Why would I make a post on the Saturn Junkyard about a PS3 launch game? I'll tell you why...
Resistance Fall Of Man has kicked up a stink in my home town.... A completely bogus, irrelevent, and nonsensical stink... and I feel the need to speak about it!
OK, so what's the deal? Well, some of the scenes in this alien vs. human RPG/shooter takes place in Manchester Cathedral. Yip! I know you never heard of the place, but basically it's a huge metropolitan church, in Manchester. Some young scamp has mapped the real environment into the video game.
So, we see some shooting of aliens, taking place within the 'real' Cathedral. Not humans you understand, but aliens. The end result of this piece of 'realism'? The Church up in arms, the story a big piece of news on Sky and The Manchester Evening News. And once again the tired old link between video games, and real violence being established...
The Bishop Of Manchester on Sky News, lamenting the fact that his cathedral was the backdrop to the game. Then UNBELIEVABLY, the mother of a kid, murdered within the gang wars that pollute Manchester, linking the shooting within the game, to the shooting of her son!!!!! BTW... This is one woman's experience... There are unfortunately many others... Look here...
FUCK ME! Whilst I've every sympathy for any parent that has lost her child, to link it to this game just limits and dilutes the real reason her son died... It's 'cos of 'Gang-banger' mentality, teenage bravado, socio-economic depravation, failures in the education system, a lack of significant black male role models within the black community, a perpetuation and glorification of 'ghetto' mentality, a refusal within the Moss Side community to take on accountability for black on black crime!
And if all this sounds a little racist, please allow me to contextualise the whole post! Shots were fired by white kids, at my son's (innocent) black friends, this week on my street! Yep! White boys are equally capable of acting like dicks, and popping caps at innocent black youth.
So we've got a multi-cultural problem with teenage boys, suckered int the 'gangsta' mentality.
And how do we address this? By laying the blame at the feet of a game developer... By somehow, placing accountability on a video game.
It makes me wanna cry! Believe me, anyone who points the finger at a video game, rapper or film, is side lining the real issue!
Instead of deflecting the horror of inner city society in 2007 onto a game, maybe we should be looking at the causality of the attitudes that leads a young person to pick up a gun... And deal with that.
What hurts me the most is that I taught some of these boys... I knew them as pre-teens when they were youngsters with potential... Somehow, their environment has sucked that potential out of them...
Sorry if this seems like a rant, but that's exactly what it is...
There is a lot of violence, rape, murder and genocide in the Bible... Maybe the Bishop Of Manchester should think about that! I never saw that fucker speaking out about young black men, shooting each other on a week to week basis on his doorstep... Until his church was featured in a video game...
However, as soon as some fictional character shoots a 'bug' on a rendered version of his church, he's up in arms and ready to speak to the Sky cameras, and the story is on a loop on international news.
Fucking, arse, bollocks, shit, wank! Where and when will the ignorance end?
12 comments:
There is just nothing else I can say, thats pretty much the truth. People just dont like to point out the real facts. Seriously to blame a video game for what happened is just a disgrace, street problems have deep roots I know it, I lived it. Now if they really want to make a cover story on something they should do it on one of the main contributors to crime,(*regurgitates in disgust*) Rap!
I would like to point out that this game took place in the 1950's...
CLEARLY this violence against aliens decades ago laid the groundwork for todays problems...
There's an interesting documentary on screwattack.com about the whole subject of the media trying to turn gamers into killers. It's pretty interesting and worth the 7 min or so
contemptible that years of neglect from both the relgious and the political community have contributed to a youth who see a gang culture as more comforting and supportive than their elders.
Contemptible even more for those bastions of society to cite an element of youth culture as reprehensible.... and remain silent when images of dead iraqi and lebanese children were paraded on our sitting room tv's for all our children to see....
excuse me while i spit...!
Thankyou for your comments esteemed contributors and friends... Sorry for the diversion from the normal Saturn related proceedings, but this story really yanked my chain... I loved Elderly's summing up BTW...
I read another example in the press today about a clearly unstable guy that had stabbed a nurse who had gone off her ward, outside of the hospital for a fag break (that's cigarette break).
She had been stabbed 70 times by a clearly mentally ill youth. He was said to have been a 'gamer', who spent his life in (quote) "virtual world".
The fact that he had spent most of his time trawling the internet for satanist, murder, sadism, suicide sites was brushed aside to focus on the fact that he sometimes
"played video games" (a fact that appeared in the headline...)
He could have been playing Fifa, Pro Evo, Cars, Kingdom Hearts or Cars didn't matter...
Fucking media!
Excellent post Father, excellent. Probably a definitive one too.
Oh, and apparently I couldn't agree more. Trying to blame social ills on such trivial consumer choices as video gaming, books, movies etc is plain ridiculous and definitely not naive, but part of a whole attempt to obscure reality.
But we all know of the spectre that will forever haunt Europe, dont we?
Fifa....*shudder*...
Is Fifa the spectre hanging over Europe... Or is it the Illuminati?
You spoke the truth Father. Here, here!!!
Why thank you J! I'm glad this post delivered the message I wanted to put across... I thought it might have been a little controversial and let's face it... Its not the usual fayre served up on the SJY...
I recall you once speaking of how you wished your Navi Saturn thingy to give blow jobs. I think we've already crossed the threshold of whether the Saturn Junkyward can handle controversial. :P
I agree whole heartedly with what you said though. It seems everybody wants to shift blame in order to avoid the real issue. "Somebody got shot let's blame games and that black kid down the road!" It's not right.
I'm glad your kids are okay though. I assume that's one of the scariest aspects of being a parent - losing your children. There's so much out there that you can't protect your kids from. Silly arseholes on the streets with guns being one of 'em.
... well all hell will break loose when GTA 4 hits the shelves...
Blaming games is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of!
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