![]() Best of all is when I can get all 4 simultaneously, which is what (for instance) Half-Life gave me (yes the graphics were rad back in 1998). I generally play video games in order to a) learn/exercise a skill, b) be taken someplace I can’t normally go, c) ogle rad graphics, d) blow stuff up. Well I haven’t played Silent Hill but I don’t generally play video games in order to get a revelation about the human condition. They have a protagonist who seems to show regret or remorse for their actions. In the case of Silent Hill there’s an attempt to put that in the context of some kind of revelation about the human condition. I mean, when Schwarzenegger spends 2 hours gleefully disemboweling people, does it make it ok when the arbitrary construct of the plot declares them “bad guys” instead of innocents? (Classic line from True Lies: “Did you ever kill anybody?” “Yeah but they were all bad.”) to have a sanctimonious message tacked on after 2 hours of self-indulgent violence, etc. Yeah, it’s pretty easy for a movie/game/etc. ![]() There were several scenes of lesbian S&M stuck in the middle of the movie, with shots of Bela Lugosi interspersed as a critical “spirit” making sure we had the excuse of “condemning lost souls” to cover for our perverse curiosity at watching such acts… I hope no authority figure is ever given legal power to decide which violent games have artistic merit and are thus allowable and which are not artistically meritorious and should therefore be banned. Ed Wood’s “Glen and Glenda” was a fucked-up masterpiece of this genre. I remember that back in the '50s there were some movies that showed people fornicating, doing drugs, murdering etc., but at the end there would be a tacked on message from a psychiatrist telling the audience that crime doesn’t pay and that the purpose of the film was “educational” and moralistic. So the mere presence of violence doesn’t really indicate one way or another what the game’s attitude toward violence really is. You aren’t the cause of the gore, and the object of your wrath is usually those that did cause the carnage. In games like Silent Hill 2, there is plenty of gore, but it is often the backdrop against which you have to act to find your daughter, save someone’s life, etc. The “reward” of is being able to murder lots of people in a variety of graphic ways. I’m sure the developers are going to try to cover their asses by saying “you don’t have to play the game violently,” but in reality there is no “game” unless you do. The “reward” of the game is being able to murder lots of people in a variety of graphic ways. But I’m guessing that there is no “winning” the game, there is no goal, reward, impetus or anything of that kind. I am sure Erik is right that Postal 2 has a plot of some sort and that it claims you don’t have to engage in psychopathic behavior to “win” the game. Of course, she had trouble living down her notorious review of Last Tango in Paris.īut your point regarding Clockwork Orange v. She had impeccable taste, but when it came to more cerebral movies that challenged her orthodoxed '60s view of the universe (including her complete dismissal of religion as voodoo for priests and rednecks) she wrote some pretty embarrassing pseudo-philosophy. ![]() ![]() Pauline Kael is the official critic of the middlebrow. (Violence used to specific artistic purpose, versus violence for violence’s sake.) Of course, Pauline Kael called Kubrick a pornographer… I suppose you might say it’s like the difference between A Clockwork Orange and Faces of Death.
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