Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Marley Shelton and Naveen Andrews in the "Planet Terror" segment of Dimension Films' Grindhouse
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Bloodsport

Last week I somehow got into the Hollywood premiere of Grindhouse. It was interesting and… well, I’ll leave any commentary to people actually qualified to review this genre movie. I will say I had fun. In fact, I often found myself being the only person I could hear laughing during, say, a surprise decapitation or a smashed hand. It was like watching Blood Simple all over again. 

And it made me realize: for all the gruff given about video games, they have yet to approach the violence in the most graphic movie. I spent the previous week whopping nonstop through God of War 2 and even after taking out [insert surprise villain here] I wasn’t exposed to anything much more graphic than, say, Silent Night, Deadly Night, a classic I was way too young to see, or to the aforementioned Rodriguez/Tarantino flick, which I saw a couple days after wearing Kratos out. It’s pause to wonder what all the hoopla’s been about over violent games. 

The obvious issue has been the age of the average gamer. The Atari 2600 was geared towards kids, as was the original Nintendo. It could be said that the following Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis/NEC Turbografx-16 battle was for the teenagers. In fact, NEC’s Splatterhouse was the first awesomely violent home game I remember playing (It helped, in all honesty, that it was one of the few reasons to buy the system aside from Legendary Axe). The battle got uglier when, in the early ‘90s, Congressional hearings were held over video game violence and, more specifically, the home adaptation of Mortal Kombat. As many remember, “family-friendly” Nintendo opted for green blood (zombies!) while Sega kept it real red. Both copies sold well, anyway.  

While a few systems pop up in between, the real age split occurred with 2000’s Sony PlayStation 2, perhaps the first (successful) game system aimed towards people at drinking age – or at least near it. The included DVD player, slick casing and mature titles, such as the groundbreaking Grand Theft Auto III, pushed systems out of the kid’s rooms and into the entertainment centers. In short, the style of games grew equally with current technology as well as current demographic. Now, as the Electronic Software Association often cites, we’re 31-year-olds going to see 300 before heading home to play God of War or, as Warner Brothers would like, heading home to play 300: March To Glory. I have not had an opportunity to play the retail copy of the Sony PSP 300 game, but the version available at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last year was bloody as hell. Fitting. 

The slightly less obvious reason for violence hoopla is politics. Presidential hopeful senator Hillary Rodham Clinton soapboxed Grand Theft Auto’s Hot Coffee fiasco in 2005, while senator Joseph Lieberman led the Mortal Kombat hearings more than a decade ago (I still distinctly remember reading the classic magazine Next Generation with readers threatening not to vote for Presidential candidate Al Gore because Lieberman would become vice president. It still didn’t bring our asses to the polls that year). Violent video games are like the war on drugs – a safe statement that most people will get behind, namely because a) respecting the freedom to create adult-focused video games seems neglectful of younger audiences and b) there is no clear outcome to hold someone accountable for achieving. The Mortal Kombat hearings brought about the rating system, which was and is a smart idea, but few other political actions haven’t established clear-cut goals. The fight to get rid of filth becomes less of a plan and more of a rhetoric.  

The real point here is that video games aren’t necessarily an exceptionally violent medium. “Birth of a Nation,” often credited as the first mainstream theatrical movie ever made, was a violent, racist portrayal of American history. If you can cut through the lingo, some early blues and folk recordings are bloodier and more sexually explicit than the last Dr. Dre album. It is not to say that violence is readily accepted in other mediums. However, video games are the newest popular artform, and they will be scrutinized on a level that movies were decades ago during the Hayes Code or that music has been during each successive conservative shift.  

Violent video games will have a much longer road to acceptance because they are still connected to kids, but things are changing slowly. Just a couple weeks ago Electronic Arts released “The Godfather: The Blackhand Edition.” An update to the PS2, XBox and 360 game, it is easily the bloodiest game released on the Nintendo Wii. Worse – or in my case, better – you actually act out the attacks using the wii-mote and nunchuk thumstick. Before tackling God of War 2, I spent a few days perfecting choke attacks (push both controllers inward and squeeze together) and body slams (swing both joysticks together towards one direction, then quickly swing the other way). I won’t even get into the pleasures of the baseball bat.  

It wasn’t until hours later, as a trail of digital bodies lay in my wake, when I realized that my interactive Godfather experience wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, have happened in the ‘90s – not technologically, but politically. I was playing on a machine manufactured by a company that skirted any and all connection to adults. Perhaps Nintendo itself will step up and give Mario “The Conker treatment” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conker%27s_Bad_Fur_Day>. Probably not. 

Grindhouse is some violent stuff – and some scenes did actually make me squirm – but I’m so glad I could go home, turn on God of War 2, and continue my fun, perhaps more interactive experience at home. Isn’t that what video games are all about? 

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