Here in the City of New York, CBS2 WCBS News has a recurring feature in which Arnold Diaz tries to get to the source of something bothering, annoying, or otherwise pissing off New Yorkers; entitled “Shame On You.” (It isn’t as ridiculous an idea as Lou Young’s “Fix That Flag,” which was recently ridiculed on The Daily Show. Then again, I don’t think “Fix That Flag” has a theme song…or a computer generated finger pointing and shaking up and down as if to say, “for shame!”)
Anyway, last night the Flying Fickle Finger of…um…Shame was pointed at New York business Rockstar Games and its president, Sam Houser, “for cashing in on racism and violence.”
Possible everyone in the country is aware of the violence in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and the earlier games in the GTA series. But here, the Haitian-American community was offended as one of the missions involved killing all the Haitians.
Since I personally believe there are two sides to every story, the question is: I’m not really a fan of the GTA series. It seems fun, but I don’t have an Xbox or PS2. I’m aware that the characters in the series are tough mobster criminal-type guys who will do anything, steal anything, and kill anyone to get the job done. I also find the idea of killing Haitians hilarious, as the Haitians are a race that isn’t ridiculed often. (Please note I do not condone the actually killing of Haitians, or anyone for that matter.)
Why do these guys go after the Haitians…or certian Haitians? The cutscenes they showed just had a tough guy saying things like “I hate those Haitians! Kill all the Haitians! Boom! Bye-bye!” There must be a better reason for a criminal group to go after Haitians than that.
I haven’t reached that scene in the game yet, but I would like to propose the startlingly original theory that because a book, show, movie or video game has a racist character, that does not make that work racist in itself.
Does a mystery book with a murder in it promote murder?
The “tough” guy mentioned (you soon realise he ain’t so tough) is Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina, who you do some missons for. These missions generally involve attacking Haitian gang members who live in the area a few blocks north of the Cubans.
The fact is, though, that you do plenty of missions for the Haitians against the Cubans too, it’s just that the Cubans are too dumb to realise that it’s you attacking them. In fact, one mission for the Haitians has you standing on a roof, picking off Cubans with a sniper rifle as the two gangs engage in hand to hand combat.
I never saw this as racism when I played the game, just as two rival gangs who want control over the same slum area of Vice City. If the Haitians hadn’t been there and the Cubans had been attacking the white biker gang that operate further north in the downtown area, would there be white, Hell’s Angel types phoning in to complain about racism? I doubt it.
The choice of Haitians makes a whole lot of sense in the context of the game. You may not have ever met a Haitian in your life, but if you lived in Miami you would realize just how many have immigrated to the United States.
In Miami there is a (usually) friendly ethnic rivalry between Haitians and Cubans. More Haitians live in South Florida than the rest of the US combined. There are Haitian gangs and Haitian neighborhoods. Rather than bitch about racism that isn’t there I would praise the game makers for their attention to detail.
It’s nothing against Haitians. They happened to be a identifiable group that lives in Miami (the city refused to let Rockstar use their name-- can’t say I blame them). The Cubans, Italians, teenagers, construction workers, cops, Liberals and Conservatives-- check out the talk radio shows-- don’t come out looking any better. It’s equal opportunity blowing the shit out of whoever whyever.
Biggirl–the city names, Liberty City, Vice City, and the likely San Andreas all come from the original GTA game. Futile is right–cities can’t keep their names off of a game, for example London and Los Angeles have been featured in recent GTA-type games.
It was also not a game written in the States - for those media outlets fixating on the US office, Rockstar North were behind GTA:VC, and the’re based in bonny Edinburgh.
Just turned 18, can’t drive by myself yet. I love Ne…that is, the City is a very nice place I enjoy, so maybe sometime in the future…who knows?
Going back on topic, I figured the Haitian community just misunderstood that these virtual guys’ll kill anyone who gets in their way. They think they’re modern-day Hitlers who want the Haitian race exterminated. It’s Night Trap all over again.
(For those of you who don’t get that reference: the U.S. Senate, thanks to America’s Favorite Video Game-Hating Jew™, Joe Lieberman, had a hearing about violent video games. The two targeted mainly were Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Everyone knows about the former, the latter was a Sega CD game that was a satire of slasher flicks. The goal was to save the damsels in distress from vampires and creeps by setting up traps. The Senate hearing somehow mangled this into a game where you kill girls. When Marilyn Droz, a major player on the anti-game side, was informed the scene in which a girl is killed by a vampire is meant to be a “game over,” Droz commented, “Oh, it makes me feel a lot better that if you are a loser you are dead?” Of course, this is pretty much what happens in every game ever since Pac-Man said “mrow-mrow-mrow-mrow boop-boop.” Droz then gave the great line that gaming magazines “are filled with game tips on how to play the game. In no time at all, children become winners and kill, and their kill ratio goes up. It tells[…]exactly what to do to become successful in murder.” Source: Steven L. Kent, The First Quarter (later reprinted under the title The Ultimate History of Video Games). Of course, games were tame then, but the zealots still came out. Although there have been GTA copycat crimes, I don’t think somebody’s going to kill all the Haitians.)
Theres a quote by the president of Nintendo thats pretty funny. I can’t find it now but hes talking about Pac-Man and it goes something like;
If it affected kids, then their whole generation would consist of people who play in the dark, listen to electronic music, and eat magic pills.
By some standards of racism, then yea GTA III and Vice City are pretty racist. Italians in the mafia, Cubans say cojones a lot, Colombians ship drugs, and rednecks really like alcohol.
By the standards of the people who play GTA, its all just humor. The game isn’t funner if we’re killing Cubans or Haitians. If anything besides humor, the amount of diversity in the game only makes it that more believable.
This quote is, as far as I can tell, apocryphal. Although the gag is comparing Pac-Man to a rave unwittingly, as far as I know, no one at Nintendo ever said anything like this. (The quote is often attributed to Kristian Wilson, Nintendo’s CEO, in 1989. As far as I know, no such person exists. The head of Nintendo at the time, IIRC, was Hiroshi Yamuachi.) However, Howard Phillips, who was kind of Nintendo’s publicity guy during the time of the senate hearings (he was a well known personality, and also starred in a comic strip in Nintendo Power alongside a smart-alecky kid named Nester who would always try to outsmart him, but fail), was asked by a news reporter or something, “Why are video games bad for children?” Howard’s reply: “They aren’t.” This anecdote is reprinted in Kent’s The First Quarter/Ultimate History.
