Controversial Video Game Creator Says Football is Part of a Violent Culture

Danny Ledonne, creator of the controversial online game “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!,” has recently discussed his game’s controversy (full interview) with me for an article I’m doing outside of this blog. Part of the interview touched on football, and Ledonne said that football represented the violence of American culture and that athletes are excessively glorified.

“You look at Columbine High School … the pride of the school is the football team. The trophies that are displayed prominently inside the school belong to the football team. That represents something about what the school deems as important.”

Interview:

Mitchell Blatt, JSB: You have said that we have a violent society and mentioned Super Bowl Sunday as an example of that violence. Why is football violent?
Danny Ledonne: Sports are to war as pornography is to sex. It is a rehearsal that is designed to simulate the same areas of our brain. The sport of football is designed to mimic a battlefield with different territorial zones. The sport itself is fairly violent by American standards. Certainly some sports are more violent, like rugby, boxing, and ultimate fighting, but football is by far the most commercialized American sport.

The apex of television is defined as Super Bowl Sunday. … It is like one of those forms of violence that is unquestionably accepted because it occurs within a context that we all feel is accepted. Rates of domestic violence among US households increase dramatically after a football game is broadcast on TV.* [which may or may not be true–see explanation at the end of the interview] …

It also represents something about our culture’s priorities. You look at Columbine High School, it’s not that Columbine doesn’t have awards in public speaking and science fair and academic decathlon and all these other areas, but the pride of the school is the football team. The trophies that are displayed prominently inside the school belong to the football team. That represents something about what the school deems as important. You can see that on a national scale as well. What does the average player in the NFL make in comparison to your average high school teacher or nurse.

MB: How can you criticize football as being violent but then defend violent video games?
DL: My critique of video games is a little bit nuanced. I’m not willing to come out and say that Grand Theft Auto is the best game, and, not only that, every game should be like it, because violence in video games is what we need a lot more of. I think it really comes down to how the violence is contextualized. … I think that the difference is that we have written a blank check to things like football that we celebrate as the cornerstone of American character.

“It is one of those forms of violence that is unquestionably accepted.”

DL: I’m not calling for the end of football. I’m questioning why it is given the paramount place in our society that it has. … Why does football fulfill our desires? On some basic level, we’re a species that, until very recently, has organized a lot of tribal warfare. That’s how we marked our gains and losses in a lot of indigenous culture. Now unfortunately, we still have global conflict, now on an unprecedented level, but even beyond that, we still seem to have a fundamental need for in group, out group thinking. You’re a Christian, I’m a Jew. You’re a Sox fan, I’m a Yankees fan. These are ways we seem to like to identify ourselves as part of one group and not another. Football fulfills that nicely, and it also provides us with the opportunity to participate in this sort of primal male ritual.

Rest of Interview

*Does domestic violence really increase after football games?
Linda Mitchell of FAIR began advancing this notion during January 1993, and it received a lot of attention as the Super Bowl loomed. Ken Ringle checked the facts for the Washington Post and found that the rise in emergency room admissions of women “was not associated with the occurence of football games in general,” however that, “the number of women admitted … was slightly higher than average” at the city of an NFL team that has just won, but not by 40%, as Mitchell had stated. Snopes looked at the issue, specifically at the theory that domestic violence increased on Super Bowl Sunday, and found no correlation.

Ledonne didn’t specifically cite Super Bowl Sunday as having higher rates of domestic violence, but the Snopes article and the Washington Post article said that there wasn’t a statistically significant change even on regular football Sundays.

He did respond to my later email by saying in part: “Ritualistic events like SBS replete with gambling, drinking, and the duality of “win/loss” (zero sum gain) culture are most certainly contributing factors to depression, aggression, and activities like domestic violence.”

More Info About Why I Was Interviewing Him…
He has filmed a documentary called Playing Columbine about his video game and others that have come under controversy and tried to look at societal issues. His game is actually kind of a docugame, as it spends a lot of time taking you through parts of the shooter’s lives before and on the day of the shooting, using real quotes from their journals. It received a lot of controversy again in 2007 when it was pulled for the Slamdance Guerrilla Gaming Competition, which is the backdrop for his documentary.

Full Interview

Popularity: 6% [?]