Book: The Trouble With Boys
One of the writers over at Ars Technica, Mike Thompson (who some of you might remember as Boy of Tomorrow), recently put up an very interesting article about a book that a former Newsweek writer, Peg Tyre, recently wrote entitled The Trouble With Boys. No, it's not a dating help book for figuring out troublesome boys, but a new look on the role that violent videogames play in the developing lives of boys.
Unlike the slew of other books out there demonizing videogames, this one actually looks to see if maybe violence in videogames is exactly what these kids need to help them develop in today's society. As Peg mentions, she even started off as a skeptic of videogames; however, that quickly changed:
I started off, admittedly, as a video game hater... [But] I sat down and played Halo with [my sons], and while I saw that it's very violent, I also saw that it's a very condensed form of violence... so I started to take a different view about video games: maybe I should be a little less hysterical about them.
Once seeing that videogames weren't necessarily destroying her children, she then looked closer at what these games were actually displaying:
Many [boys] play and think around violence. We might see them as doing something potentially dangerous. But actually what they're doing is playing around with ideas of courage and valor, good versus evil, and teamwork. These are ideas we want to inculcate in our culture...
She then went and picked apart just what might have formed this negative view about games when violence in media has been around for hundreds of years:
There was such media saturation about [events like Columbine]... that it seemed to people that it was happening in their communities next door, [and] it created a zero tolerance policy towards violence...You're often playing a heroic role [in a video game]. I think that sense of heroism has been around since Greek drama. If you want to get into violence, look at The Odyssey or The Iliad. Homer's stories are very violent... but we regard them with less suspicion.
In the end she states that videogames might be filling a niche that young male adults need to help them explore the natural violent fantasies that occur in their developing minds in a controlled and healthy enivroment. While her viewpoint might not be readily accepted by those entrenched in the "violent videogames are evil" campaign, it is at least refreshing to see the other viewpoint being brought to the literary table.
Keeping violent media away from boys could be a bad idea [Ars Technica]
[via GamePolitics]
PixelPoet
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany, Video Games on 18 February 2009
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: ars technica, book, halo, the trouble with boys, violent video games
Good for her for actually using her head instead of being a lemming. Actually doing homework & also the unimaginable, playing games with her kids. Incredible, a parent being a parent, quite an oddity.