Stephen King weighs in on video game violence
It’s a subject that never seems to go away. Censorship and legislation trying to impose limitations on the sale of violent video games. This time, horror master Stephen King has voiced his opinion on the subject; one that pretty much mirrors my own.
I think the key paragraph from his column is this:
“… if there’s violence to be had, the kids are gonna find a way to get it, just as they’ll find a way to get all-day shooters like No Country for Old Men from cable if they want. Or Girls Gone Wild, for that matter. Can parents block that stuff? You bet. But most never do. The most effective bar against what was called ”the seduction of the innocent” when this hot-button issue centered on violent comic books 60 years ago is still parents who know and care not just about what their kids are watching and reading, but what they’re doing and who they’re hanging with. Parents need to have the guts to forbid material they find objectionable…and then explain why it’s being forbidden. They also need to monitor their children’s lives in the pop culture — which means a lot more than seeing what games they’re renting down the street.”
Damn right, I say. If you’re a parent and you’re letting your 10-year-old play Grand Theft Auto or Resident Evil, you’ve got problems no amount of government regulation can solve.
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[...] With this paragraph, I thee wed: What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It’s easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room. Elephant One is the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, a situation guys like Fiddy and Snoop have been indirectly rapping about for years. Elephant Two is America’s almost pathological love of guns. It was too easy for critics to claim — falsely, it turned out — that Cho Seung-Hui (the Virginia Tech killer) was a fan of Counter-Strike; I just wish to God that legislators were as eager to point out that this nutball had no problem obtaining a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Cho used it in a rampage that resulted in the murder of 32 people. If he’d been stuck with nothing but a plastic videogame gun, he wouldn’t even have been able to kill himself.” [...]