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Kenya: A Work of Genius in the Service of Sensation
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
6 May 2008
Posted to the web 6 May 2008
Tim Rutten
One of the hallmarks of a healthy consumer society is that its older generation habitually despises and decries the entertainments of the young.
The young, in turn, elevate their aesthetic rebellion to respectability over time. Jazz spilled out of the brothel parlour as satanic barbarism and an incitement to miscegenation; now it is the authentic American art music. Bob Dylan just won a Pulitzer Prize.
So what about today's youthful diversion of choice-the video game, which this week crossed some sort of pop cultural threshold when the year's big release, Grand Theft Auto IV, was reviewed seriously on the covers of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section and The New York Times' Arts section.
Andrew Reiner of the Game Informer-something of a bible for people of a certain age -was far less restrained. "I now know how film critics felt after screening The Godfather. It's been days since Grand Theft Auto IV's' credits rolled, yet I cannot seem to construct a coherent thought without my mind wandering off into a daydream about the game."Hmmm.
Maybe that's what eschewing decency for obnoxious, intelligent violence will do for you. It's also going to make its corporate distributor, Take-Two Interactive Software, and its creator, Rockstar Games, a great deal of money. A number of Wall Street analysts believe that the game-priced at about $60 per copy -may earn more than $500 million during its first week of release.
There's a new world of entertainment here, proceeding under its own power and following its own stars. But what does it contain? In this case, the story of a former Serbian militiaman (the protagonist through whom the players act) who is lured to a fictional version of New York. He kills, maims, has sex, then kills and maims some more, while also stealing various forms of transportation.
The graphics are stunningly realistic, and the opportunities for a player to interact with the characters and the physical setting are quite gripping. Still, where earlier generations of youthful art crossed boundaries- the critics call that being "transgressive" -they also affirmed something else, some alternative or countercultural value.
The Beat generation, just to take one example, rejected middle-class morality and aesthetics for Buddhism, ecstasy and sexual expression.
Censorship will not avail against this kind of compelling cultural shift - nor should it. Grand Theft Auto IV is a work of genius- but it is genius in the service of nothing more than sensation and profit. With this game, the interactive video industry has turned an aesthetic corner and is now an art form in search of an artist.
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Mr Rutten is a Times columnist.
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