A Big, Wordy Scholarly Post.
Sorry the post is so late today, by which I mean I should have had an article up like 6 hours ago. Nonetheless, as I consider the time before I go to sleep to still be the previous day, even if it is actually 4 and a half hours into the current day, you can consider this the post for Monday.
This is the reason I actually haven’t posted. I had to write a long-ass research paper for my Sociology class. I thought I’d go ahead and post part of it up here. It’s about the effects of violent media on social groups and individuals, and this section in particular covers why I don’t think that the effects violent media (in particular, video games) have on people are as serious as you may think; specifically, because when a scientist says games cause “aggressive behavior,” he doesn’t mean the subject starts punching him, he means a stronger desire to compete and take action against what the subject sees as an opponent. When Jack Thompson cites that same study, he tries to tell you it means the games compel the subject, perhaps through black magic, to take up the nearest firearm (which people like Jack Thompson have gone out of their way to make as accessible as possible) and just kill everything they see. I’m a little too fucking tired right now to tell if this is good or not, and I may reconsider this in the morning and replace it with dick jokes and Galaga references. Enjoy it while you can.
An interesting component of this debate is the relativity of the way some material is examined compared to other, similar material. Consider two games, both of which involve similar activities. In both, the goal is to defeat your opponent by physically attacking him, attempting to completely disable and prevent them from being able to progress. The only difference is one is real life and the other is make believe. The activities I am describing are football (specifically playing defense) and the video game Mortal Kombat. Both have similar effects on aggressive behavior afterward, but the difference is that Mortal Kombat is considered by many to pose a danger to children, while the other is a routine activity children are encouraged to participate in. Mortal Kombat is sometimes seen as dangerous (in the same way as other games) because it increases aggressive behavior towards others in children. Football, on the other hand, is encouraged for children because it causes increases in competitive behavior in children. These are different words for the same type of behavior. Of course, I am not suggesting that football is “just as dangerous” as video games; in fact, I am saying just the opposite. My point is that, strictly from an observational point of view, the science so often touted to “prove” that video games and other violent media cause violence could be used against many activities that are considered “good” for children. While I was able to find several studies linking the play of video games to violent behavior, and several linking the play of sports to aggressive behavior, I couldn’t find any studies that compared the two. However, it would seem from the data presented that the emotions produced by both activities are similar, and despite the pejorative use of “aggressive” in many news reports about violent media, it seems that, in the actual scientific data, it’s very similar to the “competitive spirit” so valued in American culture. This is often a problem when a scientific study is done with the purpose of evaluating and proving or disproving a specific claim; sometimes the data found is not properly contextualized. While I am of course not encouraging aggression in children, I can say from personal experience that, having grown up an only child in a neighborhood with no children for 10 miles, video games and televised football both helped develop understanding of the proper way to compete with others and how to contextualize aggression developed as a result of competition. I have concluded through my research that the “aggressive behavior” and “more violent reactions” touted by the news media and moral crusaders are really the same things I learned by playing pee wee baseball; a desire to do better than my opponents and be successful.
Comments
Leave a Reply
raddevon on 04.27.2010
The devil’s advocate asks: Do you think it makes any difference that football uses violence as a mean to the end of getting a ball across a line on the field where video games sometimes use violence as a means to the end of killing the opponent? Obviously, video games don’t occur in meatspace so the threat of injury from the activity is incredibly slim compared to something like football where actual violence is taking place. However, the violence in football is toward a contrived goal that is much more abstract. For instance, if I have a clear running path to the end zone, I’m not going to keep ramming into the opposition for the sake of it. In MK, I may have a clear path to the other side of the screen, but I’m just going to keep spamming that sweep kick until I can unload my fatality.
raddevon on 04.27.2010
I should also note I had to put on my monocle to read this post.
Ninjapocalypse on 04.27.2010
I think that is a valid point, but I also think it actually backs up my point in a way. While the immediate goal in football is more abstract, the ultimate goal of the two games is the same: to be victorious over the opponent. The only difference is the means by which victory is achieved. The argument that in football you don’t continually run into the defense if you have a clear path to the end zone, while in Mortal Kombat, even though you are able to reach the other side of the screen in Mortal Kombat, but are still inclined to attack your opponent physically, is flawed, because in football, the means of victory is to reach the end zone, without any regard to physical contact other than as an incidental occurrence, while in Mortal Kombat, the goal is to defeat the opponent through physical contact without any regard to location. The basic goal of the two games is the same; you just achieve the goals in different manners. Mortal Kombat doesn’t reward you for violence any differently than football. In football, a strong physical defense will push the offense back and prevent them from being able to score. Likewise, in Mortal Kombat, scoring an uppercut takes away energy from your opponent, making it harder for him to succeed. Ultimately the violence is just a means to prevent your opponent from defeating you; overkill violence is not rewarded. The only argument against this is the presence of the fatality in Mortal Kombat. However, the fatalities are not really rewarded; they’re merely a way of showing superiority over an opponent, much in the same way as beating a team in football by 20 points as opposed to 1. The actual violence isn’t edified so much as the skill shown in performing the move as a way of demonstrating superiority over the opponent. The ability to enter the series of button presses necessary to perform the move is what is rewarded, and that is every bit as abstract as running to an end zone in football.
I hope this all makes as much sense as I think it sounds like it does. I had a much better reply written, but I accidentally clicked on a link on that goddammed stupid “bookmark toolbar” in Firefox and it just erased the whole fucking thing. If I wasn’t using a computer at school to type this it wouldn’t have been a problem.
Also, kudos on wearing the monocle. However, I think I should note that to get the full effect of the article you should be wearing full morning dress, including a tailcoat, waistcoat, and cane.