Slices of America
Posted on | July 24, 2005 at 1:34 pm | 8 Comments
A few random catchup items/observations…
One thing I noticed when I was in Milwaukee, and that I brought up with my hosts, is that the servers at the ethnic restaurants we went to there were not of that ethnicity themselves (Indian and Japanese at least, not quite sure about the Mexican place). Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I was just wondering how much of a trend it was there, since it’s fairly rare in Denver. If you go to a sushi bar, the servers are most likely Japanese. If you go to an Indian restaurant, the servers are usually Indian. I was wondering why Milwaukee seemed to be different (from my admittedly low sampling) but didn’t really get an answer.
While I was gone, the whole Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas “hot coffee” sex mod controversy (which I wrote about here, really heated up and it was decided that the game would be pulled from store shelves and the rating changed from “M” (Mature) to “AO” (Adults Only), thanks to Hilary Clinton, crusading anti-video game lawyer Jack Thompson, and their ilk. Seems the sex scene was built into the game after all (and meant to be inaccessible), despite developer RockStar’s early denials, which did not surprise me. And apparently it is possible to do the mod in the PS2 and Xbox versions of the game as well as the PC version, but it sounds pretty hard to do, requiring special software (and possibly hardware) as well as hacking skills. A lot of trouble to go to for what is by all accounts not really that explicit or interesting. I stand by my original opinion that this whole thing is overblown and I don’t understand why they’re making such a big deal of the sex when the violence in the game is so overwhelming. (Note that I am a fan of the GTA series and have played all the way through GTA3 and some of GTA: Vice City and GTA:San Andreas – but the whole gangsta storyline in SA got to be a bit much for me.) The policy makers of this puritan country of ours have their priorities out of whack. But everyone involved in this debacle should bear some of the shame, as this editorial at Joystiq nicely puts it.
God of War also had crazy violence, as well as an unsympathetic immoral lead character. spoiler warning At one point you are even required to sacrifice an innocent victim in order to advance in the game. There were also plenty of naked boobies and a sex mini-game that by virtue of a slightly removed camera angle was not explicit (not visually explicit, at least, though it had full audio). Yet it had an M instead of an AO rating, and I don’t see anyone making an issue of it (yet).
Actually, according to the ESRB rating system, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference between an M and an AO rating, though I gather that the stores are probably more strict about who they sell AO games to.
Lastly, as I said in my last post, I got to see Charlie & The Chocolate Factory last week. I’m giving it a rating of Entertaining on my movie rating scale. I liked the book a lot when I was a kid, though I’m not sure the first movie based on it, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory quite captured the book for me. From what I remember of the book, this new movie did a better job. You gotta admit, this property had “Tim Burton” written all over it from the beginning, much more so than his underwhelming remake of Planet of the Apes. His whimsy and visual sense are a perfect match for the wonky world of Willy Wonka and the people that inhabit it. Yeah, Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka was kinda creepy, but that was the right note the movie needed to make it less saccharine (how many times has that word been used in conjunction with reviewing this movie?) and more entertaining for adults. The Oompa Loompa’s and their Danny Elfman-penned musical numbers were a treat. One of the unexpectedly enjoyable surprises of summer for me.
Latre.
Comments
8 Responses to “Slices of America”
July 24th, 2005 @ 2:51 pm
Why make a big deal about the game? Same as always. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. If GTA’s distributor doesn’t fund the ESRB directly (not to mention the lobbyists who put Clinton et al onto this) they should. The amount they’d have had to spend to get GTA this much non-commercial airtime is unthinkable, even given their already massive marketing budget – this gets the product onto the news and in front of the eyes of even Tivo owners who skip past their omnipresent commercials. And when was the last time a government warning label stopped a high percentage of people from doing anything? Remember how great the music rating system worked…
People think this country is Puritanical because of flaps like these. But really it’s just a cynical, sophisticated form of marketing. No, the Puritanical element in our society helps protect us from jagoffs like Howard Stern who can’t seem to figure out how to make a point while prevented from using 7 or so of the lauguage’s 400,000+ words…
I gotta go cash my check from Stern – later!
July 24th, 2005 @ 3:19 pm
I make a big deal of it because I’m scared of what they’ll go after next. There’s already governmental talk of censoring cable/satellite like they do with broadcast networks, possibly even including pay services like HBO. If anything gets me on my soapbox, it’s censorship. Everyone was holding up videogames and the ESRB as an example of a self-regulating ratings system that was working. Now that’s destroyed. It worries me.
July 24th, 2005 @ 6:46 pm
Re censorship: the truly pathetic thing is that, at least where sex is concerned, and only dubiously with violence, no one has shown that there’s any cause-effect relationship between viewing it and inappropriately enacting it. One problem with studies that purport to show connections between viewing violent TV, movies, and videogames and violent actions is that correspondence doesn’t prove causation: that is, it could be that violent people are drawn to violent media, rather than the other way ’round.
Re Mwaukee restaurants and ethnicity: I can’t remember anymore which Mexican place we went to – but if it was that little place with the bizarre little cooling unit by the doorway, with orange paint outside (Xel-Ha), everyone who’s waited on me there has been Mexican. Of course, if you’re interested in “authenticity,” the real indicator is the extent to which the clientele is from the cuisine’s people of origin.
July 24th, 2005 @ 10:39 pm
Agree on the cause-effect issue. Though I would be interested to know if there are any side effects from viewing/simulating violence that do not relate to causing violence. I remember reading some study that said there were.
Also agree on being able to tell a lot about the authenticity of cuisine by viewing the clientele. Often the best way to find the best places. That should be more of a barometer than the (non)ethnicity of the wait staff. Although the cooks are a different matter…
Yes, it was Xel-Ha that we went to. I liked it a lot, though the cuisine was very different from that of Mexican restaurants around here. It felt authentic though.
July 24th, 2005 @ 11:49 pm
The great redeeming characteristic of censorship is that it’s generally ineffective, often laughably so. It’s only evil when conducted efficiently, and while I agree the overall trend is not a positive one, at the moment most of western society is still far too open and chaotic for organized attempts to do any real harm. What it can do is placate narrowminded reactionaries, at least for a time… so again, something that seems bad can be shown to serve a purpose when viewed from another perspective. Anything which distracts pious idiots is a Good Thing in my book.
Someone a lot smarter than me put it concisely: information wants to be free. If a regime like China’s can’t keep the Internet safe for communism, what hope does the USA have to keep GTA out of the hands of impressionable young hooligans (of color)?
As for the cause-effect thing – of COURSE not. If censorship had any rational basis it would probably be a good idea. Poking holes in the rationale is fairly straightforward to do, and just about as pointless as not bothering to try. Stop me if I’m getting too profound or annoying, but my point is, rising up en masse to fight against something that’s merely a bogus ideological threat is maybe not as important as worrying about things which are genuine and immediate problems. And I don’t mean fait accompli like the Iraq war, about which we can do little except make badly-spelled protest signs and boycott Diebold products…
July 25th, 2005 @ 7:08 pm
Ben, I think I’ve given you the impression that I’m more up in arms about this than I really am. I just find the whole thing sad. Once the politicos get involved, you know things are heading toward the gutter pretty fast.
July 25th, 2005 @ 11:57 pm
I’ve long said that government can be viewed as just a really expensive way of keeping our most obnoxious citizens far away from home, someplace where we can keep an eye on them.
Better the politicians get involved with this than, say, screwing up Syria. Trouble is, they appear to have time for both. We gotta coax more gays to try to get married, if only to save Iran from needlessly getting kicked in the balls by cruise missiles!
July 26th, 2005 @ 7:10 pm
Yeah, the flag burning amendment kept them busy only for so long.
Ben, you’re sounding more and more like a libertarian every day.