Filed Under: Society
It’s another month and a half away, but Rockstar Games is making yet another Grand Theft Auto game, this time revisiting a stylized NYC for the third or fourth time, depending on how you’re counting all the previous iterations.
The entire series is terribly schizophrenic in terms of how it’s portrayed in the press. On the one hand, it’s basically the only game of its type - a freeform adventure/third-person shooter/racing game set in a huge “living” environment - and thus created new inroads into computer and console gaming.
On the other hand, its main audience is clearly suburban white males, because its depictions of NYC, Miami, LA, San Fran and Las Vegas (in GTAs 1, 3 & now 4 and the colorfully named Vice City, San Andreas and Liberty City Stories) are praying on the idea of crime-ridden ultra-violent cesspools run mainly by thoroughly corrupt ethnic minorities, and all its copycats are even more thoroughly hyperbolic than it in trying to depict a gangland universe.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg went out of his way to comment on that, and that’s the first time I can remember that a politician whose name wasn’t Gore had something to say about any particular computer game.
Having played pretty much the entire series (being, sadly, the resolute gamer I am) and basically noting how much they’ve pulled from such sources as The Godfather, Scarface and New Jack City, I can not remember a single positive image for Blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, Jamaicans, Colombians, Haitians, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, one Jewish lawyer (!) and soon in the upcoming game, Russians and Serbians; not to mention the constant lampooning of liberals and homosexuals. Mind you, of course, there are never any white gangs. There’s the occasional allusion to rednecks, but throughout most of the game the people in the sights of the player’s rather large retinue of weaponry tend to be blessed with ample amounts of melanin (or at least funny accents).
Funny enough, since Rockstar Games basically gets at least one major lawsuit a year (I think it’s part of their normal budget now), their most common excuse for this insipid behavior is that, because their constant use of stereotypes is so widespread, they cannot be faulted as being racist at any one ethnicity. It’s an equal-opportunity putdown for all! I think South Park’s creators use that excuse. But then, South Park tends to have the same audience and this audience I’d love to find and beat to a pulp with a shovel.
Not that these kinds of games desensitize me to violence or anything.
“As blind as white people to racism,” comes to mind when I write this, and GTA4 wasn’t the main impetus for this post. What was, was a particularly liberal coworker of mine’s issue with his black students calling each other ‘faggot’ in the obviously pejorative sense, but could not figure out why they took offense when a mutual coworker used the term ‘ghetto’ as an adjective on them, as his knowledge of the word only had connotations with Jews, not necessarily Blacks.
This is after a week’s long school-wide debate on the word ‘nigger’ following a student’s recital of the poem I am the Nigger by Carl Sandburg in an assembly. (Mind you, 88% of the school is Black. The rest are basically Latino. There is maybe one white kid in the school, though the paraprofessionals think she’s Dominican but won’t admit it.) Considering the demographics and the actual meaning of the word ‘ghetto,’ I couldn’t see how he didn’t understand why the students would bristle at the term - both in terms of classism and racism.
I was hoping the week-long discussion on the word ‘nigger’ would open most people’s eyes to the connotations of various words - and how they evolve into (and maybe out of) epithets and pejorative attacks - but apparently the lessons are only applied but so far.
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At about 1:45 am computer #1 goes BANG. Smells of burnt silicon. Thin veil of smoke. Mmm.
Currently 4:30am now and the RAM, video card (now SLI’d), DVD burners and SATA HD are in computer #2, thankfully running smoothly.
Time to buy a new power supply. Maybe replace those parts in computer #1 along with a new […]
Took a cab from Gowanus back to Washington Heights yesterday after a few drinks. Well, not all the way. Only from when I realized after transferring to the A that it’d be local and only go to 168th.
Romanian guy, really nice. Wife was a teacher back home, tried it out here; left after two weeks. […]
So Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 10%, which means the election will be won in the convention. Hello, two more months of cringing at every stupid nonsensical bullshit gaffe either makes over the other while we stare at the calender and will McCain’s early death.
Speaking of gaffes, what happened while we were talking about […]
From your comments it is clear that you have a selective memory when it comes to your experience playing GTA.
GTAIII White Mafia
GTASA In Las Venturas who is harassing Woozie’s casino? White people.
How about some conservative nuts- GTAVC is filled with them, how about the politician and conservative religious televangelist? Both white. How about the guy that wants to turn Florida to a country? Redneck as you can get.
How about some positive minority role models. How about Kendl and Cesar? How about CJ?
March 7th, 2008 at 9:54 amRight. You save Woozie’s hotel from Italian mafiosi, saving their neurotic Jewish lawyer and going so far as to fly to Liberty City to gun down an entire mob hangout while listening to opera music.
In GTA3, under a revenge plot to kill your Mexican partner-in-crime, you get jobs from the Italian mafia to kill Chinese tongs until you get bounced to a Japanese dragon lady telling you to kill Jamaican drug runners all the while under the spectre of some grandiose Colombian conspiracy. Granted, you do get one white guy - a bent cop - and lo and behold all he wants is out.
Listening to the in-game radio pales in comparison to actually playing the game.
CJ? A positive role model? You practically fight a full-fledged citywide gang war all by yourself. Kendl? That reminds me, the only female role in the entire game is either ‘dragon lady,’ (Catalina, Asuka Kasen), hooker or perennial victim (Kendl, Maria). Kendl’s only show of ability is in an assumed business acumen at the very end of the storyline.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:03 amNo white gangs?
Wasn’t the gang you were in in GTAIII white? What about the cartel you were in in Vice City? Weren’t most the guys in it white as well?
I don’t get it.
Does this article mean to say that Russians and Serbs aren’t white or something? Is this article trying to say that because you PLAY a white character that he somehow isn’t a part of the criminal underground and activity in GTA IV?
It’s right in that there isn’t a very positive thing to say about the different cultures in these games. BUT THESE GAMES CENTER ON THE CRIMINAL INDUSTRY. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?
My experience? There’s plenty of violent thugs in GTA of all races, colors, and cultures.
Author is completely off his whig and I’d even go so far as to call it race baiting.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:44 amIt is very interesting that you do not consider Italians, Jews, Russians and Serbians as white. Did something happen in the last few years or are now only Aryans, Blond hair & Blue eyes, considered white?
March 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pmWhat’s white in your eyes?
Serbians? Predominantly white.
Russians? Predominantly white.
Not to mention the white groups who have actually appeared in the game as criminal organisations such as the mob.
Funny you should talk about racism when you seem racially biased in your definition of the word ‘white’.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:20 pm@Rott
This is the problem. Your lens is to narrow. Kendl broke the barrier of the traditional female role. Strong, independent, and dating someone out of the norm. Here she is, with brothers running a black gang, dating a hispanic. She is breaking the traditional mold of dating inside ones ethnicity. Ground breaking and positive in any context.
You also neglect saving the Music producer and his wanking friend.
Ultimately though, you are either stereotyping minor points (Italians for instance) instead of saying white. Yes, their are no “generic” white gangs. Just as there are no “generic” hispanic gangs, since they are cuban or columbian or something else. But Italian, Serbian, Russian, etc. Are still white people. Just because you slap a regional label on them doesn’t change this fact. You also neglect to point out that there are no positive white role models either.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pmThe GTA series is for grownups who know what satire is. I’ve been playing GTA games since the first one which came out when I was 16 and it was clear to me at that young age that this is a caricaturized fictional city where everyone has a chip on their shoulder.
I really think you’re grasping at straws here. The GTA series does such a good job of giving personality to its characters which make you love or hate them all the more, and gives context and justification for your virtual retribution. It’s a virtual jungle where the weak deserve to be preyed on and the greedy deserve to be overthrown.
I have never been insulted by these games, nor South Park, and the edgy themes have never caused my delight in their presentation to falter (and I have a post-graduate education).
You come off as a prude. You’re entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine, but I feel you can’t see the trees in the forest. There are some strong minority characters (CJ’s sister Kendall and boyfriend Cesar, for example) that show common sense, loyalty, and an appreciation of hard work.
In short, don’t look at gangster fiction for lessons in morals. You’re likely to be disappointed.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:56 pm[…] Click here to read the article. I know..I know i’m just helping send hits to his blog. As a white person that doesn’t see what racism truely is, I can’t help but send people to this elightened and awe inspiring perspective. […]
March 8th, 2008 at 10:17 pmI guess you forgot Donald Love being depicted as a cannibal. Or the redneck gang in Vice City Stories. Or the Italian Mafia. You don’t know what you are talking about.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:23 am