What’s the Difference Between Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Postal 2?

The question about the difference between Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Postal 2 sounds like the set-up to a corny joke.  In fact, it was a subject discussed yesterday at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices heard oral argument on a first Amendment challenge to a California statute banning the sale of violent video games to minors.  The New York Times reports on a spirited question and answer exchange between the justices and attorneys for each side in the dispute. 

According to the report, the law imposes a $1,000 fine for selling violent video games to anyone under the age of 18.  Violent video games are defined as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a “patently offensive way,” or a way that appeals to “deviant or morbid interests” while lacking “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” 

Justice Scalia’s comments and questions made it seem like he is leaning against the law, since he pointedly questioned both the definition of a “deviant violent video game,” and queried whether, since Grimm’s Fairy Tales are indeed grim, whether they, too should be banned. 

He went on to point out that American free speech tradition has never been successfully used by the government to ban portrayals of violence, and that the drafters of the First Amendment would have found the idea odd.  Questions by other members of the Court revealed a reticence to make it easier to regulate whole categories of speech, such as speech concerning violence.

I am guessing that a lot of things about this case would have struck the Framers as odd: television and video games for starters.  Moreover, there are legitimate concerns about creating less-protected categories of speech based on content.  Although some would argue that this has already happened in the case of speech with sexual content that has crossed into pornography, speech about violence seems more established in the American tradition, and it seems more difficult to differentiate between violent speech and “deviant” violent speech.  Another category where we know it when we see it could be problematic.

On the other hand, there are legitimate concerns with exposing children to violence.  Children who have survived actual violence or threats of violence, such as maltreated children or children who have witnessed domestic violence or wartime violence, often suffer psychological harm including post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression, or anxiety.  The concern with video games is less about trauma and more about what children might learn from the games.  The military famously used video game-like simulations to train soldiers to overcome their natural inhibitions against shooting other human beings.  Many people fear that video games allow children to become habituated to violence, such that they will act more aggressively in real-life situations.  Yet, at least a generation has now reached adulthood after having played many sorts of video games, and there is no reliable evidence demonstrating an increased population of serial killers or sadists.

The tough issue here, in my view, is whether the government can — or should — impose regulations like this as a means of helping parents to control the media to which their children are exposed.  Earlier attempts to regulate websites with sexual content have failed constitutional tests, partly because they make it harder for adults to access the materials.  Here, a store can certainly card customers to ascertain whether they are over 18 (in the same way people are carded for liquor or cigarette purchases), and this will not seriously interfere with adult purchase of the games in question. 

The goal of preventing minors from obtaining access to violent video games — unless their parents consent — is an impossible dream, in my opinion.  On the other hand, a law that sets such a goal might convey a powerful message to minors about society’s dim view of sadistic and gratuitous violence.  Grimm’s Fairy Tales and similar tales often included subtle or not so subtle moral messages in a way that (I’m guessing) Postal 2 does not.  A fairy tale wicked witch who suffered a terrible fate is a bit of a cautionary tale to children about the wages of sin.  Where a video game does not carry a similar message, perhaps we should let the legislature at least weigh in about society’s view of “deviant” violence.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Jeffrey J. Szczewski

    Video games, of course, are much closer to television, movies, books, etc., than to liquor or cigarettes. Besides the obvious fact that the former constitute speech and are therefore protected by the First Amendment, it’s worth noting that California’s law would only regulate video games, leaving television, movies, books, and the like completely unregulated. The irony is that the video game rating system is actually more strongly enforced than its counterparts in other categories of media, and minors have much greater success, say, getting into an R-rated movie than buying an M-rated game.

    For what it’s worth, I haven’t played Postal 2, but Wikipedia makes it sound like a satirical critique of the increasingly hostile nature of social interaction and its effects on everyday dispute resolution. (Plus it features Gary Coleman!)

  2. Kristin Pierre

    A fundamental difference that Justice Scalia seemed to have overlooked between our buddies the Brothers Grimm and games such as Postal 2 is that these video games place the child into the position of the aggressor, seeking out specific targets, yearning for destruction, and coming out victorious only after everything in the virtual world around you is mutilated (actually, it sounds a little bit like U.S. politics, but that’s a different story). Additionally, it gives children an irrational structure in which to view life and death and the consequences of their behaviors, i.e., if you murder someone or you are dismembered, there is a restart button.

    I spent a good amount of time in undergrad studying and writing about the detrimental effects of fairy tale notions on the psyche of young girls. I am a firm believer that these principles can be dangerous, but I must put up the argument that while fanciful notions of being saved from towers or snipping off a few toes to fit one’s fat foot into the coveted glass slipper represent unhealthy ideals, they cannot be placed on the same playing field as the aggression and desire for harm to others (though animated) that comes out while individuals are engaged in games of this nature.

  3. Chris Winchester

    As an avid gamer and a newly christened 1L, I have been following this case with more than passing interest. A few of my thoughts:

    1) The law seems unduly restrictive given the alternatives available. The most obvious of these is that every modern game console contains parental control settings that allow parents to lock out games that are beyond a certain rating. If these settings are enabled, even if a kid gets their hands on a game they shouldn’t, they won’t be able to play it due to the parental control.

    2) I think there is a great deal more protection-worthy speech in games than most people realize. Grand Theft Auto, for all the furor it generates, actually contains a pretty biting critique of modern America. It deals with timely and mature themes like the decline of The American Dream and individualism vs. government control. This type of commentary is by no means unique to just this game and I wonder how many of the people responsible for drafting these laws actually have played any of the games they find objectionable.

    3) Regarding the idea that video games are interactive, and that this level of interactivity somehow makes the violence worse, I would respond that this interactivity with violence is not unique to games by any stretch. There are many daily activities that we never question that have us equally, if not more so than games, participating in violent acts. For example, owning a gun is constitutionally protected. A person can take their gun to a shooting range and shoot at a target that looks like a human silhouette. What makes the interactivity in video games worse than that? I’d argue very little, if at all. Both involve active participation. Both involve an act that could be described as violent, and both involve causing damage to some human-analogue. In fact, I’d argue that the gun range is worse, since there a person is shooting a real-world weapon that fires real-world bullets capable of causing real-world death. This seems more likely to cause a desensitization to violence than the abstract action of pushing a button on a controller.

  4. Tom Kamenick

    I want to echo Jeffrey that the ESRB (the video-game industry’s rating panel) is a very strong body. Every single video game is rated, EC (early childhood), E (everyone) E10 (everyone 10 or older), T (teen), M (mature) and AO (adult only – only a bare handful of games have ever received this rating). More importantly, there are detailed content descriptors on each video game telling the buyer WHY it got that rating (things like “comic mischief,” “strong language,” and “graphic violence”).

    Stores that sell video games enforce the M restriction to 18+ very thoroughly. I once biked to a Gamestop (nation’s largest video game retailer) to buy an M-rated game, forgot my ID, and they wouldn’t sell to me (I’m 30). Every major video game retailer checks ID’s on M-rated games.

    Interestingly, the ratings tend to be stricter than movies, as well. Watch “As Good as it Gets” — a breast, buttocks, the f-word, strong sexual language, and it’s PG-13. Any one of those would get a video game an M.

  5. Ashanti Cook

    Although I understand the immediate aversion to putting something in the hand of a child that puts them into an aggressor role in fantastic situations, I think that the media portrayal of violence in music, television, and movies is more damaging specifically because it is not so immediately offensive to people. The portrayals of men, and increasingly scantily clad women, becoming heroes by violently taking out every ‘bad guy’ they can find is the kind of passive training that desensitizes. It is these images, where you never have to do anything to get to the next ‘level,’ that create a socially acceptable stereotype that the good guys are the ones who kill everyone else and get the girl. It is this training that convinces parents and adult friends that it is not a big deal for minors to play violent video games because they play violent video games.

    I think a parent that says “don’t hit your sister” while shooting down the enemy on a video game is, in my mind, just as worrisome as the child playing the video game to release the aggression that he is not allowed to vent on his sibling. In both situations the child could potentially learn that although one violent activity (hitting his sibling) is not okay, another violent activity (shooting the brown ganster) is acceptable. Similarly, when a child watches a television show or movie, whether or realistic or fantastic, where the good guy shoots a gun at the bad guy (or gets him with lasers, photons, or any other fantasy gun-like device) and sees that no matter what the show, the major difference between the good guy and the bad guy is that when the good guy shoots, he doesn’t miss, the child learns something. When this same child passes multiple billboards that advertise the things that parents buy using that same character or actor, the child learns something. The point is, children learn to accept violence and violent people as a natural part of life from more than just video games, so although I applaud Californians for attempting to look after their children’s welfare, I think that they would have to ban a lot more than just video game sales to minors in order to accomplish that goal.

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