Games Vs Art

"Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”

                                                                                 - Billy Loomis (Scream 1996)

 Although the columbine shooters may have based their rampage loosely on the Matrix by wearing black trench coats and the classic pc game Doom was found to be one they played frequently that doesn't mean if neither the Matrix nor Doom existed the shooting wouldn’t have happened. Films and games influence people but they don’t decide people’s actions. If not the matrix then another action movie, the idea of living in a dream world, tricked by a malevolent entity is by no means new, it originates from the sixteenth century French philosopher Rene Descartes and his ideas of the devil, but that is entirely beside the point.

"To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis, in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures."  -Stanley Kubrick (1972)

This quote, from Kubrick is regarding the spree of copy cat violence that occurred upon the release and subsequent ban of A Clockwork Orange. Essentially what happened was criminals ‘themed’ crimes around the film or mimicked some of the crimes that happened in the film. Who knows maybe they dressed the same maybe they sang singing in the rain while beating a man and raping his wife, who cares? The point is this is purely aesthetic, you don’t watch a film one day and say ‘sod it’ and go live the life of a rapist gang member out of the blue, if you did do that it would have to have been something that you wanted to do all along. Games and films don’t manufacture behaviour they don’t alter people the only impact they have is on the aesthetic, so the film isn't the ‘why’ it’s just the ‘how’.

The only impact The Matrix had on the columbine killers was their choice of clothes, which seems like a moot point when the cause of their actions was their parents and their school ignoring the fact they were obviously being bullied not to mention the fact they were collecting guns. Not that I believe gun collecting precipitates shooting but what other uses to guns have? On the surface the ban is understandable but what it boils down to is purely aesthetic. Yes they may have copied the clothes and the words but when a killer kills we shouldn't focus on the clothes he wears or the books he reads to explain why. Those things are only the window dressing of a disturbed mind. Games and films and other media can’t actually implant murderous thoughts into people’s heads. Those are already there, films and games may if they do anything fan the flames, give them ideas but ideas are just ideas and to give up these ideas would be worse than just living with them.

 Would you really want to give up films like Clockwork Orange just to stop people copying them but then if not Clocking Orange then it’s the Matrix, ok that’s gone, what’s next? Just destroy all films and all books and all plays and erase all history to do with any violence just to destroy the slightest possibility that anyone might copy any of it. Do you think this would work? Of course not because people will still kill, as long as there are two men left on the earth one may still kill the other and he’ll say God told him to do it, if he hasn't read any good books recently or seen any good films.
The reason for this is because people just want something to blame anything but to have to come to terms with the fact that we’re no better than animals really and animals don’t need any other reason for killing other than having nothing better to do.