Yeah, I agree. It is only a game. Thank god for that! I have no idea how many bad guys I have killed so far with my mouse and keyboard and I am starting getting really good at it and I am not alone. When the kids in school talk about the latest smash hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at the lunch table in our school cafeteria, they use almost the exact words. Kill. Good. Brains. All over the place. One could think that the kids I teach would be a little bit different from the rest of the Swedish school kids - these are immigrants from Iraq, northern Africa and other countries where violent conflicts have become the daily life. But no. They enjoy killing off people in games as much as anyone and to be honest, this scares me a bit.
The Call of Duty series could easily be thought of as a advertisement for American and British armed forces. Go to Afghanistan and chase terrorists, or to Somalia, or Iraq - the choice is yours. Be that cool SAS or Marine officer you have seen fighting their way through crowds on film. And repeatedly hear the narrator use sentences such as "You belong to the best trained and deadliest armed forces in the world!". It is what we could expect from a recruitment ad by US Army.
I can't but think of the scene from A Clockwork Orange when young Alex is strapped to the chair forced to watch screens showing violence, wars and dying people. The difference between this film and a game like Call of Duty would be that Alex eventually learns something from it and end up not enjoying violence. We are different. We don't learn a shit apart from how to be better at killing people. Instead we are slightly brainwashed to believe that whenever USA and UK send out their forces around the world it is all legitimate and even cool. Perhaps the developer of the game, Infinity Ward, realize this a little bid and therefor wanted to change perspective a little bit and threw in Rio de Janeiro and war on drugs. After all, the war on terror is so 2001 and no one really cares anymore. We all know that Iraq and Afghanistan are two major frakk-ups and a silly computer game can't change that. Or can it? Nah, probably not but it is a good try.
Maybe I shouldn't be taking games too seriously and maybe I shouldn't be thinking politics, but I just can't help it. Simply because it is to darn obvious. It is like a bad film containing obvious product placements where the camera zooms in on the Apple computer or the Audi car logo. And there is a psychology behind that sort of advertising: people will buy more Apple computers and more Audi cars. I guess I could then say that people will be more likely to be a little bit happier about the wars around the globe, especially the ones the US started.
Welcome to the entertainment industry where modern warfare is glorified and turned into something cool and enjoyable. Disgusting, isn't it? But quite cool...
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