I just moved into a new home, and I’m sorting through old posessions, getting rid of what we don’t need.
Today, my housekeeper came over. She’s a very nice lady with three young children, so I decided of offer her the item we decided to get rid of: an old Playstation with assorted games. She said that the kids’ Playstation had broken a while back, and they’d be thrilled to have it.
I gave her the stack of games, but with a warning that some of them she might not want her children to play. “Just so you know,” I told her, “For example, we have Grand Theft Auto in there, and some parents wouldn’t want their kids to play that.”
“Oh, no,” she assured me. “It’s okay. They’ve played it before at my brother’s house.” She continued to sort through the stack. “Now, this one, I probably won’t let them play.”
It was the gameSouth Park.
“Uh . . . it’s not, uhm, bad,” I said. “Basically, you throw snowballs at turkeys.”
“Yeah, but is there any cussing?”
I told her I didn’t think so, and let it go at that.
But it struck me as an odd commentary on American culture: a video game in which you steal cars, beat and kill people (including police officers) is considered acceptable, while a relatively innocuous game with little violence-- unless you consider hitting poultry with snow projectiles to be violence-- can be ruled out because it may contain language which might offend.
