In the interest of fairness, and with the adage; 'no publicity is bad publicity' is mind, I am publishing a (shaky) translation of a scathing report citing 'Where Lunatics Prosper' which I wrote in 2011 and was published by BACP. It has caused quite a stir in Portugal... Preconceito e ignorância - Prejudice and ignorance.
This week generated great discussion in
Portuguese about network a "report" of the national channel, TVI,
about the E3 video game trade show [1]. Dissatisfaction with the way in which
the culture of games was treated in this part "journalistic" even led
to the creation of a petition calling for a formal apology from the television
chain [2]. I saw the "report" and surprised me more by the
misrepresentation of the basic principles of journalism, than the lack of
knowledge of, the simple: "what?", "Who?",
"When?", "Where?", "how?" and "Why?".
The piece was intended to address the fair games, in which they were announced
the two big international consoles. The last time this happened on a E3, was
seven years ago, which gives good account of the importance of the event. But
the piece ended up talking about alleged emotional problems caused by the
games. That is, the "journalist" did not address the matter at hand,
I wanted to before issuing an opinion on the subject, background. So I have to
use quotation marks when I refer to the piece as "report" or
"journalism".
This is not a problem only of TVI, is not even a
problem only. There are
weeks shared on the network article, "where lunatics prosper" [3] of
Jeanine Connor that left me far more disturbed than this piece. The
article goes way further than what has been done here, although focusing on the
same topic. Moreover, it is not a mere loose text, or a report that is a low
audiences anytime. The
text was written by a psychotherapist, and published in the journal Therapy
Today, published by the British Association of counselling and psychotherapy. A
magazine dedicated to disseminate advice and resources for use by professionals
in the field of therapy practice. That is, it is assumed that before being
published, was read by pairs, filtered by editors, and seen as reliable enough
to become the main article, and complete cover theme, in the number this month.
And so what tells us the British Association of
counselling and psychotherapy, according to the words of Jeanine Connor? The
article starts by presenting the case of a child of 11 years that has a
terrible behavior in school, slams us colleagues, evil teachers, has bad notes
and has been suspended several times. After tells us that this child was born
of an unwanted pregnancy, pretty new parents, who have been living together for
a social House. The father beat the mother, drank alcohol and took drugs. After
a few years the boozy father almost killed the whole family firing the car
under a truck, and was arrested. The mother herself, joins a friend, who had in
the meantime violated. The friend who also beat in the pregnant mother-of a
second child. This friend fled, and mother arranged a third, which also beats,
and you made a third son. The 11-year-old child doesn't like the mother, and
tells him that wants to die. Spends most of his time locked in the room playing
video games ("GTA" and "CoD")."
Now
the analysis and interpretation of the case conducted by the psychotherapist.
The child lives in a real and virtual world laden with violence. The child has
no parental affection and is educated by the screen. The screen serves as a
mirror for your outsourcing, merging real and fantasy. In the absence of a
parent, the formation of identity of teenage boys is entangled with the
characters of the games. These teens are educated by games with aggressive
characters, provocative images of women that do "oral sex
simulations". The text ends saying that the continuation of these trends
in media, will lead the boys in the future to feel more attracted by rape, paedophilia
and domestic abuse, and that "this dreaded future will then be the true
place where lunatics prosper." To support this text, was
created an image for the cover of the magazine, in which one sees a scene of
domestic violence to be controlled by a gamepad.
Just read, or want to believe. It is true that
putting images of Anders Breivik in a story on the E3 is an unusual distortion
level, but you want to solve the problems of violent homes and disrupted with
the withdrawal of videogames and violence of the screens, should give to laugh
if it weren't published with this seriousness. I know that it is much more difficult, if not impossible,
to a psychotherapist change the social reality that surrounds the child.
Give it a new home, new
parents, a second life. But then streamline and synthesize all the problems
that plague the life of this child in games, and to propose as a solution to
what has been reported, the simplistic ban of these artifacts, is an affront.
But
what hurt me most when reading the text, was the moment when the therapist asks
the child alone, about the games more liked to play, and surprised says, that
was the first time during the entire evaluation, in which the child was lively
and awake. Then again, a child who lives in a home to physical, sexual violence
and daily stress, in which everything is uncertain and nothing is safe, the
only thing that guarantees some cognitive and emotional stability are exactly
the video games. The video games are to some extent the ones who understand,
that give you positive feedback by the actions and achievements which, when
around them all just the face as a hindrance.
This
goes beyond ignorance and prejudice. This is a symptom of liberalism that took
the pulse of society, or what remains of it. Are accurate to blame, and these
cannot be us, nor the rulings that stimulate highly individualistic societies.
Because no matter the promotion of social policies with ability to maintain a
cohesive society, healthy and educated. In the middle of all this, the
journalism rather than investigate, limited to debit the current speech.
