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Rockstar...so
much controversy.
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Kill
the Haitians! (Or Other Non-Specific Ethnic Group)
Video
games have long been the target of conservative parental groups and
politicians for years for the supposedly horrific influence that they
have played on the demoralization and total corruption of the supposedly
easily-impressionable (in other words, not bright enough to choose right
from wrong) youth of America.
The assault on the video game world reached a new level of ridiculous
and frivolous absurdity with the recent tempest that has swirled around
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The Cuban American Bar Association (CABA)
expressed outrage at what was deemed “the game’s use of racially
charged remarks promoting the hate and killing of Haitians and
Cubans,” by sending a letter demanding an immediate apology by
Take-Two Interactive, GTA: Vice City’s publisher and Rockstar Games,
who developed the critically-acclaimed and gamer-favorite title (more
than a year ago).
(GTA: Vice City is one of the biggest selling games of the last decade
for its open-ended gameplay, great use of licensed music, and
well-scripted (albeit full of violent undertones) storyline. In a great
twist of gameplay conventions, the game’s star is a seriously morally
flawed anti-hero, Tommy Vercetti.)
That letter was signed by CABA president Ramon A. Abadin, the U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Florida Governor Jeb Bush. This was
closely followed by an attempt of the North Miami City council, made up
of primarily Haitian-Americans (Miami is ironically the inspiration for
GTA: Vice City’s fictional setting) to pass an ordinance restricting
stores within the council’s governmental reach from selling
Mature-rated games (as GTA: Vice City obviously is) to anyone under 18
years old.
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furor in Florida, which resulted in Take-Two
Interactive and Rockstar Games taking the path of least controversial
resistance and actually issuing an apology with the promise to remove
the objectionable material from any future versions of the game. (Rockstar
Games and Take-Two Interactive are both incidentally headquartered in
New York).
So what was this incendiary language that caused such strong outbreaks
of furious damnation to be cast upon GTA: Vice City and everyone
involved in the creation and distribution of the game? One of the lead
mob characters issues an edict to “kill the Haitians” in reference
to a criminal gang element in the game that is comprised of Haitians.
Being half of an interracial marriage with interracial children, I
certainly don’t support the use of any type of racism in a
video game or any other media for that matter. But let’s be serious:
Out-and-out racism or ethnic slurring is clearly not the intention of
the GTA: Vice City team. What’s so ironically laughable is that the
organizations and politicos pummeling GTA: Vice City with clearly
unconstitutional attempts of censorship have probably never even spent
two minutes playing the game to make a judgment on the severity and
harmful intent of the supposedly racist phrase at the heart
of the matter. In all probability, the name Tommy Vercetti has
absolutely no recognition value to them whatsoever.
I haven’t played through the entire game of GTA: Vice City myself, but
I have played enough of it on my PC in the privacy of my own home to
soundly declare that while GTA: Vice City certainly deserves its “M”
rating for the harsh language and violence at its gameplay backbone,
this is not a racist game intent on spreading hate and ill-will towards
Haitians. And even the violence of GTA: Vice City is completely blown
out of proportion. Yeah, you can technically kill anybody in Vice City
in all sorts of ways (particularly with vehicular mayhem), but resorting
to bloodshed in the game increases the risk that the police will start
paying attention to your actions and take you down. And even if you’re
mowing down pedestrian after pedestrian with one of the game’s many
driving machines, GTA: Vice City still doesn’t have the same level of
blood and gore as many of today’s first-person shooters, or even the
game that used to be the central poster-child of harmful-to-youngsters
gaming, Mortal Kombat.
Look at today’s game scene. Hollywood is combing the ranks of gaming
for its newest ideas for movies. Why? Even though most of the early
video game-to-Silver Screen adaptations haven’t been exactly very good
(totally awful in many cases; remember Super Mario Bros. or Street
Fighter?), many of today’s more matured-themes games have well-crafted
stories. And GTA: Vice City is no exception. Although it has a passing
resemblance in its storyline to “Scarface” and is based in a
fictional city (a thinly-veiled 80’s Miami), Tommy Vercetti’s
journey through the mob underworld is stylishly written. Part of that
style relies on the base model of the real Mafia and other related
criminal elements.
And yes, it is easy to believe that a Miami-like city would have a
Haitian gang amongst its law-abiding citizenry. So what would be more
believable: A Mafioso that would say: “Kill the
gang-that-has-no-ethnicity-whatsoever,” or one that would say, “Kill the Haitians!”
Really, Rockstar could have chosen any ethnic group, but Haitians were a
credible choice because of the game’s setting. And there’s no
absolutely no implication that all Haitians are criminals or belong to
underworld crime organizations. These are just a bunch of bad guys that
happen to be Haitian in a game dominated by a cast of bad guys of many
ethnicities.
Attacking popular youth culture isn’t anything new. No matter what era
of history, the parental group has always somehow found something
terribly wrong with their children’s interests that have exploded on
the cultural scene-of-the-times. Whether it’s rock n’ roll, jazz,
comic books, disco dancing, rap music, break dancing, skateboarding, or
the latest fashion choices, what hasn’t been part of a previous
generation’s upbringing has been venomously attacked as not good for
the newest generation.
And one of the biggest targets of attack has been the video game
industry. As hard and heavy as some political groups and politicians
(pressured by the parental group of video game players) have assailed
the industry that now makes more money yearly than the movie business,
you would think that video games are more debilitating to America’s
youngsters than all the drugs, tobacco, and alcohol flowing through the
American landscape.
Somehow, there is the perception that the majority of today’s gamers
are geeky little 14-year-old boys with gullible minds that a game with
violent and mature themes and elements such as GTA: Vice City will
manipulate into an army of Columbine killers that will be the downfall
of civilization as we know it.
But truth be known, a recent survey by the Entertainment Software
Ratings Board (ESRB), the voluntarily-created video game-industry
watchdog organization that provides ratings and content information for
each and every video game that hits store shelves, reports that the
average gamers is in the 25-35 age group, and in fact even reports a
large percentage of gamers over the age of 40. Yes, that’s right: The
everyday gamer is a voting-age adult, which means that these politicians
are not protecting the children of their constituency as they
incorrectly believe, but instead are trying to restrain the rights and
desires of adult gamers to play games with even a hint of gore and
violence.
Even with the ruckus that some of today’s movies and television
programs create for perceived racism or stereotyping, it still doesn’t
measure the amount of critical attack that the video game industry
receives. Rarely does a movie or television show get as scrutinized for
its content and storylines, short of HBO’s “Sopranos,” which
raised the ire of a few Italian-Americans a couple of years back for
what was called a negative portrayal of Italians as only being suited
for life as Mafia members. And even that died down quickly without all
the hoopla of the current GTA: Vice City uproar.
Is GTA: Vice City a violent game? Yes. Does it contain raw language?
Yes. Are its characters almost all universally morally corrupt to some
degree? Yes. But it’s still a good game that ADULT gamers enjoy, even
if it’s nothing more than a simple therapeutic release of aggression
that 99.9% of them would never seriously consider unleashing on real
people in their everyday lives. From high unemployment rates, to the
return of deficit spending government, to a growing healthcare crisis,
to questionable motives in engaging in foreign war efforts, America has
bigger problems for its politicians to worry about. Don’t you wish the
same effort on the part of these politicians were spent on these issues
instead of fretting over alleged racism in a video game?
- Lee Cieniawa
comments@armchairempire.com
(March
11, 2004)
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