Media Morals

For a number of years violence in the media has been causing debate and argument, be it on TV, in films or computer games, especially in terms of its effect on children. The subject of the game Grand Theft Auto has arisen on more than one occasion during my course and I have always backed it up. As far as I was concerned if parents were worried about children playing this game it was up to them to regulate its usage and the majority of adult minds are unimpressionable enough that this sort of game would not have a huge effect on them. That was, until recently.

I bought the game for my boyfriend who liked the idea of being given a whole city to do what he wanted in. As I watched the game unfurl it seemed harmless enough, yes it is violent but both my boyfriend and I are aware that you can’t actually steal random cars and run-down pedestrians and to be fair if you are too reckless in the game you do have to escape the police.

However, I was horrified when one of the tasks that you are required to carry out, as Niko the main character of the game, was to arrange a date with a gay man and shoot him. It was bizarre, the player was given no reason to shoot this guy and literally the only thing we knew about him was his sexuality. I couldn’t believe that this had made it through the regulators. It turned out that later on in the game Niko has a friend who is also gay. I believe that this was put in so that the makers of the game could deny any kind of homophobic accusations.

This kind of gay-hate breeding material is shocking to me. The fact that I always used to back this game up in arguments of its morality makes me feel almost betrayed. To me, explicit violence and car stealing in this game does not have a direct effect on our society, criminals are likely to be that way for other reasons, not just because they played a game, otherwise we’d all be doing it. However, a homophobic attack on a character is a whole different matter. It seems to give the message that it is okay to hate gay people and although I don’t think that my boyfriend is now going to become a homophobic bastard, people who are already inclined to think that way would only be encouraged that they are correct and that is what is so worrying.