A scientific science fiction writer, scientist and Polyglot Nancy Falda reflects on the formation of the entertainment industry and finally answers the question – we will have long been to sensitive violence in video games
Imagine our civilization in fifty-hour. The combustible minerals have long exhausted, the Martian colonies have just appeared, and wealthy townspeople, wanting to join a high culture, instead of going to the opera … they play network video games.
Not so fantasy. From Shakespeare to television, from Viennese waltz to rock and roll-they often look at new types of entertainment with suspicion and often hang on them labels. And soon the former object of bile attacks begin to appreciate and respect.
Take, for example, Vienna Waltz. Before he could appear in Europe, he was immediately condemned for a swift pace and obscene proximity of his partners. In 1797, the waltz was condemned, calling the “main source of weakness of the body and the degeneration of our generation”, and in the secular chronicle of the London “Times” it was noted that his “indecent extracts” was more likely to prostitutes than “people of high society”, which did not prevent the waltz from establish itself in Europe in less than a century, by the middle of the XIX century.
Say, an unexpected turn? Not at all. William Shakespeare wrote his masterpieces at a time when the theater was called vulgar bad taste. The novels of the 16th century, which we consider to be a classic of world literature (say, “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes), contemporaries called children's fairy tales, unworthy of serious study. And Leo Tolstoy, in turn, said that a ballet, “in which half -naked women make voluptuous movements, are intertwined into different sensual garlands, there is a directly depraved representation”.
And everything rolled to hell ..
Such transformations of evil influence in a respected pastime were full in the last century.
In the early 1900s, when the cinema began to gain popularity, the Chicago Tribune newspaper announced that cinema is nothing more than a “school of crime, where robberies, robberies and murders are shown in all details”.
Or here are comics-in the 1940s they dumped poor performance, and the growth of child crime, and adolescence drug addiction. “Poorly painted, poorly written and even poorly printed, this horror in a soft cover is a real attack for young eyes and fragile nerves,” wrote a literary critic Sterling North. – These low -grade books can only provoke violence … If we, teachers and parents of America, do not want the growing generation to be even merciless than ours, we must unite and destroy all these “comic magazines”.
And only half a century later, in the early 1990s, Superman and other heroes turned into cultural icons; In many universities, courses on the composition and text of comics appeared, and the graphic novels of Arts Spiegelman “Mouse: the story of the surviving” received the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
Looking at all this, you might think that society tirelessly chooses itself more and more cruel, sweet -loving and aggressive entertainment. However, history proves the opposite.
Compare the fears expressed in the 20th century regarding cinema and comics, with judgment on the theater written by the English pamphletist Philip Stabbs at the end of the 16th century: “If you want to learn to rebel against the sovereigns, betray, thirst for wealth, be defiantly indifferent to everything, speak and speak and speak and To sing about lustful entertainment and corrupt love … If you want to become a pimp, glutton, drunkard or lecherous … You do not need another school except the theater ”.
Other words, but the object of discussion is the same. But today's society is much more tolerant than five centuries ago: in the 16th century, the torn limbs were put on public display – right in front of Shakespeare's house; In the XVIII century, executions through decapitation, hanging and dismemberment were the usual entertainment of the crowd; What is there, even the tales of the Grimm brothers, composed in the 19th century, and they confirm that death and cruelty began to interest children not today and not yesterday.
Author!
Nancy Falda is a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence (her work was presented several times in IEEE-the International Institute of Electrical Engineering and Electronics), Columnist of many Western Journals and the author of popular science fiction, winner of the PHOBOS Award and Vera Hickley Mayhew Award. Assice of America, now she lives with her husband and three children in northern Germany and writes a book about one colonized planet with unusual orbital properties.
Accept unacceptable
Well, if time does not multiply public shortcomings, then why each new way of entertainment leads us to such indescribable anger? What is the trouble of this fresh, other, contagious fun, that it gives rise to such a frantic immediate rebuff?
The answer is simple. Everything innovative, newly -minted – whether it is fashion, game or political movement – attracts both critics and admirers. And the more important, the more significant phenomenon, the more violent the warring camps come across.
Thus, criticism is a kind of recognition of a certain potential for a new type of entertainment. Not every fun, causing anger of society, becomes a cultural phenomenon, but only a few entertainment can boast that they have achieved recognition without listening to the accusations of something unworthy or even vicious.
Recognition is very dependent on the ability to remove the disputed elements, while maintaining the entertainment itself. For example, there is no getting away from the proximity of partners in the Vienna waltz – without clinging to each other, it is impossible to preserve the drawing and rhythm of the dance. However, this proximity is rather forced than sensual; Cavalier’s hand now lies not at the waist, but on the label of the lady; Partners behave calmly and decent.
Also with the theater: screaming public, street merchants and pickpockets, necessarily present at each medieval performance, were replaced by closed sedentary halls, healing spectators and focused silence. In the framework of decency, they keep the content of films, comics and games voluntary rating systems.
However, the object of the main claims of the theatroponavian are alive and to this day. Critics were afraid that indecency on stage would teach the audience something unworthy-nevertheless, sexual hints and violence scenes are full not only in modern, but also in classical productions-for example, in Romeo and Juliet or Don Zhuan. Why all these obscenities were not cut after the productions have received public recognition?
Just because it is impossible. Imagine a play in which there is no villain, there is no conflict, there is no crime, folly, there is nothing that in theory can somehow “ruin” the audience. What will work out? The play is so boring that it can no longer be called entertainment. Just as a waltz does not bring pleasure if it is dancing, not clinging to the partner, and the theatrical performance is pointless when it has not a hint of conflict.
And this already forces society to make a choice. Does the theater really corrupt its spectators, according to its opponents? Or crimes, murders and battles on stage serve some worthy goal?
Here society is unanimous: the influence of theater, operas and ballet on world culture priceless. And this, in my opinion, does not say about the fall of public morality. This is more likely to say that something that used to be evil could be healing in a certain context. So, you will be horrified to listen to the story of a husband, a blade of an overwhelming belly of your wife – until we find out that he is a doctor who made her a cesarean section.
The best thought is illustrated by one case from the history of ballet. At the dawn of the 1700s, the Marie Ann Kamargo dancer shortened her dance skirts so that her ankles became visible: Marie wanted the audience to see her anthrash, a difficult jump, in which her legs are quickly crossed in the air, touching each other.
Kamargo's costume seemed shameless, but discovered completely new opportunities for the dancers and caused completely new emotions among the audience. Her idea quickly gained wide recognition. By 1844, ballet packs to the knees long, as in the paintings of Edgar Degas, became for dancers of the state Parisian opera by conventional vestments.
Again into battle!
What does all this have to do with video? Yes, the most direct!
Just like ballet or Viennese waltz, many popular video games are considered inappropriate for society. As comics and on the cinema, on video games, poor academic performance, growth of child crime and adolescent drug addiction.
The statement of the US Army Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, the author of the book “Society and the Psychological Price of Teaching Murders in the War”, is well known. Grossman wrote that cruelty into media – in particular, video games – is able to turn a normal person into a murder: “We achieve such an extent that the causing pain and suffering to others becomes a source of pleasure for us. Aversion is replaced by bliss. We learn to kill – and we learn to enjoy it ".
Terrible words, but what a familiar tone! So the society, which is not on the verge of destruction, does not believe, but on the threshold of great changes.
Speaking about the excited fuss that the video game reigns today, we must remember that they are very young in comparison with other types of entertainment. The first games appeared in the 1950s, but in the West they were not particularly popular until Atari seriously took up this market in this market. Video games are similar to an unheard of horse – mysterious, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. We do not understand them, and – let's talk honestly – they often scare us.
And our fears are not groundless. Grossman's theory is based on research that reveal the relationship of aggressiveness and cruel games. And although experts agree that cruel films and games are associated with aggressive behavior, they are in no hurry to announce that there is a consequence and what is the reason. Perhaps cruel games and lead to aggressive actions – as Grossman believes. Or maybe, on the contrary, these aggressive children love cruel games https://sister-site.org/betti/. Or maybe there is generally a third factor here, such as stress at home or at school, which affects both children's behavior and what entertainment they choose. Our information is not enough, and it is too early to draw conclusions.
Even the annual FBI reports force to think about the right causal relationship. Judging by these reports, the number of cruel crimes has decreased over the past 20 years – while the popularity of video games, as we know, on the contrary, has increased. Researchers of the Harvard Faculty of Harvard Medical Faculty Lorence Katner and Cheryl Olsen, who are in the book “Grand Theft Childhood, are also contributing to their contribution: an amazing truth about cruel video games” with foam at the mouth is disputed that the games are somehow connected with the growth of crime. From the point of view of scientists, video games are a much more creative and useful pastime than it is considered in society.
The next few decades we will witness a very interesting process of “cleaning” the video game, which began in the nineties: our society (not without noise and dust, of course) determines which elements of the video game it is ready to accept, which is not, and learns to distinguish the first from the second.
Go to the future!
Ironically, many things from which parents and critics would prefer to get rid of (and this is cruelty, violence, long hours spent behind the TV with a gamepad in their hands) may turn out to be an integral component of the video game. As a play needs a villain, and the dancer is a shortened skirt, so video games can be vital, possibly very cruel to fully reveal, achieve its highest cultural value.
Why are video games that attract us so much – if not to say, conquer, forcing them to engage in a day for a day? A possible explanation was found in people, at first glance very far from games, – scientists involved in the study of autism.
Matthew Belmont, a professor of the National Center for Brain Research in India, for four years dissected video games, trying to choose those that can help children and their relatives for patients with autism. It will seem to someone that the games are not the best object for serious scientific research, but they came up perfectly by Belmont.
“Such a problem faces us,” the professor explains, “as an environmental validity, or the degree of compliance of the conditions of the experiment of the studied reality. It is very difficult to simulate a person’s natural behavior in the laboratory, to make him experience feelings similar to what he experiences in everyday life. We needed to put experiments in the most realistic conditions, and video games turned out to be the best tool for their creation.
You see, Belmont continues, “games motivate and carry a person much more than a regular psychological test, and they act equally strongly both on people with autistic spectrum disorders, and without them”. By the way, Belmont believes that autists can be called "people 2.0 " – due to the fact that this ailment enhances the ability to sensual perception of reality.
We are all constantly faced with the problem of perception of the world. People are surrounded by mixed sensory stimuli and, in order to understand what is happening around, are forced to constantly process the signals coming from them.
Video games can help a person interact with the outside world, present him as something more predictable. Games – they are right in the middle, exactly between the unpredictability of interpersonal communication and extreme predictability, the programming of laboratory tests.
Predictable, but exciting.
If you are a parent whose child has been crumbling zombies for the third hour in a row, the neighborhood of these two words will seem creepy to you. But it also brings us closer to unraveling, why video games were so quickly fell in love with both children and adults.
It is not known whether the highest strata of society will begin to prefer video games to the theater, but we can say with confidence that they gradually, gradually conquer their place under the sun. Already now, in the educational programs of some universities, video games are on a par with works of classical literature, and the professor does not cease to argue for a long time whether the games are art or not. It sounds incredibly, but once, perhaps, Halo or Max Payne will be called timid harbingers of something glorious and great.
So now, touching the mouse or picking up a gamepad, remember: you are not just playing. You make a story.
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