Esteem

Recently, a huge hub-bub in the press, and especially the video game press, has been the "challenge" Jack Thompson issued to video game companies to make a violent game he designed. Jack Thompson is a lawyer from Miami who has been fighting the video game industry for seven years (as he likes to brag.) For those of you not knowledgeable about video games seven years ago graphics and effects in video games were not as realistic as they are today, and the industry was still fairly new. But I won't comment on Jack's politics or record, I'm going to discuss the literary problems with Jack Thompson's letter. In full, here it is:

A Modest Video Game Proposal

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule

This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has for 18 years been involved in efforts to stop the marketing of adult entertainment to minors.

The title of his proposal stands out; "A Modest Video Game Proposal" is, no doubt, based on Jonathan Swift's seminal satirical work "A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public," the title is usually abbreviated to "A Modest Proposal" and has become a cliché for any satirical work. Swift's original Modest Proposal was a satire written to point out the wrongs of the British landlords treating the Irish as serfs, and to lampoon people who treat human beings as simple numbers and statistics. Swift wrote with a definite noble cause in mind and his satirical work was so well written some of his contemporaries actually believed he was suggesting the rich British landlords eat poor Irish babies! Swift's work was both subtle and intelligent, and it has become been the benchmark for satire for the English language; hence the cliched use of the name. So, are we to believe that Jack Thompson's letter is in fact intended as satire?

Further reading into Jack's letter reveals that it cannot be satire at all because he's arguing for a stance he is well known to champion. He mentions that he's against violent video games and says they are "murder simulators." We know that Jack believes this because he's been saying it for quite a while now. In fact, as a lawyer he conducts lawsuits against the video game industry. He then goes on to present anecdotes of teens murdering people under the influence of video games: "The killing was like an extension of the game." It should be noted that these anecdotes aren't presented with any actual scientific evidence, but that isn't the point of this article. It's clear he doesn't intend for his letter to be a satire because he is fighting for his beliefs in a non-satirical and a completely not ironic way.

Then, we are surprised as Jack then puts his money on the line. He will donate $10,000 to the favourite charity of the chairman of Take Two, Paul Eibeler, if his proposal is made into a video game. If he's promising to donate money to charity, then the possibility of his letter being a satirical work is almost non-existent, right? No good person would dangle money before charity only to snatch it away in a fit of satirical madness! At least I wouldn't.

Then comes the bulk of the proposal: Osaki Kim, a man with a Japanese first name, and a Korean last name goes on a killing rampage after his son is killed by a gamer. He starts by killing "Paula Eibel," CEO of "Take This" (get it? "Take Two," "Paul Eibele" I know, it took me a few read throughs to get it too) and then makes his way across the U.S. killing Take This's lawyers, murdering Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart employees after stealing their stock, and finally ends up in L.A. just in time to massacre E3. Apart from the very thinly veiled references to Take Two, Paul Eibele, and Take Two's law firm, all of the commercial entities and trade events are real. Most intelligent satirists stay away from using real names (some exceptions include Swift's A Modest Proposal where it is necessary to mention Ireland and Britain.) Gulliver's Travels, also written by Jonathan Swift is a commentary on British society and government. Yet he never mentions Britain at all. "The Lilliputians were clearly really the British" is not a line you'll find in that work. Likewise, Animal Farm by George Orwell never mentions the fact that it is about Soviet Russia. Both works true message can be figured out by anyone willing to pay attention while reading them, but neither of them are open and completely up-front about it. Jack Thomson's letter is about as blunt as a baseball bat to the head, or a tonne (metric) of bricks dropped on your foot. It is clear that Jack is being so blunt because he truly wants this game made, he doesn't want to skirt around the issue at all.

From the last lines I can only conclude that Jack wants this game made so that the video game industry knows what it's like to be targeted by a violent video game. The only indication that Jack has made that he ever intended satire is the title. And "A Modest Proposal" has become so cliche, it really could mean anything.

I have just learned that Jack did indeed intend his letter to be satire, seven days after its original publication, and after the great bulk of this article was already written. Jack Thompson, you fail Satire 101, you did not write a real satire. Your letter can be best described as a "challenge with a misleading title." I will post the full text of A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public so that you may study it for future attempts at satire. I also recommend you read the books Gulliver's Travels, Animal Farm, visit the website "The Onion" and watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for good examples of irony and satire.

Wendel Schwab - wendel@esteemmag.ca