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"Banning a game is a distraction, recasting the problem in unrealistically
simple terms that do nothing to address the reality of the complex world."
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Why ban Manhunt 2? The reason, according to BBFC, gaming's regulatory body who
yesterday declared they were refusing to rate, thus banning, Rockstar's sequel in the
UK, is that it
'would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors...
[that]
would be unacceptable to the public.' Their reasoning, vague assessments about stalker
gameplay and dangerously bleak tone, is as shallow as the
recent howling denouncements of violent videogames that we suspect influenced the
decision: any able-minded person can see that. Whether games are violent or fluffy,
good or bad, comfortable or upsetting, a ban is never the answer. Censorship is never
acceptable.
We live in violent and unsettling times. Teachers are
searching students for knives, children barely into double figures are hurting
perfect strangers for kicks and then posting the video online so others can get some
entertainment on their break and post banal comments, before getting it on their
phone and laughing in the pub with their mates. Many young people are involved in
shootings and beatings, fueled by a culture of drugs and alcohol, the newspapers
regularly report horrible tales of pensioners being attacked for change, or some
urban youth maimed for walking on the wrong side of a neighbourhood.
And we live in a culture that tolerates and celebrates violence. But the problem is
not
with the games, films and music that replicate and fetishize violence, it's at the
core of the common modern condition. Excessively violent societies are caused by
apathy, by a
political system that discourages action and involvement, by a post-Thatcherite
asocial attitude that says there are no ties between you and the people you live
near and interact with, by schools that, with under-funding and a weary
workforce, cannot instill a sense of shared values in their students, by the slow
destruction of the family unit, by over-worked and complacent parents, by a
empty consumerist ideology that says everything's a commodity and you don't have to
actually believe in anything anymore, by a high availability of guns and other
weapons, by economic deprivation and social immobility that force the use of gangs
and violence to get ahead in life. This is a culture that often breeds alienated,
apathetic,
bored individuals, with few values and litte respect for those around them.
In this culture, a single game, any game, is the tiniest drop in the ocean.
The way to cut violence is to rebuild the ties of community and the family unit,
give kids something to aspire to beyond owning the latest piece of blinged nonsense,
increase
social justice and make proper, safe schooling a national priority. Banning a game
will do nothing: it is a distraction, recasting the problem in unrealistically
simple terms that do nothing to address the reality of the complex world.
That is why the banning of Manhunt 2, for all its worrying implications, can be cast
as pointless and pathetic: banning the game will do next to nothing to
alter the public's attitude towards violence, since playing it would do next to nothing
either. And if you really want the game, you will get the game outside the UK and
Ireland with little difficulty. The BBFC's action is more posturing than anything.
Should kids play Manhunt? No. But kids shouldn't be playing Grand Theft Auto
either, or watching Hostel either. Why? Because children's understanding of
the world is a work in process, and they lack an intellectual firmness
to really comprehend the consequences and factors shaping violence, and to know
that no slick soundtrack and white shirts makes mutilating another human
being cool or fashionable. BBFC knows this: hence the 18 certificates on games and
films with the potential to warp children's attitudes towards violence and sex.
The Manhunt ban is the equivalent of the BBFC saying they don't have faith in their
own rating system, despite ELSPA director general Paul Jackson's ludicrous claim that
it demonstrates an "effective" games ratings system in the UK: that making Manhunt an 18 somehow won't isn't enough,
so much so that the only option is to stop it hitting shelves. This says more about
the ability of the retail industry to enforce age certificates than the content of
Manhunt 2. After all, it is not the concern of game developers what the potential
effects of some stranger playing their title is. That task is with the state's
regulatory bodies, the retail industry selling the title, and the parents or guardians
that are supposed to be monitoring what their children are viewing.
The age limit - for smoking, voting, sexual intercourse, whatever - is drawn because
we accept that there is a fundamental difference between adults and children.
Children have not
yet been fully educated, are still developing emotionally and physically, and so
many of them cannot be trusted to deal with certain things in life safely.
Obviously the
distinction is sometimes arbitray and incomplete - I know many under-age persons who
are mature and
level headed - but we accept that some sort of general distinction is needed. With
that acceptance is the assumption that above the limit we gain the capacity to
make our own decisions about how we live our lives. By denying Manhunt 2 a release,
instead of simply applying an 18 rating, the BBFC are robbing us of the autonomy to
decide if Manhunt 2 is something we want to, or should, be playing. Is Manhunt 2
really too sadistic? Brutal? Bleak? A good game? A shallow game? I don't know.
Maybe the game does go too far, but that is something I should be
allowed to decide myself. The BBFC, in their condescension, have decreed that I am
unable to be trusted with this responsibility.
Other problems will be dissected on the boards, blogs and main site in the next few
days. Why does this game deserve a ban when all of the previous decade's hyper-violent
titles have avoided one? Can the BBFC
really claim that no outside pressure forced this decision, after all the (unfair)
controversy the original and the developers have received from the media, 'concerned'
groups and a certain loud and stupid lawyer? At what point does 'bleakness' become illegal?
Is the game really that harsh?
(Our boy Mike has been at Rockstar's
offices this month: once the embargo runs out this week expect his verdict on the
tone and content of the title.)
But for the moment, there are some certainties. Banning games doesn't work.
Censorship, the weapon of the small-minded and
weak-willed, hurts us all. Adults should be able to
make their own decisions about what they play.
And, however offensive, adolescent, unoriginal
and intellectually vapid Manhunt 2 might be, the opinions of the few should
not be allowed to govern what pieces of art and entertainment the rest of us adults have
access to.
Conor Smyth
conor@n-europe.com
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