unmediated: The McCarthy Code

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August 02, 2005

The megaphones powering the Save the Children Rhetoric Society have found new sources of awesome, cosmic energy with which to boost their signal, lately. Their sound-waves, crushing intellect and creativity alike, have brought to light several instances of demonic perversion through which the medium of "Video," combined with that of "Gaming," shall engulf us all. Unfortunately, there usually is no save-us-from-the-save-the-children rhetoric to follow.

Those who would save our children from ourselves always seem to overlook a rather obvious factor of the meteoric rise in the value of the industry. "They"--the Masters of Decency--seem to assume that it has very much to do with an ever-rotting social fabric and the poor sheep captivated therein having an unconquerable addiction to violence and the sexy stuffs. I attribute it to gamers having grown up, getting jobs and doing what all adults in a free society have a right to do: choose what they wish to spend their money on. What makes the adult purchase of the game unacceptable to many is the same peculiarity that makes adult themes in games unacceptable: games are for kids. Unfortunately, like most absurd cultural anachronisms, things will likely only change once the elite elders that have a monopoly on thought have kicked it and today's gamegirl becomes a gamegranny.

This continued and fabulously erroneous idea is something that strangleholds artistic achievement more than any mere standards rating board could ever hope and I tend to think that we are, at times, showing up with the wrong counter-argument. Rather than address the issue on the grounds of their ruptured view of moral decency, we should let our own rhetoric take center stage.

Games are art--a fine art. They are expression and expression is not obscene. Mr. and Mrs. holier-than-thou don't get to judge for the rest of us what does and does not have artistic value or purpose in the medium. When we buy into the language that places the game developer and the game player on the defensive, it infantilizes the medium as a whole and elevates their parochial dysphemisms into memes. While events like E3 lower the IQ of the dialogue substantially--"oo! shiny!" and "oo! cleavage!"--we should be demonstrably angry over an art form being reduced to a cultural malaise instead of just lashing out at the other side's puritanism. As an art form as much for grown-ups as for kids (much like all the other arts) and as protected speech, it is "they" who should have to have the burden of trying to convince us that censorship is in the best interests of everyone and that such censorship won't kill the valuable expression inherent in a creative medium. You never hear politicians mention that "c" word because they know it's a deal breaker. Over the long term, "The People" tend have a nasty reaction to anything being censored, and rightly so. Censorship is a slippery slope that you don't need a Masters in sociology to understand.

Force them into declaring that they don't want to censor an art form and force them into upholding freedom of speech and expression as the most valuable of all rights in an open society instead of being forced into playing the game of defending ourselves into legitimacy. The legitimacy of new artistic means is already here, already inherent. It's "on" be default. Senators Jack and Hillary aren't "saving the children," they're latching onto a hot-button issue that plays well to whatever demographic their polling data says will get them re-elected and in the process, knowingly or unknowingly, framing the debate on McCarthyist terms which require us to extricate ourselves from obscenity instead of forcing them to extricate themselves from McCarthyism.

Originally posted by matt from game girl advance, remediated by yatta on Aug 2, 2005 at 06:56 PM