The Supreme Court has agreed to hear several cases that will further define the freedoms of speech that are protected by the First Amendment, but only one case prominently involves Arnold Schwarzenegger and the tenuous link between Mortal Kombat and parenting skills.
Schwarzenegger v. EMA, which came across the court’s docket last week, examines a California statute that puts real teeth behind the voluntary video game ratings system by slapping thousands of dollars in fines on stores that sell inappropriate games to minors.
Forget for a moment that most of the studies linking violent video games to violent behavior are inconclusive at best.
And forget that, as lawyers arguing against the California law so eloquently put it in Supreme Court testimony last week, violent crime has plummeted in this country since “Doom” first graced computer screens.
It would take a great deal of persuasion to convince me that a law rising from the steaming pile of wreckage that is the great state of California would be a piece of legislation that the rest of the country should emulate, let alone a law curbing the amount of violent content in media that bears the name of former action star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Perhaps I would consider a law from California that requires parents-to-be in hospitals to successfully navigate a video game in order to access certain state programs, but even then I would be dubious.
The game would have to be narrowly tailored to establish a minimum baseline for what is expected of parents in society today, allow for equal access and have a range of language options.
Wait, I see this law coming together before my very eyes.
“Call of Duty: Parenting 2K10” would be a digital representation of a short trip to the grocery store and back home, with points awarded for avoiding the pitfalls of everyday life and a score given at the end that presumably corresponds to your relative fitness as a parent.
Mom and Dad would each have to navigate their way to and from the store without crashing their simulated car or stopping off at a friend’s house to buy meth. Once at the grocery store, a purchase must be made that would provide at least one nutritional meal (including at least one serving of vegetables and/or fruit) and does not include any ingredients that are commonly used in the production of methamphetamines.
The more I think about it, the more absurd this all seems.
A video game is no way to determine how someone would function as a parent, and fining the store who sold your kid an unsavory game is not going to make you any less culpable for the actions of the little person you are supposed to be keeping an eye on.
Try as we might, we are unable to legislate good parenting.
When it comes to whether or not American moms and dads are guiding the next generation with a watchful eye, I humbly borrow the sentiments of old-school Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
I know it when I see it.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears every Tuesday.
