| He is the video game guru for the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a Manhattan-based coalition of Christians and Jews that monitors corporate behavior. On behalf of the ICCR — which counts the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) among its members — he’s already filed shareholder resolutions with four chain stores that watchdogs agree are the most egregious offenders: Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and CPT’s favorite foraging-spot, Toys “R” Us.
An alliance is emerging between CPT and ICCR. Both groups want to restrict kids’ access to violent video games, though each has been working unbeknownst to the other and in different ways.
ICCR is tapping its denominational investors to open negotiations with video game manufacturers and retailers. CPT and its grassroots, pacifist members are going after local store managers. Both groups are pleased that the campaign is reaching other levels.
CPT evolved inside the historic peace churches — Mennonites, Church of the Brethren and Quakers. But it also draws support from both Catholic and Protestant churches for its efforts to stop violence in some of the world’s worst conflict zones — from Colombia and Israel to Iraq. It was CPT’s resident team in Baghdad that first drew attention to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers.
But Chicago toy stores require a lighter, mischief-making touch in the practice of nonviolent resistance.
One year they pranced into a Toys “R” Us dressed as Santa and his elves, tossing questionable toys into their shopping carts and bemoaning, “Santa didn’t make this toy.” They managed to avoid a night in jail only because police didn’t want the public relations debacle of arresting Santa days before Christmas.
This year they strolled in wearing their trademark red baseball caps, loaded up their shopping carts with adult-play video games, and complained to the manager. The manager replied that he’s powerless to override his chain’s marketing decisions.
Such buck-passing enrages Brouse, who fumes that nobody wants to be responsible for the marketing and selling of adult-rated games to children.
The problem is simple, he believes: The video-game industry claims it has a rating system. But because it’s voluntary, there is no enforcement or penalties for retailers who ignore the rules. So most stores don’t bother to check whether the game is age-appropriate for the purchaser, nor are they inclined to suggest that parents check ratings on the games their kids buy.
To put it bluntly, Brouse says, “The controls aren’t working.” A recent investigation by the New York City Council revealed what Brouse already knew: A disturbing number of stores — such as the four mentioned above — continue to sell adult video games to minors, and do so knowingly.
While chain stores did somewhat better than smaller retailers in refusing to sell to minors, under-age kids were still able to buy adult games in 88 percent of the stores surveyed in New York City alone.
“Nobody did well,” Brouse says, and he emphasizes the urgency to get better checks into place because violent and sexual images are getting ever more graphic. Some are so vivid and realistic, he says, that the military uses them as video simulations to train its soldiers.
While he’s not sure that exposure to such violence permanently warps young minds, Brouse is sure it isn’t good for them.
ICCR has scheduled dialogues with Target and Best Buy. Brouse also has Wal-Mart on his list. Circuit City has not responded to ICCR’s longstanding request for conversation.
The PC(USA) will be approaching Take Two, the manufacturer of several lines of popular games, including the Grand Theft Auto series, which is on the ICCR’s list of “worst” video games. The PC(USA) Board of Pensions holds only 200 shares of Take Two stock, but that is enough to get the church’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) a seat at the negotiating table.
Clips from Grand Theft Auto show a car bounding up and down as a couple presumably copulates in the back seat, muttering phrases like, “Let’s get down tonight.” After sex, the man and a scantily clad woman get out of the car and he beats her with a golf club. In another segment, a white man repeatedly kicks a black man in the testicles until he is lying in a pool of blood.
The Rev. Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, MRTI’s top researcher, said Presbyterians are always surprised to see that video games are “far more violent, far more destructive” than they had imagined.
“There is a great deal of concern to address this in a responsible way,” he says, “at least that’s what I’ve found.”
That’s music to Brouse’s ears.
And if the industry doesn’t do something to better regulate itself, according to Brouse, the government will. Legislation to limit the access of minors to violent video games is pending in Illinois, Florida, New York and Arizona.
A committed pacifist, Chupp has opposed violent toys before. Video games are just the latest items on her list.
Just before the U.S. war with Iraq, Chupp was sickened by what appeared to be a marketing effort for the war in toy stores. Suddenly there was child-size desert camouflage. Plastic paratroopers and Blackhawk helicopters were suspended from toy department ceilings.
“We live in a culture of violence. That’s what our kids are growing up in,” she says. “As CPT, as people of faith, we have to find ways for people in local congregations to make a difference.”
Her resolve to focus on violent video games was only strengthened when newspapers reported that 17-year-old convicted D.C. sniper Lee Malvo had been trained to kill by violent sniper-style shooting games. Reports also emerged that the perpetrators of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, were regular players of the video game Doom, which is no. 1 on ICCR’s “Don’t buy” list.
Watching aggression teaches aggression, Chupp insists, which is why CPTers added a new twist to their toy-store operation this year: a prayer vigil in the Toys “R” Us parking lot, where members prayed for the dead in Iraq — three dead Iraqis for each U.S. soldier.
The actions got a surprisingly positive response from shoppers, Chupp says.
CPT began a campaign in 1999 called “500 Churches for Change: Violence Is Not Child’s Play.” The ongoing effort recruits local folk to monitor department stores and hold store managers accountable for what is on the shelves.
“We justgot to thinking,” Chupp says, “that if churches would really take this one on … they could really make a difference in local communities.”
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