A Response to Ron Jeremy's Attack on Video-Games

http://kotaku.com/5466746/ron-jeremy-sex-not-violence-is-beautiful-and-natural

First and foremost, I will agree with Mr. Jeremy that sex CAN be a "beautiful" and "natural" thing, even though my inclinations towards them are negative (there's a lot of vulnerability and stuff which I'm not fond of). But I'll address my problems with pornography before I address the comparison between sex in media and violence in video games. My issue with pornography is that it is inherently degrading to the human condition. Essentially it takes any character or individual and then strips them down (no pun intended) to the basic components necessary for sexual exploitation. This ranges from nudity to certain acts to particular body part or roleplay fetishes. The thing is, the individual is lost in this process of dehumanization for the sake of eroticism.

Even the role play elements are ultimately dehumanizing, creating a thin veneer of humanity to be exploited for sexuality. Take police officers in pornographic videos, or fantasy roles like firemen, waitresses, french maids, pool boys, prisoners et all. They effectively only exist to transition from the normal aspects of reality to the more dehumanized pornographic alternate "reality" or existence. The role of police officer or nurse or what-have-you is diminished entirely for the sake of the sexual experience. This remains true even if the role being portrayed by the actor or actress is one which becomes a continual central theme of the pornographic media in question. When reference is constantly made between the role and the actor or actress, it usually is simply meant to cement the connection between the two "realities" rather than glorify anything about the role. In effect, role play only builds a bridge between the real world and the world of pornography to add plausibility to the bizarre sexual experience.

Now, I'll do the extra fun bit and defend violence over sexuality!

I'll admit that I probably have what most would consider an unhealthy like of violence. I've been known to have obsessions with militancy, warfare, weapons, tactics, etc. But I will argue that violence in fact enhances my understanding of humanity and allows me to respect individuals more as people than porn, which in fact denigrates and damages our understanding as people.

I would like to begin defending my interest in violence by defining its perimeters. First, I do not receive any form of physical or emotional gratification from violence. I am not aroused by it or as obsessed by thoughts of committing these acts. I do not appreciate violence for the sake of violence or goriness, which I choose to contrast with serial killers who actually receive physical and emotional gratification from murder or an obsession with the more bodily aspects of violence, namely gore and bloodshed you would see in a slasher flick or a torture-themed movie like Saw or Hostel (which I personally consider just another form of pornography). Rather my interest in violence stems from conflict, conflict resolution, risk, integrity, testing of one's will and commitment to an ideal or vision, self-sacrifice, stepping outside the bounds of conventional morality, individualism and collectivism both (vigilantism and vengeance-seeking as well as collectivized mobilization into warfare for an ideal or goal), principles, motivations, beliefs, and interests. Violence represents the furthest extreme of human existence.

Because of this, I find that when approached and understood from this particular aspect I feel that my own interest in violence, and its exploration in media like videogames are less criminal and damaging to an individual than pornography. As a whole, my views on violence and how I choose to interpret, understand, and study it allows me to take into account an individual as a whole. I become aware, perhaps even intimately, in the desires and thoughts of a person, their motivations and how their methods reflect this. This is reflected in how I play my games. When playing Grand Theft Auto, I am less interested in wanton mayhem, but instead create stories about individuals in my mind about characters in the plot and understand them. Even when its just me using a character to cause "mayhem" I think about it from this perspective, which is why I may consider ideas like roleplay from the perspective of a violent archetype, be it a white supremacist terrorist, low life drug dealer, or lunatic. Not only do I consider the aspects of my archetype, but also individuals who this particular "archetype" comes into contact with. How does a white supremacist terrorist affect the world around him? What has he done to change the world versus a drug dealer? I know that in my experiences playing Grand Theft Auto IV it actually directly affected my play style; My devout White-Supremacist archetype actually stood out in front of a hospital engaging in a prolonged shoot out against the police that lasted until I literally ran out of ammo for every weapon I had. My drug dealer, on the other hand, shot perhaps three people and immediately tried to flee the scene of the crime the moment he had one star.

So in the hand, I have more appreciation for a person as a whole than the average person who, say, indulges in pornography. Take for instance shock pornography, which completely eliminates human dignity from the media for the sake of a purely sexual experience. Though in all fairness shock pornography is a byproduct of society's unhealthy views towards sex (treating it as purely taboo rather than a more logical cost-benefit analysis which would favor understanding the risks and counter-measures), it does highlight the problem with pornography. Shock pornography benefits in being questionable. Our society has become so sexually repressed in its upbringing that we associate sexual gratification from what society deems questionable and impermissible. Shock pornography capitalizes on this by showing content so incredibly questionable that it reaches new levels of sexual gratification by this standard. Imagine if you could graph sexual gratification with objectionable content (again, this relationship being a byproduct of sexual repression). This establishes a 1-to-1 ratio of pleasure to objective content.

http://www.gcse.com/maths/graphs/y=x.gif

Effectively, soft-core pornography could be seen as a 1 on this scale, whereas shock pornography dealing in defecation, genital mutilation, etc could be seen as a 5. The problem is that the more mass media of shock pornography is available and becomes acceptable, the more questionable content is needed to raise the level, taking subjects which should be considered sacred and sacrificing them for the sake of enhanced sexual gratification. What starts as innocent foreplay could end in simulated rape pornography. Which leads to the crux of the problem, namely that the more these acts need to be shocking, the more indignant they have to be of human character. These acts have to be so objectionable and repulsive that the actors have to literally sacrifice their own dignity and self-respect for the sake of the performance. In doing so they begin to equate indignity with sexual gratification. Sex ceases to be about people and purely about obscene acts, which in turn distances sexuality from connecting people and individuals. Because of this, any feeling of sexuality causes individuals to associate less with people and more of actions and continues to dehumanize people. If we need people to be seen purely as objects for sexual gratification, then we start to lose the ability to connect and understand one another on a meaningful level.

Not only that, but to increase sexual gratification, often the associations we make are equally detrimental to our understanding of humanity. Rape pornography is a powerful example. These pornographic films often simulate fake rapes as part of the more shocking element of the performance, again feeding the Y=X principle of sexual gratification. In doing so, we cease to associate the emotional pain and distress of rape with the real life acts and consequences of rape because our bodies are physically gratified by seeing it. Now, rape porn is barely considered shock pornography, merely "disrespectful" and "questionable."

This should highlight what a powerful and negative effect pornography can have on society. We do not, as audience members, want to associate negative and painful feelings with sexuality and sexual gratification. So instead we cultivate the negative directly-proportional relationship of more-questionable-more-arousing, due to society's sexual repression, by ignoring the pain elements of these erotic displays during moments of sexual exploitation and thereby disassociate any semblance of humanity with the actors. And because sexuality is such a powerful motivating force in our everyday interactions, by extension this becomes damaging to how we view people. We stop seeing people as people and instead as sexual potential. Our fantasies become less and less about the actual individual and more as a body to inflict various gratuitous punishments to for the sake of an increased sexual gratification.

In fact, I've seen first hand this process carry on to fields of my own interest. "Torture porn" movies, such as Hostel and Saw, are becoming more and more common and accepted in society as an assimilation of questionable content combined with an interest in sexual gratification. Though not always inherently sexual, we often see ourselves as dehumanizing people in these movies for the shock of watching grossly violent scenes for the sake of gratuity and shock. I'm no psychologist or sociologist, but it would not surprise me at all of this were a similar expression that works with violence the same way porn does with sex. They may both in fact even be based on sexuality.

To give other examples of these in video games (since I think panning an entire form of media in general is a problem which I don't wanna tackle in this specific post) here are some games which do to violence what pornography does to sex.

http://www4.shopping.com/xPO-Gladiator-Sword-of-Vengeance
http://www4.shopping.com/xPO-Vivendi-50-Cent-Bulletproof-Xbox-Pre-Order
http://www4.shopping.com/xPO-Ubi-Soft-UBI-SOFT-187-Ride-Or-Die-Xbox (this one especially, its awful. Everytime you get a head shot their head explodes in a shower of gore and across the screen the words "HEADSHOT" are written in blood)
http://www4.shopping.com/xPO-MTV-s-Celebrity-Deathmatch-710425292293

Some blurr the line.

http://www4.shopping.com/xPO---Conker-Live-Reloaded
Could be seen as a contrast to the cute furry animal aspect of the creatures to provide surrealist humor. The question is which came first; Did they choose to use extraordinary violence to contrast the cuteness of the animals or the cuteness of the animals to contrast with the violence. My guess, based on the fact that there's a lot of sex and stripper jokes, is that they chose the violence before the animals. I'd say no artistic integrity, but I've never actually played I could be mistaken.

http://www4.shopping.com/xPO---Manhunt

Gruesome, yes, but the theme is that he's doing whatever he takes to fight for his life, and its supposed to be (as far a s I know) a re-invisioning of the problems of mass-media-entertainment culture, so there's a good chance the game is making fun of its "OMG GORE" fans.

Games that definitely don't

Any Metal Gear Solid Game
Most GTA games
AVP (any of the games)
Max Payne
Doom
Gun
Twisted Metal: Black (though it was contained to the cut scenes)

Basically any game where the violence is there to enhance the experience as a way of connecting the viewer to the experience rather than as a "shock" selling point. It's hard to create a feeling of realism to a war game, for example, if there's no violence whatsoever. On the other hand, having a soldier's head explode from a luger and then some announcer yelling "HEADSHOT! BRUTAL KILL!" is certainly not realistic either.

In turn violence, as I choose to explore it, is an understanding and embracing of elements of people which make us so unique and different. The beauty of violence is that it allows the existence for two individuals who completely disagree without having to compromise their integrity. Effectively violence is the gateway to acceptance of one's views even against one who opposes your views. So in a world of so many opposites, violence preserves our ability to be different and express different ideals and still exist around others. When two visions are so radically different that they cannot co-exist live in the same world, one does not have to enslave the other or seek compromise, only use violence and still preserve the dignity and purity of the opposing vision. In doing so, those who hold opposing visions can even hold respect for one another because they are not forced to suspend their own vision through compromise, which would build up resentment and hatred. Even when explored against archetypes of people I come to hate (often times I play up the archetype of a pseudo-Darwinist reaping society of its unwanted individuals) I understand them as whole people, people with families and dreams and hopes and ideals, even if I am being critical of their decisions and lifestyles. But I truly and honestly believe that even with my interest in violence I can appreciate a human being, even one that I hate, more as a human being than someone who glorifies meaningless shock pornography for sexual exploitation, because I recognize the individual and the importance they as thinking, feeling people have on the world.