Grant Theft Auto Scandal Lesson:
Violence is Tolerable
Consensual Sex is Not
What lesson have we learned from the current Grand Theft Auto scandal? Beheading someone and then kicking their head down the street is permissible, but if you’re going to have consensual sex, well, then we need to have some congressional hearings. If we were talking about a book that had a sex scene in it, would any of this sort of censorship be acceptable?
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I think it was in 1964 when obsentity laws were lifted on books and movies, because of Henry Miller’s book Tropic of Cancer and the French Movie, The Lovers.
Isn’t GTA a rated M for mature game? What is all the hubbub about? How graphic are the sex scenes anyway? Are there spread beavers and stretched anuses? Is every store pulling the games or just the uptight stores like Sprawlmart? In the Vice City series couldn’t you get head from a prostitue and then beat her bloody with a golf club and take your money back?
Do you think this is a publicity stunt by Sony? Surely this will boost sales on a sagging game series.
And what’s up with the Patriot Act and congress? Jesus fucking facist state Christ!
I don’t think the lesson is for us to learn, more for Rockstar and the ESRB, but not for making mature content and giving it an M rating. As a adult gamer, I don’t care about the rating, and as a parent, I don’t really care about the content so much since it’s so hard to get to. My concern is how it got left in the game and got past a self-governing committee. What good does it do to have a rating on the box if the game inside exceeds it? Doesn’t that just negate the whole idea of parental advisories? Isn’t that what we all want–parents to monitor what their children are exposed to? Sure the ESRB has changed the rating to AO, and Rockstar has countered by going back and “editing” the game to get an M again, but now that one of the biggest selling game franchises has garnered an AO rating, what comes next?
You should check out what Maddox wrote about it.
A publicity stunt it may be, but a sagging game series? GTA: San Andreas has become the most bought game of all time, and broke the opening weekend sales figures when it was released (beating GTA: Vice City).
See: http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/nid/89/70/
…and here I thought GTA jumped the shark. I hope I can get a copy of the new one before they take all the good stuff out.