The Blame Game: Politicians At Play
Politicians Censor Video Games For Society’s Ills
In April 2009, America revisited the school shooting at Columbine High. For a decade, survivors, friends and relatives remembered the 13 students and faculty killed from that tragedy, included in those 13 were the two teenage assailants. They dressed in black, trench coats and went about on a murderous rampage, targeting athletes, minorities and female students. Over two dozen students were injured or maimed and from that day, their lives were changed forever.
The Questions
How did this happen? Why did this happen? What motivated the killers to carry out this act? For a decade, there have been few answers. How did two, quiet but normal white teenagers carry out the most vile, school shooting in American history? The crime was only exceeded by an Asian student at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Posthumously, he declared that he was “inspired” by the acts of the Columbine duo. Like this crime and many others, there were little to no answers so America needed a scapegoat called gaming.
A History Of Blame
There were already concerns that fictional images depicting assault, mutilations and death desensitized those watching, and in 1976 a company called Exidy (Excellence In Dynamics) created a controversial video game called “Death Race”. It featured players controlling cars that ran over “gremlin-like” figures and funnily enough was immediately pulled from the consumer market, profiled on the primetime tv show 60 Minutes and lead to what was nothing short of a media fire storm.
GTA and the next 30 Years.
For the next 30 plus years, video games were being looked at for their violence, language, religious meanings and sexual content. They became the scapegoats of defense attorneys trying to secure lighter sentences for violent offenders. Video games fell into the same barrage of policing as songs with aggressive, perverse or violent lyrics in them.
During the 1990s, Sen. Joseph Lieberman conducted hearings over video game violence as it related to violent crimes committed by offenders. The video game industry grew more controversial as games with more graphical violence, sex and racially charged storylines were produced. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City drew the ire of Washington politicians, Vice City described a 1986 Miami, Florida showing Haitian and Cuban refugees embroiled in a bloody, gang war.
The main character earned “points” for car jacking civilians, and even picked up “perks” (ie: weapons, cash, etc) from murdering prostitutes, but what got to people the most was that he earned the most points by killing police officers. Several murders were blamed on Grand Theft Auto games. Attorneys used the “video game defense” in a number of trials with mixed results, sometimes it failed and other times it meant plea agreements were reached.
Studies Have Shown …
The Harvard Medical School Center of Mental Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health and the British Medical Journal failed to find a “conclusive link” to video game usage and violent activity. However certain studies have demonstrated that users display a higher level of aggressive behavior after playing violent video games.
A secret service study revealed that 12% of those involved in school shootings enjoyed playing violent video games; 24% of those examined read violent books; whilst 27% enjoyed watching violent films. So what’s the connection and why are video games still heralded as the primary cause of this unsocial and extremely violent behavior despite the studies showing very little correlation.
Hilary Clinton
Other politicians that have gone on violence in gaming campaigned include Hilary Clinton who in her time as senator helped implement a standard “Parental Advisory” tag on any video game having strong language, adult situations, sexual content and violence.
Game Over
Despite all the blame, games continue to be produced with violence, gore and sex. Problems within society still exist, suicide rates are on the rise, people are generally less satisfied with life, families are breaking apart, respect for elders is at an all time low, and of course the official reason for extreme anti social behavior is gaming.
Games have been blamed from as far back as 1976 and they will undoubtedly continue to take the blame. It’s just one of those things, a way to deflect the questions that politicians and leaders don’t have an answer to.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Gaming unto itself is not the problem, research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/