Banman for never?

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Obviously the angle for my last article was as unbiased on the subject matter as possible, but I really do think that Jack Thompson is a greedy, biased, unprofessional scrote. As such, I find this absolutely fitting, if not mildly hilarious also...

After all his million-dollar lawsuits and proclamations of evil and damnation upon the games industry, he's been given a metaphorical kick in the nuts by the judge presiding over his own misconduct trial - in recommending he be found guilty on 27 charges, including deception, knowingly presenting false information and harassment. I propose charge #28 - being an utter jeb-end...

Banman Forever

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In 1985, Devin Moore was born in the U.S. State of Alabama. Eighteen years later on June 7th, he shot and killed Arnold Strickland, James Crump and Leslie Mealer in a Fayette police station, before escaping in a police cruiser. It is claimed that he was addicted to the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and that it influenced his actions in committing these murders. But can a cluster of pixels on a screen really make one human being kill another?
Well, according to fifty-six year old Jack Thompson, ‘yes’. He was one of the defence attorneys for Devin Moore, and said that GTA: VC trained his client to kill those three police officers. After Moore was apprehended, it is reported he said “life is like a video game – everyone’s gotta die sometime.”
Let’s backtrack a second. ‘What is Grand Theft Auto?’ I hear you cry – well, unless you’ve been living under a cultural rock for the past seven years, you might have heard of it. The series began back in 1997, and as of this month has spawned nine separate titles. The more recent games take the form of a third-person free-roam action/adventure, in which you play a lowly criminal in a fictional big city. The aim of the game’s story is to rise through the ranks of organised crime by completing ‘missions’, such as armed robberies, assassination, and as the title suggests, stealing cars.
Now we’ve all heard that playing video games turns your mind to mush, but can it mess with someone that much that it can influence them to commit felonies? Well, according to a number of studies…maybe. Whilst they stop short of claiming actual behavioural causation, they do flag ‘violence simulators’ as potentially dangerous - to developing minds.
Jack Thompson is a prominent opponent of computer games such as Grand Theft Auto, and has represented the many victims, and families of victims, whom he says were affected because of the violence promoted in such games. Thompson is a conservative Christian man, whose legal career has concentrated on cleansing the media of ‘morally irresponsible’ media. Many lawsuits have been filed under his guidance, most notably several against Rockstar North and Take-Two Interactive, the maker and publisher respectively of the GTA series. He claims they are, by creating such games, training people “how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making [them] an extraordinarily effective killer without teaching [them] any of the constraints or responsibilities needed to inhibit such a killing capacity." In their defence, Rockstar and Take-Two cite their right to freedom of speech in the First Amendment, and that these games are designed for and marketed to adults only.
You see, as the previously mentioned studies have shown, it is only to minors that such simulations are damaging. David Walsh, of the National Institute on Media & the Family, has conducted several studies into discovering whether there is a link between violent video games and physical aggression. It has been shown that a teenager’s brain is not fully developed – the prefrontal cortex, which controls forward thinking, consequence assessment and impulses is not fully matured until the early twenties at least. Based upon the work of Walsh and many others, the American Psychological Association’s official standing on the matter is that violent games can increase children’s aggression, but that parents moderate the negative effects. Douglas Gentile, PhD and Craig Anderson, PhD have summarised that this is the case, more so than with movies/television because:
1) The games are highly engaging and interactive
2) The games reward violent behaviour, and
3) Children repeat these behaviours.
So it is down to the parents? Well, not entirely, but there is a certain amount of responsibility to be accepted by them. As Rockstar and its ilk have stressed, their games are not for minors. In 1994, the interactive entertainment industry in North America voluntarily submitted to be regulated by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board), which to this date has rated over eight and a half thousand titles on their content and minimum age suitability. The voluntary PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) system is in use in Europe, developed by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe. These, and many other organisations, are there to inform parents what is suitable, both in terms of the minimum age their child should be to play a game, and what potentially harmful content is included.
The bottom line is that parents cannot claim ignorance when little Billy hits his friend in the playground because he has been given Tekken for Christmas. As it happens, Grand Theft Auto is a satire. It is not meant to be taken seriously. Young minds are infinitely impressionable, and as a result they should not be allowed to engage with media like Grand Theft Auto if they do not have the capacity to understand its context. Would you knowingly expose your child to pornography? Would you let them watch bloody films like Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill? With regulatory bodies such as the ESRB in place, is there really anything more that a responsible developer can do without stunting their vision? People produce such things in a creative context, and are well within their rights to under the laws of free speech and freedom of expression.
Jack Thompson doesn’t think so. His pursuit of Rockstar is tireless, to the point where he has been removed from cases for ‘unethical conduct’ – allegedly harassing and threatening opposing lawyers – and is currently facing disbarment. Obviously he means well, and is only acting upon his own set of values, but it would appear that he has lost the ability to be objective about the issue, and with the damage claims he has been involved with filing - $246 million here, $600 million there – it seems like he’s also being a bit greedy, or otherwise trying to just bankrupt the companies out of business – not exactly the model of a moral victory. He seems to attract attention to himself too. By being so obtuse in pursuing his activism against seemingly the whole industry, the gargantuan online community of gamers, cartoonists and modders (people who alter or expand upon a game’s original programming to create visual deviations and altogether new content) have targeted Thompson with the very satire so prevalent in the GTA series. One team of modders has placed a likeness of Thompson into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The character has an alter ego called ‘Banman’, who takes on missions to destroy Rockstar game shipments whilst the ‘real’ Jack seeks to discredit pixellated versions of his real life targets. Whilst this seems unnecessarily inflammatory, many gamers believe he has brought it upon himself – and besides, all of this just appears to reinforce his firm belief in his cause.
Although I am not necessarily here to defend the violence in video games, it has been found that games such as Grand Theft Auto and Halo (a hugely popular first-person action game) are not entirely detrimental, and indeed can boost the brain’s processing power. People who play fast-paced action games like these, and many others, generally have the ability to process visual information quicker than those who do not. Experts from the University of Rochester, NY, believe that such games could be used to improve every day motor skills, rehabilitate stroke patients and even train soldiers for combat without having to waste expensive live ammunition. Professor Daphne Bavelier says “players can process visual information more quickly and can track thirty percent more objects than non-players.” A test was also set up in a mix of male and female ‘non-players’ to see if these processing skills could be built from scratch. Half played the first-person shooter ‘Medal of Honour’ for at least an hour every day over the span of two weeks, whilst the other half played Tetris. After this time, the first group performed much better on all the visual tests administered, while the Tetris players did not.
Naomi Alderman of The Guardian makes an interesting point about the bias against computer games: if you play a lot of video games, you’re addicted. If you read a lot, you’re just ‘academic’ and ‘engrossed’. She takes the defence of video games one step further, in fact. She believes that “if we deny children access to computer games, we deprive them of a rich and magical experience…the world of Grand Theft Auto does contain violence and misogyny; but then, so does The Godfather, or Goodfellas. So, for that matter, does The Iliad.”
Perhaps, then, Jack Thompson should take up a crusade against Homer? Doh…!

The Beautiful Beast

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This is the article I promised a couple of months ago, based on a survey I sent out over Facebook. To be honest, I haven't used a lot of what was returned to me - not because it wasn't useful, but I found it difficult to write the article I had originally intended. This is the alternative result, which will be submitted in a short book I have produced as one of my assessments this year.

If you comment on any of my work, please comment on this one - it's a subject very close to my heart, and researching the last part nearly brought me to tears on several occasions - so yeah, I'd appreciate your opinions.
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‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be noise”; and there was noise – by God there was noise.’

Genesis 1:1-3

Okay, so I’ve taken some liberties with Bible scripture there, but it’s true: noise is all around us. Some noises are obviously more annoying than others: the neighbour’s yappy little mutt barking at six o’clock in the morning; alarm clocks; whistling; that beeping noise when your phone is sitting too close to your speakers; ringtones; snoring – and that’s just my personal list – but of any type of sound, music is the most frequent point of contention. Rockers don’t like r n’ b, rappers don’t like cheese, and well, no one really likes country, do they?
But what the majority of people unite against is the heavier genres – metal; hardcore; punk; screamo – they have little or no tolerance for it. Now I’m the first to admit that one of the essentials of these much maligned and dismissed genres is exactly this aforementioned component – ‘noise’. The guitars are loud and distorted. The bass is dirty and shakes the very floor on which you stand. The drums thunder away in your head long after the music is over, and the vocalists scream, roar and growl like a pack of wolves on acid.
Perhaps this attitude is understandable then. I for one used to have exactly the same attitude towards metal and its associates that many people I speak to now have. I didn’t get why the ‘singers’ couldn’t just sing – I couldn’t decipher what on earth they were saying! I wondered why the time signature would change suddenly halfway through a song. I felt that there was too much going on at once, and that there was no discernible ‘tune’ to enjoy.
All of these are fair comments. It takes a trained ear to appreciate the discordant tones of pg.99, the unparalleled ferocity of Converge or the pure unadulterated technicality of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and a unique mindset to actually enjoy it. But distinct problems come from the preconceptions around the people who listen to this so-called ‘dark’ music. It is a widely accepted, yet largely ridiculous stereotype that such people are constantly depressed, harbour unyielding anger towards everyone and everything, worship Satan, and most hurtful – that they are quite unintelligent.
It’s easy to see from where these stereotypes stem. Kids (and it generally is the young) who listen to metal often have low self-esteem, are quiet, and usually wear a lot of black. But are these two descriptions the same thing?
The short answer is no, absolutely not. Unfortunately, these days music is as much about what you look like as about the sound – but it shouldn’t be about image, and you certainly shouldn’t have to dress or not dress a certain way to fit in. It is hard enough being accepted when you are a teenager as it is – spots, awkward social graces, body odour and all – without being ostracised because your music.
A study published in March last year showed that, in a survey of members of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (a body of 120,000 students which represents the top 5% of academic achievement), heavy metal came out as the favoured genre among the highest percentage of members, far outstripping its more popular contemporaries like indie and r n’ b.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense – gone are the days of spandex one-pieces (The Darkness notwithstanding) and songs about the four horsemen of the apocalypse – modern metal concerns itself with composition rather than conceitedness. Hardcore pioneers Botch were notoriously un-cool; their white gym socks and ankle biting jeans clearly on display as they threw themselves around the stage, not a four-four time signature in sight. The prolific metal band Tool change meter forty-seven times in the song ‘Schism’, and the number of syllables per line in the lyrics to ‘Lateralus’ correspond to an arrangement of the numbers of the now infamous Fibonacci sequence. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that, well; you need to be at least close to being exactly that to understand these highly intelligent concepts.
Politics, too, has long had a place in the punk scene. Swedish hardcore outfit Refused’s left-wing views are legendary amongst their still legion fans, and they often referred to their own political manifesto, the ‘Refused Party Program’. This was far from a gimmick – the band’s lyrics covered topics like homophobia, animal rights, the press and the futility of representative democracy. They also stressed the importance of ‘new noise’ – the notion that packaging revolutionary lyrics in mainstream music was futile, and would achieve nothing against the establishment.
Metal itself has always been the music of the underdog; the outcast – it is not secret that academic intelligence and social ostracism go hand in hand. How often in high school did you see the bespectacled boffin get spit-balls to the back of the head for putting their hand up in class? A culture on the fringe of society where you can hide behind long hair and alternative clothing is suddenly much more attractive than the mainstream circles of good-looking hip-hop superstars and pop royalty – especially if it actively embraces intelligence.
From an outsider’s point of view, however, it is easy to see from where the wariness stems. Many religions, Christianity in particular, are very outspoken against what it perceives to be ‘the devil’s music’. While the age-old images of rock horns and pentagrams are synonymous with metal in particular, these are largely just aesthetic symbolism. Although black metal, a heavy metal sub-genre which is noted for being prominently secular in using these devices to purposefully enflame the religious, it should be noted that there are in fact a huge number of Christians who play and listen to metal and its associated genres. The Chariot, Norma Jean, Underøath, Zao – just a few of the extreme Christian bands who use their music not to preach, but simply to glorify their God. Of course, many in the Church disapprove, but aren’t they just moving with the times?
The religious fuddy-duddies may blow hot air and scowl with contempt, at least they are harmless. There are much more dangerous threats to the shy metal-heads and hardcore kids. Rivalry has always been a problem in youth culture for as long as anyone has been keeping track, but certain groups take it that step too far. To be physically and verbally abused for the way you dress seems absolutely ridiculous to most people, but it happens. Last month two teenagers were given life sentences for the brutal murder of Sophie Lancaster, a twenty year-old woman from Bacup in Lancashire. She and her boyfriend Robert Maltby, who survived the attack, were walking home through a park late one night last summer when a group of five youths viciously assaulted the pair – first Mr. Maltby, and then Sophie as she cradled his unconscious body in her lap. When paramedics arrived, they initially had difficulty telling what sex she was, so badly injured was her face. She slipped into a coma from which her family was told she would never wake up, and after thirteen days her life support machine was switched off. Her boyfriend, although on the road to recovery, has been left with no recollection of the attack.
Even more recently, twenty-two year old John Owen was left with a broken eye socket, a broken nose, a broken wrist, smashed teeth and serious bruising after an attack by six young men in Rochdale, Kent, in March. "I vividly remember them laughing as they kicked me,” he said when interviewed later, “I could have been dead for all they knew, but they continued to kick me.”
The reason for these attacks? Were they random acts of violence, the likes of which seem to be on the increase? Well, yes, but it’s more than that. Sophie was a Goth – a sub-culture of fashion often closely associated with dark and heavy music. She had dreadlocks, wore a lot of black and had piercings. John, similarly, has described himself as a ‘mosher’, and listens to The Black Dahlia Murder, an American death metal band. These people were targeted because of the way they dress, and by association the music to which they listen. I’m not saying that they were in any way perfect, but surely they didn’t deserve what they got?
I’m not suggesting that everyone has this level of intolerance, or would go to such disgusting degrees in acting upon it, but next time you see someone in an unfamiliar band T-shirt, clutching their copy of Kerrang! and nodding their head I time to some obviously fast-paced beat on their mp3 player, don’t give them a wide berth and a dirty look – they honestly won’t bite…hard!