it's funny how things are connected

so i'm in this class right now titled "moral reform in america." at the beginning of class my prof had us read a paper written by a former student of hers regarding obscenity controversies related to music in the 80s. the paper compared tipper gore and her ilk going to congress over their concern about heavy metal's influence on white kids, with the case of the rap group 2 Live Crew and the obscenity trial that ensued over an album of theirs. we also read an article she had written about Anthony Comstock.

i had begun class thinking i may be doing a paper that would be dependent on multiple in-depth interviews. i may still do this. but yesterday just before class another idea struck me. this idea was completely separate and unrelated to my first paper idea, but may be both more plausible given my schedule and also possibly more engrossing in the long run about what i want to end up studying.

so. here's the new moral controversy i'm looking into: video game violence. specifically, i will be looking into the ramifications of the "hot coffee" controversy from the GTA: San Andreas game. if you're unfamiliar with video games, GTA is one of the most violent game franchises out there. but that is a given, and in and of itself is not controversial. the "hot coffee" controversy surrounds an "easter egg" (i.e., code that was written by the programmers as part of the game and later abandoned and/or locked away from use within the program, which can be discovered by hackers and unlocked) in GTA: San Andreas where an explicit sex act can be interactively controlled by the player. to be sure, this portion of the game was never meant to be found by the public, and maybe was never meant to be included in the final product. alas, it was.

controversy ensued. several politicians became involved. legislation was passed with the intent of protecting children, and the developer/publisher was investigated by the FTC. my interest lies in how remaining obscenity laws are applied to this situation--which involves sexuality--as well as an overall concern for violence within video games as well.

several other questions arise, both general and specific. generally, there is the matter of how the debate on video games should be framed. should games be held as art? do aesthetic rules apply to judgment of a video game? how do politicians view video games, and how does that effect resulting legislation? what sort of parallels are present regarding the ESA/ESRB and the MPAA? specifially, is this "hot coffee" controversy too easy? too one-sided? should i look at several events, or only two for comparison? what about real violence, i.e. school shootings that are linked to the influence of video games? whose rhetoric should be considered weightier than others in this topic?

and here's where it's all connected. i started some preliminary research on this topic last night and tonight. a key figure in this "hot coffee" thing was jack thompson. the man has a kindred spirit in Anthony Comstock, the man responsible for thousands of arrests in the 19th century over obscenity charges. my prof wrote a book on comstock. i read it. it's good. but the big whammy is that this jack thompson fellow, he was was also involved in the 2 Live Crew incident, too. craziness! and FWIW, i know i linked wikipedia and that that's what i'm basing this off of, but i believe it's beneficial to start looking at a topic by viewing the wikipedia entry, but negligent if that is where you stop. and this is all in the nascent stage, so i am unapologetic.

so there it is. i'm looking at obscenity in the video game industry. i really think GTA is a great topic to focus on. and i think jack thompson would be a great guy to focus in on, and i know he has a dissenting conuterpart, b/c i've read an article about him and another man duking it out over this very issue. but those are just my thoughts. i would love to get some dialogue going in the comment thread here about whether you think this is a plausible thesis for a paper.