Supreme Injustice
When I read it in the news, last Monday (July 27th, 2011) decision by the US Supreme Court left me speechless. On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out California State’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.
Even stronger, Justice Antonin Scalia explained that “there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence”. That much we already knew, as TV channels beam worldwide hundreds of hours of American made fiction films or series depicting all forms of violence and now even torture (in one particularly shocking episode of “24” Jack Bauer even threatens to kill a child, in order to obtain information about the ticking bomb which threatens civilization.”) The annoying thing with this beautiful tradition is that it keeps a door open through which ever more violence and a taste for ever more powerful weapons are inserted in juvenile minds. It creates an addiction to violence in US society which has now been characterized and understood.
Justice Antonin Scalia shockingly tried to justify the decision by pointing out that “the violence in the original depiction of many popular children's fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.” If this was really the base for the legal reasoning of the high court, it demonstrates an appalling ignorance of the role of symbolic violence in fairy tales and the role it plays to alert young minds to the world’s meanness without giving them the example of real / realistic violence. Fairy tales are preventing violence not condoning it - and incidentally avoiding giving the instructions for use of various weapons. The high court save two exceptions, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Stephen Breyer; Justice Clarence Thomas at least showed he understood the difference between an adult and a minor when he wrote: “The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that "the freedom of speech," as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians.”
For Justice Antonin Scalia, “No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” What kind of “ideas” are exactly presented in the extremely violent video games, apart that it is okay to randomly kill your neighbours and whoever you come across? This extreme interpretation of the First Amendement is contrary to what simple ethics call for. In a country where the majority is religious, are the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth not somewhat selectively listened to? Or are they just valid on Sundays?
The high court must also be unaware of, or chose to ignore the findings of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, as early as 2000, reported that one of the warning signs characteristic of school shooters was that the high-risk student “spends inordinate amounts of time playing video games with violent themes, and seems more interested in the violent images than in the game itself” (O’Toole, M.E. (2000). The school shooter: A threat assessment perspective. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 20). OK this is not the only cause for violence, only a big risk factor, like high fat foodstuffs or smoking for heart attacks. Do we then encourage these activities because they are ‘only’ risk factors?
The high court must also have chosen to ignore the statistic reality of violence in the USA. A UN source, the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, carefully validates and compares international statistics which show that the level of intentional homicide in the USA is of 5 per 100,000 inhabitants, four times the level of France, five times Italy’s, six times Germany’s, seven times Switzerland. In this ranking, the USA find themselves surrounded by countries like the Philippines, Ukraine, Argentina, Laos… of course far better off than the worse countries among which Russia (15), Brazil (22), Colombia (35) or El Salvador (73), but still the only developed country with such level of violence.
Finally you wonder in what kind of protected world the Supreme Court judges live. May be if the next hot video game was about killing a Supreme Court judge with a realistic depiction of the Supreme Court premises, they would at last discover limits to the so-called freedom of speech, which is now being translated a license to learn to kill.
When I read it in the news, last Monday (July 27th, 2011) decision by the US Supreme Court left me speechless. On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out California State’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.
Even stronger, Justice Antonin Scalia explained that “there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence”. That much we already knew, as TV channels beam worldwide hundreds of hours of American made fiction films or series depicting all forms of violence and now even torture (in one particularly shocking episode of “24” Jack Bauer even threatens to kill a child, in order to obtain information about the ticking bomb which threatens civilization.”) The annoying thing with this beautiful tradition is that it keeps a door open through which ever more violence and a taste for ever more powerful weapons are inserted in juvenile minds. It creates an addiction to violence in US society which has now been characterized and understood.
Justice Antonin Scalia shockingly tried to justify the decision by pointing out that “the violence in the original depiction of many popular children's fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.” If this was really the base for the legal reasoning of the high court, it demonstrates an appalling ignorance of the role of symbolic violence in fairy tales and the role it plays to alert young minds to the world’s meanness without giving them the example of real / realistic violence. Fairy tales are preventing violence not condoning it - and incidentally avoiding giving the instructions for use of various weapons. The high court save two exceptions, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Stephen Breyer; Justice Clarence Thomas at least showed he understood the difference between an adult and a minor when he wrote: “The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that "the freedom of speech," as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians.”
For Justice Antonin Scalia, “No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” What kind of “ideas” are exactly presented in the extremely violent video games, apart that it is okay to randomly kill your neighbours and whoever you come across? This extreme interpretation of the First Amendement is contrary to what simple ethics call for. In a country where the majority is religious, are the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth not somewhat selectively listened to? Or are they just valid on Sundays?
The high court must also be unaware of, or chose to ignore the findings of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, as early as 2000, reported that one of the warning signs characteristic of school shooters was that the high-risk student “spends inordinate amounts of time playing video games with violent themes, and seems more interested in the violent images than in the game itself” (O’Toole, M.E. (2000). The school shooter: A threat assessment perspective. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 20). OK this is not the only cause for violence, only a big risk factor, like high fat foodstuffs or smoking for heart attacks. Do we then encourage these activities because they are ‘only’ risk factors?
The high court must also have chosen to ignore the statistic reality of violence in the USA. A UN source, the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, carefully validates and compares international statistics which show that the level of intentional homicide in the USA is of 5 per 100,000 inhabitants, four times the level of France, five times Italy’s, six times Germany’s, seven times Switzerland. In this ranking, the USA find themselves surrounded by countries like the Philippines, Ukraine, Argentina, Laos… of course far better off than the worse countries among which Russia (15), Brazil (22), Colombia (35) or El Salvador (73), but still the only developed country with such level of violence.
Finally you wonder in what kind of protected world the Supreme Court judges live. May be if the next hot video game was about killing a Supreme Court judge with a realistic depiction of the Supreme Court premises, they would at last discover limits to the so-called freedom of speech, which is now being translated a license to learn to kill.
posted by Antoine Jaulmes at 2:22 AM
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