The Violence Maker?

Hello, Rachel again.
I found Thursday’s lecture on video and computer game immersion of particular interest and it lead me to ponder the relationship between violence in games and immersion.

It seems that in the last few decades there has been a huge moral panic over themes of violence and sexually explicit images in video games with conservative commentators arguing that games are to blame for the high crime rates and appalling actions by games by youths. It appears that such commentators abide by the theory that video games have an all encompassing power to immerse a subject potentially against their will and then dictate their actions. Groups and individuals who point to video games or violent films as causing violent reactions often grab statistics from correlation studies to support their vendettas. Correlation studies are limited; they can establish links between viewing overtly sexual or violent material and the subsequent commission of violent acts. However showing a link is different from showing causation and proving unequivocally that viewing alone resulted in violence. As Burnett article discussed in class points out, no one can be immersed against their will, a subject is immersed because they choose to be so. People commonly close curtains when they sit down to watch a film and avoid distractions, they do this because they want to be involved in a film or gaming experience. Furthermore even if an individual became immersed in a violent scenario would this really result in a violent reaction? The 1990 Reading Group Report is an example of a buzz box test and this test found that subjects would only retaliate aggressively if angered before watching the material; the material alone could not provoke an angry response.

So what then do we make to the burgeoning category of insanity pleas which point to violent film and video games and reasoning for diminished responsibility? The most famous of which is probably Joshua Cooke trial. Cooke in 2003 went on trial for murdering his parents and attempted to use the ‘Matrix defence’, that his repetitive viewing of this film had been instrumental in his actions. CNN put forth to his defence lawyer “millions of people have seen this movie and... haven’t actually killed anyone, millions have seen it so how can you use it as a defence?”. This is an obvious question and yet the Matrix defence has been successfully utilised to acquit for murder (in the case of Tonda Lyn Ansley). Wouldn’t it be wrong to censor games or blame them for actions on the basis that some material may indirectly as a result of a condition particular to the individual provoke a negative reaction, it is unquantifiable to what an unbalanced mind will find influential. For example rapist and murderer Heinrich Pommerenk was prompted into action by a scene in the Ten Commandments of women dancing.

Even though logically video games cannot cause violent actions there is an understandable unease about allowing individuals especially children to view violent images. Do you think there is any potential for a violent action to be the direct result of video game use (rather than a complex set of wider societal factors?)