Witches, The Witcher, and WTF …
Every once in a while we get a game that promises ‘mature content’. And every now and then (too frequently) we have another chicken little proclaiming how the sky is falling based on some new game or book or movie … late last week we had both!
The Witcher is a game from Polish developer CDProjekt based on fiction by Andrzej Sapkowski. It tells the tale of a monster hunter, or witcher, names Geralt and his adventures. The books – and game – are full of violence, choices with consequences you can’t always see immediately, moral ambiguity, terrorism, pathos, corruption, blatant sexuality, racism, humor and more. In other words – mature content in the story translated into mature content in a game made for adults and appropriately Rated M.
But of course that isn’t good enough – the game has an optional mini-game that allows you to collect ‘cards’ with pictures on them, and some of the pictures feature topless women. So Atari now has several versions – including the North American version featuring edited cards that basically ‘hide the nipples’. Let me get this straight – Geralt can have ‘relations’ with up to twenty different women in the form of romance or prostitution, will kill hundreds of humans and monsters – some in cold blood, and the big concern is nipples. So there is a concern about whether people old enough to watch full nudity and simulated sex between actual people in R-Rated movies will be able to handle seeing digital nipples? WTF?
Meanwhile, last week in the Boston area, long thought to be a hotbed of liberalism and educational advocacy, we had yet another instance of ‘Harry Potter Hysteria‘. In the suburb of Wakefield, the head of St. Joseph’s school has ordered all of the Harry Potter books removed from the school on the grounds that they are ‘spiritually dangerous’. This despite the same article showing a teacher being proud of the reading accomplishments of her students, with Harry Potter leading the way as the most read book. I have many issues with this – and not the least of which is that these books have been around for many years, long enough for many articles to have extolled the positive impact they have had in terms of getting kids reading again. And while many of the protests about Harry Potter have centered around how reading them would turn our children into demon-worshipers (sort of how reading books on auto repair has turned many teens into carburetors), this one also focuses on how the books model disrespect for adults. Because, of course, teens thinking for themselves and solving problems and not automatically doing what they are told by adults without reasons other than “because I said so” is very dangerous … we might end up with a generation of free-thinkers who fail to repeat the stupidity of our generation and previous generations.
Again … WTF?!?! Where are our priorities? Why are we worrying about kids reading Harry Potter when more and more states have to institute secondary testing systems to combat the amount of high school graduates who cannot read or write; why are we worrying about 17-year olds seeing a nipple when in less than a year they could be carrying their best friend’s leg off the road so that his mother can have a full body to bury? What is wrong with us?
(it is interesting that as I was finalizing this I noticed GamerDad had posted some similar thoughts around Manhunt 2)
October 29th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
As if on cue I just got a Catholic forward from my aunt warning me to ban “The Golden Compass” because it was written by an avowed Atheist and that “in the end the kids kill God” <- I don't know WHAT that means and I did read the book. I swear, I actually hit REPLY ALL and wrote the following: Jesus Christ! God forbid children and families might actually THINK! Then I thought better of it and posted it here instead. Also, Mike, any word on the Religious reaction to Dumbledore being gay all of a sudden? Rowling did say earlier that to her, the moral of the books is "Sometimes authority figures are really bad or stupid." NOW I see why she's hit the zeitgeist so hard during this particular decade!
October 30th, 2007 at 5:14 am
I’ve not seen anything yet, but then we stopped getting regular mailings from the Boston Archdiocese after sending them a letter about the full issue they devoted to how gay marriage and homosexuality were the ruination of man and needed to be stopped by constitutional amendment … and included info about ‘sexuality counseling’ for kids …
As for the Golden Compass, that is a movie all of us are looking forward to – we all read the books this summer – and as I was writing I thought that in a month or so I could foresee an article “why the church needs to get over the Golden Compass” … looks like I was late with that …
But seriously, look at the actual church structure a few hundred years ago and project it along a slightly different course and see if you don’t end up in a scenario very much like the one Pullman depicts! Well, aside from the Daemons and dust and the other elements – I mean the over-reaching world church authority.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Gamerdad: http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp
Quote from the author: “My books are about killing God”.
I’m not saying you can’t expose kids to competing ideas, but I don’t want to expose them to ideas that are diametrically opposed to my own wrapped up in shiny, seductive marketing, which is woefully effective on even smart, well-raised kids, sometimes. I’m not making a snap judgment without reading them, but it doesn’t look good.
October 30th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
That’s fair James.
I was reacting more to the fact that my aunt thought I’d want to see an email like that than anything else.
My main point is, judging from the books alone, I very much doubt that any child of faith will come away from these books with any loss of faith. You know, in much the same way the Narnia movie didn’t convert any heathens to Christianity. Seriously, if you read the books yourself you might even be surprised to learn that the author is an atheist. It really doesn’t come across nearly as explicitly as that Snopes entry makes it seem (which has to be one of the most one-sided Snopes entries I’ve ever seen) and despite the fact that I read these books about 2 years ago… I had to be reminded that they had much religion in them. My main memory was of a unique and bizarre parallel world and mediation on other dimensions than any anti-religious stuff.
I’ll likely be reviewing it for Disney’s family websites and my track record is actually very sensitive toward people of faith … so believe me if this is anything other than a big epic movie with some hidden allegorical religious themes – I’ll be sure to mention it.
And let me make one thing clear in case this comes back to haunt me. What I mean by “god forbid children and families should THINK” is that the film portrays the dominant religious establishment as hypocritical, anti-science, and totalitarian.
I meant that kids and families should think about how the human messengers often don’t represent the word of God/Jesus particularly well.
All that said, your job as a parent is to protect your child and it’s your choice how you do that. Avoiding a movie like this for whatever reason is certainly valid. Just understand that I swear whomever wrote that Snopes article clearly didn’t read the books – or if they had, they read it through enormous coke-bottle sized bias-glasses.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
My younger son is probably the strongest of us in his faith, but all of us are practicing Catholics, and my wife and I are CCD teachers. Yet we are also students of history and reality, and the Church is not a gleaming beacon of ‘doing God’s work through the ages’. That is what I – and my kids – read. Like GamerDad, I’ll be surprised if the movie is stronger than the book. Indeed, I expect it to soften the overtones and leave the compelling story intact.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m OK with people having a problem with Harry Potter due to the “magic” in the book (hey, I gotta have an open mind after all…) I disagree, but that’s my right. These people are typically coming from the side of things looking at traditional “magic” which is closer to witchcraft and shamanism – both of which are seen as having some semblance of reality coming from non-Christian (ie. demons/devils/Satan) sources – examples can be given in the New Testament.
My personal feelings (and I’m about as hard-core in my Christian beliefs as any) is that Harry Potter type magic is so far removed from what the Bible warns about that it isn’t a “big deal”. (Similar to how candy cigarettes are not going to get anyone smoking anytime soon…)
My major problem with Harry Potter (the character) is how stupid (read foolish) he is. I’d say 80% of the books (or more) would be nothing of importance, danger would be solved, etc… if Harry et al… were to actually TELL one of the involved adults what’s going on. But NOPE… gotta keep it all secret, the adults certainly aren’t going to be able to help… The adults could tell Harry more, its true, but he does start out as an 11 year old or something like that and how much are you really gonna lay down on a kid that age?
October 30th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Matt,
We’re talking about The Golden Compass, not Harry Potter. But you bring up some good points:
Harry tells Dumbledore everything and then Dumbledore solves the problem and then the book is 5 pages long. In a kids book there’s a basic rule that the kid has to solve the problem. This is just one reason why so many moms or dads are dead in kid lit, it’s easier to distract one parent than explain why two aren’t helping the kid versus the insurmountable problem.
Don’t let logic interfere too much with story. That said, when I write children’s books (and I’ve really only written three) I try to avoid just this problem like the plague.
And now I will present a LOGICAL explanation for Harry’s behavior:
He was raised by two monster surrogate parents and was neglected to the point where even when he meets a good adult, he still is extremely slow to trust.
But even that doesn’t work, which Rowling acknowledges by saying: “If he were real, Harry would be one messed up kid.”
For the record, I really wouldn’t have had a problem with my Aunt’s email boycott dealie if it read more like this:
“Attention parents. We’d like you to know that The Golden Compass is a movie you should consider avoiding. It’s a children’s movie based on a book written by an activist Atheist named Phillip Pullman and despite winning multiple awards for literature the story contains anti-religious themes. Here’s an article that tells you more: SNOPES LINK.”
The email as I received it reads like Dolores Umbridge wrote it. 😉
October 31st, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Heh, points for the Umbridge reference.
RE: that Snopes link I posted earlier, I was really surprised by the one-sidedness of it too — usually (in my experience) if Snopes “takes sides”, it’s with the liberals or secularists (or both) against the conservatives or religious folks.
Anyway, I agree with you about the tone thing — perhaps the easiest way to get me to ignore you is to shout (or the INTERNET EQUIVALENT), especially about “SAVE THE CHILDREN!1!” type stuff.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 am
Remember, it’s a European Game – Less violence, more sex.
It also sounds a little similar to something..
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:35 am
There is plenty of violence and blood and strong language as well – I’m only about a half-hour in, but it is shaping up to mostly be ‘mature’ in a real and not pejorative way.