Sexy Jihad

Wired has an interesting analysis of California’s new anti violent video game law:

I squeeze the trigger on my shotgun and pump a fusillade of lead into my enemy’s chest. He topples to the ground lifeless, and I look down to see that I’m drenched in blood. But what I’m really wondering is: Have I just broken California’s new video-game law?

This weekend, I cracked out The Suffering: Ties That Bind, one of the season’s goriest titles. Just hours before, Arnold Schwarznegger signed Assembly Bill No. 1179 (.pdf) — a new law that slaps a fine of up to $1,000 on anyone who sells a “violent video game” to minors.

Critics have mercilessly attacked the legislation, noting its many flaws: It violates the First Amendment; it claims without evidence that games cause “neurological harm to minors”; it was signed into law by a guy who has personally starred in Terminator video games that are treblecharged with carnage.

Games Without Frontiers columnist Clive Thompson
Games Without Frontiers
Fine critiques all. But as I discovered when I sat down and read the bill myself, the most intriguing thing is really the law’s language. Why? Because when a politician drafts a ban, it forces him to state precisely what it is he’s objecting to.

Bill 1179 targets games in which you “virtually inflict serious injury upon images of humans or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.”

As the article goes on the author also throws in some nice equations between the law and new US laws permitting torture (*cough* Guantanomo Bay *cough*). Nicely done.

Be Sociable, Share!

•