made him do it" crap. There are two possibilities:

a) The person in question was completely sound of mind, and the game made them do it. This is quite clearly utter crap, and shouldn't really need refuting, but apparently it does. I have played video games for a LONG time, and in that time I have wasted monsters without number messily with a shotgun, splattered thousands of zombies, shot many people in the head with a sniper rifle, run over thousands of innocent pedestrians and even offed quite a few dogs. As yet I have never gone out and murdered anyone in real life (although stories like THIS bring me to the brink). Millions of people have played Manhunt, yet only one has apparently gone over the edge.

b) The person in question was mentally unstable, and the game played on that instability until they broke. This I can come closer to accepting, but even if this is the case, can you really blame the "trigger"? If he hadn't been set off by the game, it would have been a film, or a book, or a chair, or a bowl of custard. A mind that is pre-disposed to murder will go looking for an excuse to do what it wants to do anyway. What are we supposed to do? Keep pulling stimuli out of the way of people like this, and hope like hell they stagger through society without going off? Violence is in everything, if you look for it. It's in films, including many regarded as defining moments of cinema. Take a look at IMDB's Top 250. Number 1 - The Godfather. Number 2 - Shawshank Redemption. Number 4 - Godfather part 2. Number 6 - Schindler's List. All include graphic portrayals of violence and murder. Violence is in books, a form that arguably is even more soluble to the psyche. It's in Shakespeare, a literature included on school syllabus' (at least it was in my day). It's even in the BIBLE. Nailing a guy to a tree? Pretty violent. The Passion Of The Christ is relentlessly and graphically violent, and yet the church has been ENCOURAGING people to see it. If a persons psychotic psyche WANTS to find external violence to pacify the suppressed guilt it might feel from what it's propelling them to do, it WILL find it out there.

So, if videogames DIDN'T make him do it, what did? How about, I don't know, let's say, his upbringing, social situation and personal circumstances? For example? A radical theory, I know, but it is after all the reason for EVERY OTHER FRICKING MURDER EVERY YEAR!

For the most revealing sentence regarding this entire case, have a look at this story. Note particularly this sentence:

"Leicester Crown Court heard the defendant had planned to rob Stefan."

So, there you have a reason, a motive for the crime, actually being reported in the news stories relating to this case, and it's being TOTALLY ignored by the pitchfork brigade. It's a murder for money, nothing more unusual than that, EXCEPT that the parents of the victim picked up on a playground Chinese Whisper about a videogame, and blame that as it gives them a target to vent their grief at. Which brings us to part 2 of the story, the subsequent censorship of the game.

The parents of the victim called for the game to be banned. Now, this is going to be difficult to discuss without appearing insensitive to the parents and their loss, but since they've decided to propel themselves into the public arena, that can't really be helped. I don't recall voting for, or hearing of parliament passing, a law which puts the decision of what we all are allowed to watch or hear in the hands of the parents of murdered children. The decision of what I watch etc. is MINE to make, thank you very much. But of course, the gutter press jump on board, purely because they're happy for the story, and a few daft retailers feel compelled to make a knee-jerk reaction and pull the game, in spite of the fact that it prominently displays an 18 certificate on the box. Of course, they've only pulled THIS PARTICULAR 18 game, they can't get too carried away as the share-holders might complain, and I've no doubt they'll be carrying Doom 3 when it launches soon, not to mentiont the next installment of Grand Theft Auto, another notorious Rockstar game. I already don't shop at Dixons for other reasons of customer service, but i've just added Game to my boycott list. As i've already said, I decide what I will or won't watch, not some spineless retailer attempting to display faux-concern. I wandered into Woolworths yesterday, and noticed that Manhunt was also absent from their shelves. Then I wandered over to the DVD section and found this, a film banned in this country until recently as a video nasty. It was even in a promotion to encourage it's sale. Draw your own conclusions.

Just one simple thing is required to sort this entire video game furore out. Make the certification on video games compulsory, as it is with films. (It's only a recommendation, and the retailer can choose to ignore it, you learn something new every day). That's it. Problem solved. At this point, the responsibility lies squarely with the people it should do: The retailer, and the person purchasing the product. Then the world can return to normal, and the gutter press can go back to screaming rabidly about immigrants and liberals.

The biggest shame about this entire business is that because everyone is obsessing about videogames, no-one is really asking "why did he REALLY do it?". So the social circumstances that made him what he was continue to exist, and will shortly spit out another little killer. It's sad that we will have to wait for someone to be murdered by someone that DOESN'T play videogames, Dungeons & Dragons or listen to Heavy Metal records backwards before the REAL issues are addressed.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pop some zombie's heads off.