Jack Thompson, Civility, and Freedom

Moral Kombat, which Danny Ledonne wrote about here a few days ago had its premiere at VGXPO on Sunday, and afterward, Lorne Lanning (of Oddworld fame) debated Jack Thompson.

Quotes from reportage:

"One was at various times snarky, belittling, pushing, and personal, and the other one was Jack Thompson." (from Wired)

and

"Thompson begins to speak and, when he is at ease, it becomes clear that his phrasing is careful, and his viewpoints themselves are surprisingly moderate. (from 1UP)

Sure, of course; Thompson is in potentially hostile territory, and of course he's on his best recognizance.

The Wired reporter later says:

"What made me sad, though, was the way that the gaming community represented itself. Sure, we tend to disagree with Jack Thompson, his beliefs, and his tactics. We can all name any number of things that he's done to make us angry, but the bottom line is that he comported himself like a gentleman the entire time he was on that stage. He was gracious, humble, and polite, which is more than I can say for Lanning and most of the members of the audience who took part in the Q&A that followed the debate."

Look, I'm all for being gracious, but we're talking about the defense of fundamental American liberties here -- the right to free speech. The attack on game violence is couched as "protecting the children," but there's no evidence to indicate that violence in games is any different in its effects on children, or anyone else, than violence in film, TV, or novels, nor any reason to impose greater strictures on games than on other media. Do we have to belabor the fact that any child in America can walk into a Barnes & Noble and buy a copy of, say, American Psycho? For the good and sufficient reason that free men must be permitted to think and say what they wish, or they are not free; it's not a matter of "constitutional liberties," although our Constitution thankfully does protect free speech, but a matter of the innate natural rights of all thinking beings, which tyrants trample on at their own peril.

There is repugnant violence in some games, and I've written on that subject before. Playing the original Manhunt, I found that it went over a personal line for me; I don't enjoy playing games that make me queasy. I have no desire to play its sequel, nor for that matter to read American Psycho, or see Saw IV. Yet the notion that any of these works should be barred from the American public, in the form their creators chose to release them, is far more repugnant than the works themselves.

And yes, barring them from the general public, not merely from "children" is the ultimate objective of Thompson and his ilk; "think of the little children" is the opening wedge. No, this isn't mere paranoia on my part; consider the treatment of sex in games even today. A work as harmless as Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, which contains mild sexual themes (far milder than, say, those in either the film or novelistic versions of Lolita) is barred from America, in the form intended by its creators, because major retailers won't carry AO-rated games.

The general attitude about the ESRB, at least on the part of the industry, as stated both here and elsewhere is that "it does a good job." Thompson attacks it as being unreliable, and in fact, I think he's right; they're facing an essentially impossible task, of imposing identical standards on widely variant works, and there's a high level of inconsistency (the Hot Coffee Mod is impermissible, while naked breasts in God of War are not). For my part, the idea of lauding the ESRB is itself faintly repulsive; I accept the necessity of its existence, as a means of warding off more severe efforts at censorship by the state, but the reality is that, at present, it is in effect a highly efficient mechanism for censoring games, and prohibiting their exploration of mature themes. In other words, the ESRB is actually part of the problem, an instrument of censorship in its own right, and reluctantly acceptable only as a stop-gap to prevent more severe intrusions on our freedom.

Perhaps I should point out to our readers that Windows Vista "helpfully" does not permit play of AO, M -- or unrated -- games by anyone using a computer who does not have administrative permissions, or has been granted access to "adult" content by an administrator. In other words, our largest producer of operating systems has decided that censorship of games (but not of other media) should be the default stance.

Almost all of the games Play This Thing points to are "unrated" because small indie and shareware developers are unlikely to think it worthwhile to pay the ESRB's not-inconsiderable fees. Meaning that children (and indeed all non-adminstrative users) who wish to play such suspect games as, say, Chocolate Castle or Eets are, by default, prohibited from doing so. In other words, what began as a defensive industry maneuver to protect itself against censorship has become a proactive mechanism that denies whole legitimate areas of expression to game developers in the conventional industry, while effectively barring a non-adult audience to smaller game developers.

We are already living in a regime of effective censorship, which the like of Thompson merely wish to extend to some illogical extreme.

For my part, the most revealing exchange in the debate was the moment when Jack Thompson claimed that Rupert Murdoch wasn't a "Christian," but instead a "Roman Catholic." I think it would come as something of a shock to St. Peter, Christ's own disciple, and the founder of the Holy and Catholic Apostolic Church, that he and the billions who have over the millenia placed its faith in this rock, are not "Christians." The reason I find this revealing is that only the most extreme factions in evangelical Christianity deny that Catholics are "Christian".

Thompson wants to have it both ways, too; at one point, he asked everyone in the audience who was a "Christian" to raise his or her hand. Some 50% of the audience did, which he used to argue that in fact a majority of the American population agrees with his position. How many of those who raised their hands were Catholics, or members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Unitarian-Universalists, none of whom are acknowledged as "Christian" by extreme evangelicals, despite their (to my atheistical eyes) closer adherence to Christ's actual doctrines of toleration, forgiveness, and love? For that matter, how many were Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist, or adherents to some other mainstream denomination that does not deny the Christianity of Catholics? How many are simple Deists who do not commonly attend any church, yet consider themselves to believe in the divinity of Christ? And by what exercise of unmitigated gall do you claim that anyone who has some mild attachment to the Christian religion in its multivarious forms must ipso facto agree with the suppression of the right to free speech because some such expressions offend your particular non-mainstream beliefs?

In short, it's clear that Thompson's crusade is motivated primarily by what he would doubtless describe as "faith" but which may more accurately be described as the streak of American thought that derives ultimately from our Puritan rather than our revolutionary origins, and is fundamentally at odds with, and seeks to suppress, American freedom in the name of a vengeful God. Jack Thompson is the enemy not only of games, but of freedom, without which the whole American enterprise means nothing.

Let us return therefore to the theme of gamers' supposed rudeness to Thompson. I wasn't present, but I imagine if I were, I would have held my tongue, seething though I might have been; despite my online persona, I think people who know me well will tell you that I have, in this kind of situation, an almost Victorian sense of propriety. I have no doubt that I would have similarly experienced what's termed "rudeness" here as unseemly.

Yet for the critics, I have one fundamental question: How polite is one required to be to fascists?