Whither Middle Class values?
'Despite demagogic and alarmist claims that a relentless “War on the Middle Class” has left ordinary Americans pummeled and powerless, middle income people still manage to find enough money to secure most of life’s true necessities – like the grotesquely violent and anti-authoritarian video game Grand Theft Auto IV, which shattered all sales records in its first week of release.
Despite a price tag of sixty dollars (more than ninety dollars in the special edition), and despite its release on April 29, 2008, at the very height of national concern over a potential recession, the game sold an astonishing 6 million units in its first week. By the end of 2008, at least 11 million Americans will have purchased GTA IV, placing the game in nearly one out of ten households in the land of the free.
The stunning success of a game that glorifies guerrilla warfare, murder, irresponsible driving, prostitution, cop-killing, international conspiracies and, of course, car theft highlights the real threat to the American Way of Life: it’s not the war on the middle class; it’s the war on middle class values.'
- Michael Medved, 'War on Middle Class Values, Not on Middle Class '.
Despite a price tag of sixty dollars (more than ninety dollars in the special edition), and despite its release on April 29, 2008, at the very height of national concern over a potential recession, the game sold an astonishing 6 million units in its first week. By the end of 2008, at least 11 million Americans will have purchased GTA IV, placing the game in nearly one out of ten households in the land of the free.
The stunning success of a game that glorifies guerrilla warfare, murder, irresponsible driving, prostitution, cop-killing, international conspiracies and, of course, car theft highlights the real threat to the American Way of Life: it’s not the war on the middle class; it’s the war on middle class values.'
- Michael Medved, 'War on Middle Class Values, Not on Middle Class '.
Comments
The concept of these video games , esp a GTA or a Need for Speed Racing , is to do something , that is quite impossible in the real world.
Its plain fantasy that the people wanna experience , and almost 99.9 % of them playing, are quite knowledgeable to the fact that its illegal or impossible to do such acts.
Values whithering , because of playing a game which has violence
actually does sound absurd
Its about the 'kind' of fantasy....
As to whether it erodes values....take note:
'The prevalence of divorce and out-of-wedlock birth, for instance, threatens to sweep away the proud sense of respectability and family commitment always associated with the bourgeoisie. A 2008 study for the Institute for American Values reported that family break-up costs the government more than $100 billion a year in terms of the consequences to the legal system, law enforcement, welfare systems, social workers and more. The toll on private citizens could be even higher, and the appallingly common incidence of marital collapse surely causes as much financial distress for middle class Americans as outsourcing, high food prices, immigration or other sources of anxiety.'