Posted on 29-11-2002
Murder
For Christmas
By Bob Herbert, NYT, 28 Nov02
Forward Command Post is one of the weirder toys being marketed
for kids
this holiday season. It's essentially a bombed-out doll house,
complete
with smashed furniture, broken railings and bullet holes in
the walls. This
twisted variation on a traditional childhood theme is manufactured
by a
company called Ever Sparkle Industrial Toys and is sold by mainstream
retailers, including Toys "R" Us and J. C. Penney. It's being
recommended
for children 5 years old and up.
Forward Command Post is at the top of this year's "Dirty Dozen"
list, an
annual compilation of "toys to avoid" that is put out by the
Lion & Lamb
Project, a group in Bethesda, Md., that opposes the marketing
of violent
toys to children. The group noted that the Forward Command Post
playhouse
"comes with dozens of 'accessories,' including a machine gun,
rocket
launcher, magazine belt and explosives."
For 5-year-olds.
Also on the list is a video game called "Burnout 2: Point of
Impact." This
is an auto racing game — rated appropriate for 6-year-olds —
that features
spectacularly gruesome crashes. An ad showed a man's head smashing
through
a windshield. "The last thing to go through your mind," the
ad says, "will
be your [behind]."
Someone needs to get a grip here, and I don't mean the kids
with their
hands on the joysticks. Any adult who thinks this stuff is appropriate
for
a 5- or 6-year-old is a lunatic.
In terms of their approach to the world, a 5-year-old playing
with a
traditional doll house and a 5-year-old playing with the ruins
of the
Forward Command Post are at two fundamentally different starting
places.
The biggest-selling video game over the last couple of years
has been a
PlayStation 2 game called Grand Theft Auto III. It actually
carries a
voluntary "M" rating, which means it's not recommended for kids
under 17.
But teens have no problem buying "M"-rated games, and they love
the various
incarnations of Grand Theft Auto. This is a game in which all
boundaries of
civilized behavior have vanished. You get to shoot whomever
you want,
including cops. You get to beat women to death with baseball
bats. You get
to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them. (And get your
money back.)
The game is a phenomenal seller. At close to $50 each, millions
of copies
are sold annually. The latest version, Grand Theft Auto: Vice
City, is
expected to be one of the biggest sellers this Christmas.
I don't for a moment think these games should be banned. But
I do think
that millions of American adults have lost all sense of what
are
appropriate forms of play for children and teenagers. And the
country as a
whole behaves as though there is no real-world price to pay
for a culture
that has so thoroughly desensitized us to violence that it takes
a terror
attack or a series of suburban sniper killings to really get
our attention.
Rockstar Games, which created the Grand Theft Auto series, has
come out
with another extraordinarily violent game called State of Emergency.
It's
got rioting in the streets, looting, individual acts of extreme
sadism and,
of course, endless gory murders. The player gets to be part
of it all,
killing and maiming at will. One online enthusiast said, "You
could run
down the escalator, then wait at the bottom . . . and watch
as you blast
some guy or gal's head off, watch them stagger about a bit before
they
collapse, then pick up their severed head and beat them up with
it some
more." A reviewer on Amazon.com called the game "an enjoyable
cacophony of
senseless violence." State of Emergency will no doubt be a hot
gift item
for youngsters this year.
Reading about State of Emergency reminded me of the riots in
Los Angeles 10
years ago, an explosion of violence and inhumanity that did
not strike me
at the time as the raw material for fun and games. It still
doesn't. Even
now the murderous violence in parts of Los Angeles is so intense
that
decent residents often feel imprisoned in their homes. Killers
have been
running amok in the streets. The murder rate is rising. It's
not a video
game. And it's not fun.
The building blocks of violent behavior are dehumanization and
desensitization. The lessons begin at a very early age.
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