ARTelevision

Yeah, I'm not too fascinated by the acting-it-out argument - it's a red herring. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking human stupidity, miserableness, insensitivity, alienation from each other - things we all feel and have to live with.

The time I spent in Japan indicates to me that the people inhabit a sad, repressed, alienated, miserable culture. That's the problem here. Our "entertainment" is trauma-based - fucked up, in other words. That's how fucked up we are. It doesn't take a genius to see it or say it.

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xepherys

When was entertainment NOT trauma-based? Ever? Anywhere?

Epic poems of war? check
Biblical descriptions of suffering? check
Gladiatorial battles? check
boxing/wrestling/mma? check

Why do we watch a train derailing? Why do we rubberneck as we drive by an accident? I said it a few posts ago, and I'll say it again - this is not new. Sex, violence, fear, elation - humans are wired to want to biggest and most intense feelings that can be mustered. And while love is grand, you can't have pure love on demand. But you can have pure sex. Pure fear. Pure violence. Our entire collective being throughout history proves that it's no different now than ever.

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ARTelevision

So we should give things like man's inhumanity to man, endless war, endless violence, endless rape a pass?

I don't get it.

Is there something defensible about typical human behavior?

Or are you... "just sayin'"?

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xepherys

I'm neither "just sayin'" nor accepting of it on the whole. But I think there needs to be an understanding and a common middle-ground met between human nature and social utopia.

Offering an option to explore socially-abhorrent behavior in a safe way (a video game, an anime, a website, a dungeon) is the middle-ground in the case of this thread. Do I think we should just allow people to rape each other? No! Do I think we should try to dissuade people from feeling how they feel though? No!

If we could get all the angry leaders and politicans and warlords to take out their aggression in Battlefield: Bad Company instead of waging wars, wouldn't that be an awesome plan? Sure, it'll never happen universally, but having venues to release your socially unacceptable nuances sure beats having them pent up and then having them actually negatively affect another human being.

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ARTelevision

So this is the theory that if I spend my time rehearsing, fantasizing, jacking up all the worst parts of my nature that I will somehow end up a better person?

This is the kind of silly indefensible scenario we're left with if we refuse to accept the degree to which we are seriously fucked up - as a species, a culture, and as individuals. If we accept it perhaps we can do something about it. That's all.

It seems to me that either we keep that in mind - daily - as we go about our business or else we seriously - and dangerously - continue to delude ourselves that we are somehow OK - both collectively and individually.

And sorry, but if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that we are not "OK."

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Halx

The way I see it, Art, you cannot know light without knowing dark.

I am often reminded of Scientology's claim to remove unhappiness from a person's mind. The only way to do this is to also remove happiness.

So, if your ideal world does not pander do the animalistic side of humanity, then I don't think it can embrace the "finer" points of the human psyche either.

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The_Jazz

ART, out of curiousity, what culture isn't fucked up? Even historically, I think you're hard pressed to give an example of one that doesn't have some facet or another that would magnetically draw it into your definition.

I see fewer cultural differences here and more of the human condition acted out in a way unique to Japanese culture. To much of the world (as you've already noted) American culture is bizarre since we'll put gratuitous violence in childrens' movies (Home Alone, anyone?) but any sign of a female breast or cigarette immediately makes it unacceptable for anyone under 18.

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xepherys

I guess it depends on how you define "OK". A lot of people think being gay is not "OK". In fact, there are groups dedicated to teaching gay people to NOT be gay anymore. Hopefully, you find that abhorrent. If you do, you should at least see some of my reasoning. You can't make people be different than who they are. People don't legitimately change their true nature. But you can prevent, to a degree, action on people's darker nature if there is an alternative outlet for it.

However, if you think that the aforementioned groups are on the right track with the Great Fixing of Society, then, well... we'll agree to disagree.

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ARTelevision

Jazz...all cultures are pretty much fucked up. It is a measure of the degree to which human beings are a dangerously self-destructive species.

For me it is axiomatic - based on a study of history and human behavior. Our only hope is to admit how seriously deranged we are. It's the only way we will ever get serious enough to repair ourselves. I think it's possible. But not the way we are going about it.

Take culture, for example. It's obviously a mirror into ourselves. We just seem to have a hard time admitting how fucking ugly, messed up, and sick we look in that mirror.

The only reason I can think of is that we just can't handle it.
We like to think we're somehow better than that.
That's no reason for me to enable the delusion.

*

edit to respond to Halx...

Yeah, I just don't believe it's necessary to be a slave to some sort of dialectical belief system, either. What's so hard about saying that some things are fucked up and choosing to change them?

That's all I'm saying. I don't see any reason to believe we can't somehow make choices while we go about evolving ourselves. That's what creative evolution is about, as far as I'm concerned.

I just think it's strange how timid we are about saying some things are just fucked up...period.

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The_Jazz

ART, I'd love to get you and Voltaire in a room together.

Conceeding the premise that humanity is inherently flawed for the sake of argument, I have to argue that it's a fatal flaw - we ain't fixable. There are few constants in human history, and one of those is human nature. We diefy those who somehow transcend that nature - Christ, the Buddah, Mohammed, etc. - but at the end of the day, we're a pissy little species hell-bent on destruction at the fastest possible rate. We've become incredibly efficient at inflicting misery on everyone and everything around us since the day we came down from the trees.

In other words, if you're right, we're doomed.

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ARTelevision

Jazz, I don't see any reason to believe that. We can get smarter. We can make better choices. But if we keep giving ourselves a pass - or if we just keep throwing up our hands and saying "that's just human nature" - we are doomed on a daily basis (I'm sure you have noticed this).

So it's simple and doesn't require a meeting with Voltaire.
We admit how fucked up we are.
We decide to get smarter and change ourselves.
That seems to be worth living for.

Everything else is just diversion, delusion, and trauma-based entertainment...

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Baraka_Guru

Well, the whole point of "trauma-based entertainment"---or even if you apply that to the arts----is that it's an exploration of extremes with regard to our capabilities, both good and bad. Most art that I appreciate I would assume was made by an artist who believed that the future was at risk. Why else would one create art? If the future weren't at risk---i.e. we lived in a utopia---would it be art, or would it simply be some nice craftsmanship?

Now I can't say this game is art, but it is entertainment. It explores a deep, dark fantasy amongst a certain population. I wouldn't say the game is indicative of a doomed race or essentially a dehumanization of who we are. To me, it is a reflection of both fantasy and reality.

It's exploring these things I think is what makes us innately human. The problem I have with the game has more to do with its aesthetics/vehicle than its subject matter.

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ARTelevision

Yep. Makes sense to me.

It's all art. The question is always whether a particular form of art is any good, good for anything, good for nothing, or whether it is just plain crap art.

This is about taking positions and making choices - not making excuses and giving our guilty pleasures a pass.

That's what creative evolution is about.

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mixedmedia

First of all, I hardly need you to tell me the history of rape. It is irrelevant. Rape in the past, and largely in the present, was not a form of Saturday night entertainment. My objections to this game are not based on my objections to rape - which are objections prob. shared by most of the people on this board.

Second of all, I really don't need you to tell me about kinkiness, particularly about rape fantasies. My objections to the extension of fantasy to the realm of what could loosely be considered non-consensual roleplaying is that there is no mutually agreed upon 'control' - it's a free-for-all with one participant in control. And not just played out in the mind, but being visualized for you with sight and sound. I think it crosses the line from fantasy into something else...that I don't have a name for.

Thirdly, before someone tries to force the moniker of 'censor' onto me, I have no desire to see these games banned. What I would like to see is less people finding these things to be acceptable - and that includes any ultra violent forms of role-playing, not just these games.

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Ourcrazymodern?

What was that they used to say about men's brain waves when feminine-protection commercials came on? For all the interesting tidbits herein, I'm VIRTUALLY comatose.

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Zeraph

Meh, interactive porn, whatever. And its not like rape fantasies are new. I've known many women with rape fantasies as well. Now there's an untapped market.

Shauk

Peepo-spider

I admit that it is a common enough fantasy and that you never will or ever can loose the darker edge of humanity (after all so long as there is the reproductive urge and human lust for power, or void of power in lives, the rape fantasy will always be present, agreed?) however I think there is simply no need for it to come into publication like this :-/

So long as an action causes fierce pain and prolonged damage to any other human being it should always remain a taboo.

In my opinion videogames like this aren't so much endorsing it as they are bringing it to the surface, as they become increasingly common they will be frowned upon less and less and eventually blend in with society, people will stop caring. The same patterns as violence in video games (don't get me wrong, I've played a few myself and despite being the worse crime in a sense they're the lesser crime ... um... far fewer people have murderous fantasies to indulge than there are rape fantasies. Such is the nature of a commercial society. We're tied into life lacking control and choice on the whole and naturally seek it elsewhere, but that's a story for a different night ) but in the end the more publicity it gets, the more it's thought about.

And not necessarily the bad sides ...


I suppose what I'm trying to say is treating topics as a social taboo is not perfect, but it's the best we have.

If we choose not to ignore a topic, but to condemn it altogether those few still with wobbly morals, capable of swinging one way or another, will have the fear of God put back into them. They learnt it's disgusting. They learnt it from their parents, from their religion, from their society, from their peers and to commit the crime would seem perhaps a thousand times more damnable.

It's social manipulation, but benevolent manipulation.

Our instincts are not always right, our desires are not always right and they are already twisted by the world we've created around us (are we naturally material? No. We're naturally competitive, this has been cleverly manipulated around to keep the monetary world and power wheels churning. Are we naturally dominating like this? I couldn't say, but I don't doubt our lifestyle contributes to this), but if we're willing to manipulate things in a selfish way, should we not manipulate ourselves in a selfless way?


You could always turn my argument against me on the grounds that rape crime's are lower in number over in Japan, but this is a completely different culture!

How many of them do you think are reported? Especially within marriage. The women there have been taught how to react, how to feel, what to expect by their media (which is no less than this) and certainly wouldn't report it! They wouldn't be taken seriously from what I can make out

... and they're less free to commit crimes, look at the way they're raised in comparison to the western world. Not all of them, but a good majority are brought up stricter on obeying the rules that they've been given.

The number of possible, plausible outside influences are staggering, the two can't really be compared :-/




Watching some of the videos where the girls in it are sobbing (they enjoy this?!) I have to say it's an absolutely disgusting take on women as it is. What about the boys that play these that have little experience with real girls as it is? I'm talking teenagers, who are still in the stage of developing empathy at this point physically and mentally ... where do these games put them? I'm sure it's not drastic, but isn't it a step downwards none the less?


... I would also call it out on being sexist, but then I've seen the other side of the coin produced also.


I disagree with that too :P

Terrell

Just a game, a dark one albeit, but IMO it should be legal for sale/play by adults. No actual women or children were harmed in the production of this game, as far as I know.

MoonDog

Bah, if I were concerned about this stuff, I wouldn't be sending my daughter to Japan for a year on student exchange