Left I on the News

First-person shooters, imaginary and real

[This post stimulated, and partially derived from, some comments in an email from reader Jamie]

I wrote the other day about violent video games (and ads!), and the effect they have on young boys and men (and I suppose an occasional woman too). One thing I failed to note, however, is that video games, no matter what the target, all share one obvious but still important characteristic - the protagonist, the "player," the "first-person shooter," pays no price. Oh, I'm sure they may be "killed" in some games, but that just means they start again. Unlike the cat, the video game player has infinite lives, and unlike the real soldier, they walk away every time with nary a scratch, and no injury more dangerous than carpal tunnel syndrome.

Which brings us to real life. A while ago, there was a lot of talk about how the U.S. government prevents pictures of coffins returning from Iraq from being photographed. But, as reader Jamie points out to me, this isn't really the heart of the matter. To macho types, there's nothing wrong with death. Live hard, die hard, or something like that. The real threat, the thing that would give macho types pause, is not seeing dead people come home in a box, but seeing live ones spending the rest of their lives without arms, legs, or functioning spinal cords. Going from being a "big tough guy" to being someone with the prospect of spending the rest of their lives dependent on other people, or in the best cases dogs or machines, for the simplest of functions. Yes, we occasionally read stories about the one who has triumphed over adversity, gone through rehabilitation, and is now doing triathlons, but for every one of those there are a hundred who haven't. And it's the pictures of those people, and the portraits of their lives, forever changed, which are needed to give potential future soldiers pause about throwing their lives away for some dubious (not to mention immoral) "cause".

Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention that Gary Trudeau has been beating this drum for several months in his comic strip, Doonesbury. For those who don't know, one of the central characters of the strip, B.D., lost his leg fighting in Iraq, and after several months of hospital rehabilitation, has just recently returned home to his changed life. I had totally forgotten about this when I wrote this post!