Touché, bitches!

Let’s Do The Pomo Again: rape games

About a week and half ago, on his blog, Japanmanship, JC Barnett wrote about the response to rape games in and outside of Japan triggered by Rapelay. Barnett places the issue in the context of—as he tells us—a general absence in Japanese culture of Western-style taboos regarding pedophilia and rape. I recommend not only taking a look at the article but also the debate that played out in the comments section.

The whole issue got me to thinking about how such arguments are delineated and resolved in contemporary critical terms; can, in fact, modern frameworks like postmodernism actually produce amiable outcomes? Let’s start by looking at the article in question.

While Barnett asserts that he “no great fan of censorship”, he takes a firmly absolutist tack on the issue:

“[games] have some responsibilities… but it is good to see… that Japan generally is looking into these sticky issues and agreeing a more responsible approach might be required.”

The responses are polarized in predictable ways. Many venture into relativism: what is “right” for one person may be “wrong” for another; such a topic can not contain absolutes. At the other pole are those agree with Barnett: we should, as a society, express our disgust at things like rape and pedophilia. This usually manifests in censorship.

Note: I find it interesting that the idea of these games affecting someone’s tendency to enact the contents was only lightly touched on. I won’t discuss it here because there is a wealth of information in support of the media not being an insidious entity. That is, people won’t kill after playing Doom. Someone who wants to kill might come to Doom, but the game won’t make them want to do it. Anyway, back to it…

Barnett bases his absolutist argument on the idea that games are not art; they are products and therefore have responsibilities beyond themselves. But who’s to say games aren’t art? Surely, at least some part of some games could be considered art? The narrative structure of BioShock, Braid and And Yet It Moves’ environments, Metalgear Solid’s player-game interactions, just to name a few. And perhaps I want to play Rapelay for it’s 3D environments and textures and not for the rape itself (I use this only as an example). I mean, I can appreciate Nazi deco design but be appalled by its content and purposes.

Similarly, the aforementioned camps have murky sides to each of their arguments. Those in the subjectivity camp back themselves into a corner where they, logically, have to be OK with other personally and culturally subjective things like customary law and child pornography. Conversely, those in the absolutist camp are ostensibly advocating censorship. This has its own swag of issues—by whose tastes do we censor video games; yours and mine or a politician’s? In liue of this, I must note that from some of the comments on Barnett’s post, I got the feeling that some people were made more uncomfortable by the idea of censorship than the content of the game. Censorship, I feel, can only be a conclusion from our analysis of the contents but should not inform how we analyze it.

So let’s attempt to abstract ourselves from these viewpoints and the censorship argument. How do most critics do this?—by applying an abstract framework. As is in vogue and the want of this blog I’ll follow postmodern lines and consider the benefits and inadequacies of the frame.

Firstly, we must consider the possibility of multiple readings of the text. Perhaps the developers meant us to consider the rape and the characters as analogous, as representative of something else. Perhaps it’s irony: a massive exaggeration of male-female power relations designed to make us question them? (I don’t agree with this at all, but for the sake of argument…)

This aspect of postmodernism is what gave rise to its push for subjective values: how you and I view corporal punishment may be different from someone else. Read: there are no absolutes under a postmodernist approach.

Obviously this is a slippery slope, for reasons discussed above. But it does highlight some issues associated with censorship. We’d be censoring this game based only on its overt content—we assume. Maybe the developers wanted to convey something more subtle; something beyond what is actually happening on screen? Now, I’m not suggesting this is the case, but postmodernism begs us to consider as much.

The postmodern argument clearly favors those who argue what’s right in my books my not be in someone else’s and thus censorship is flawed. Thus, in its own terms postmodernism works to resolve this issue.

In this case, I tend to agree with this line. But only with a very clear but at the end. No one is getting hurt by simulated rape and I’d rather someone with these tendencies exert them onto a game like this than in reality. But this rule shouldn’t—nay, can’t—be hard-and-fast. Images of real rape and child pornography should not be allowed for many reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam throughout the media (e.g. how can we regulate these things, are all parties consenting, how would it work jurisdiction-wise).

OK, I just outed myself in favor of absolutes. In this sense, I agree with Barnett. But Barnett muddies his own argument by including art. Art is a far too subjective term. Where Barnett says games aren’t art, I might say they are. Besides, the games as art jury still seems to be out and not likely to return any time soon. And it is accepted that the explicit images in art can be offset by what they are trying to say. Hence, a ten-year-old can see nudes in a gallery but not at the movies.

If you subscribe to postmodernism then this debate is quite clear-cut. If you, however, believe postmodernism can ethically take you only so far, then the debate is stodgy and it’s hard to draw lines. I’ll conclude this with some of the questions raised:

• If postmodernism is inadequate here, where is it adequate? That being said, is it relevant to this debate? And, further, if it isn’t relevant here, where is it relevant?
• Is this debate split down censorship lines or ethical ones?
• Should our attitudes towards child pornography and rape extend to simulated versions? If so, why? Largely, this hasn’t been explained.
• How does the games as art affect this debate?
• What other frameworks might resolve the issue more cleanly?

Oh, and do read Japanmanship. I’m quite a fan of Barnett’s writing.