Evil Is Everywhere All the Time

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm must be the justification for selling minors violent video games in the United States. But the lines between consumers and sellers are blurring.

There once was a gruesome end for an old woman. Outsmarted by two minors, she died an excruciating death in an oven. Let’s imagine the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel as a video game for a minute. In the video game, players develop strategies to get out of the trap into which they have fallen. Maybe there are bonus points for every stroke that keeps the player alive, and the highlight is when the old witch dies — maybe. The difference of the old-fashioned fairy tale: Good always wins in the end, whereas in video games, evil has a real chance.

Evil is everywhere all the time. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. That’s always been the case. Tellers of fairy tales will now be in an uproar over the interpretation of a U.S. judge who is using the stories of the Brothers Grimm as an argument in favor of allowing violent video games to be sold to minors. Rationale: a ban would be contrary to the freedom of expression. And ironically enough, this is in a country where there have been a few killing sprees by young people in recent years. The perpetrators often benefited from their fathers’ arsenal of weapons in the basement — another symbol of civic freedoms. Granted, that doesn’t have much to do with video games.

Friends and defenders of extreme video games like to point out the flood of depictions of violence in horror films as well as in the crude lyrics of self-proclaimed violent rappers. Whether in fairy tales or on film, the listener or viewer is the consumer who must process the presentation. In video games he or she participates — an important difference that the judge doesn’t take into account. Most of the time video games don’t allow for nonviolent ways to win. The choice is to kill in order to survive. And that’s precisely what’s not allowed for minors [in Germany].

The United States is far away [from this standard]. There’s still the death penalty — a very real deterrent — to keep young people from lashing out at strictness, chasing the enjoyment of thoughtless gunfights or a bloody assassination. And evil people always receive it — maybe.