Our sick, sad world....

[grinninfoole]

This is from an email update I got from the CBLDF the other day. It's most good news. Here's the gist of it is that the Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals overturned a St. Louis County decision supporting a law outlawing violent video games for minors without parental consent.

"An important aspect of the Eighth Circuit decision is that it
affirmed video games as protected speech. The court wrote, 'If
the first amendment is versatile enough to `shield [the] painting
of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse
of Lewis Carroll,'.we see no reason why the pictures, graphic
design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in
video games are not entitled to a similar protection.' The court
added, 'We note, moreover, that there is no justification for
disqualifying video games as speech simply because they are
constructed to be interactive; indeed, literature is most successful
when it `draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with
the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to
experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own.'"

I really couldn't put the case for art any better. This is why I'm a first amendment absolutist. People can tell whatever stories they like--only the good ones will survive.

The court didn't stop there, though, and here's the bit that just makes me shake my head at us all as Americans.

"The Court also quashed the argument that video game violence is
obscene for minors. 'We reject the County's suggestion that
we should find that the `graphically violent' video games in
this case are obscene as to minors and therefore entitled to less
protection. It is true that obscenity is one of the few categories
of speech historically unprotected by the first amendment. But
we have previously observed that '[m]aterial that contains violence
but not depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct cannot be
obscene.' Simply put, depictions of violence cannot fall within
the legal definition of obscenity for either minors or adults."

This is hardly a new idea--George Carlin, for one, alerted me to the absurdity of this when I was just a boy. Yet, I read this a realize that, hey, it's not just a sardonic observation, a deep truth about our culture, or even just the root of our sickness: it's the law.

At times, the appeal of Enlightenment rationalism is so very, very obvious.

Comments

[macropixi.livejournal.com]

What's so wrong with regulating what children can and can't see and purchase? I don't see enforcing the M rating to be any different than not letting a child into a R rated movie, as with the movie, if the parent thinks its a good thing for their child to go see they take the child to the movie. If the parent agrees that the video game is appropriate for their child than they buy it. Am I the only one out there that doesn't believe that video game automatically means safe for children. What's wrong with stopping the ten year old from buying the rated M or A video game with his birthday money while his parents aren't around. It might be free speach to make it. But that doesn't mean that children have the emotional ability to handle watching it. That law at least made it so that if parent's wanted their child to play the game they would have to buy it for them until the child became of age to make that decision for them.

Should we next overturn the movie rating system, and let all the ten year olds into the R rated movies without parental consent and involvement? There are movies that children shouldn't watch, and video games that they shouldn't play. And if a parent deceides to allow it anyway, than that should be the parent's choice, But the rating system should not be a suggestion but a rule.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Aside from the deep sickness of allowing children to see murder but not to see fucking, I oppose ratings systems and other restrictions because they don't really exclude children from seeing what they are not 'supposed' to see, and they do restrict the content available for adults. The essence of age restrictions is not a concern for the well-being of children, it is the limitation of liability for retailers and distributors and creators. Why is it the game store's responsibility to prevent a child from buying a video game, to the point where the owner might lose their shop, be driven into bankruptcy, and even go to prison because of it? That's what obscenity laws mean: that this piece of art is so damaging, that it's criminal to make, sell, or even sometimes own it. That's what 'regulating' means: that someone will have to face criminal penalties for something.

If you really are concerned enough to ban art because of 'ratings' (which, ultimately, is about packaging, ie banning books because of their covers), then ghettoize what you mean to ghettoize. Instead of an "M" classification, create a "C" classification, which can be slapped onto anything which the creators consider suitably innocuous for any child, and leave everything else suitably ambiguous. (This won't really eliminate the labelling liability issue, but it does put the boot on the other foot.)

And, in many cases, because of the financial perils lurking in 'adult' material, adult access to adult material is restricted. When Walmart won't sell you Rage Against The Machine (just guns and ammo, ma'am, we're a Christian family store), where will you find it when it's the only store in town? When Paypal won't do business with an online service that sells 'adult material', how does that change internet commerce? When AOL puts up screening software to keep kids from seeing naked breasts, adults wind-up unable to find forums for breast cancer survivors. The world is not kid-friendly or child-safe, and perhaps the greatest thing about ART is its ability to completely change our inner worlds, nudging into new paths, new choices and to become new people. Do we really want to abandon that?

(NB, the ban on kiddie porn is different, because in order to photograph sex with kids, you have to actually molest children. At that point, what you have is not protected speech, but people's exhibit one. Entirely imaginary drawings of kiddie porn should qualify as art, because no one was injured in making them. They are still creepy, but creepy isn't criminal.)