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?
