The Villainization of Mental Illness and Video Games: From Being Concerned to Becoming a Political Tool.

For now, we’re moving forward with the analysis on Video Games; recently amongst Republican Politicians (Actually, it isn’t just Republicans, Politicians in either party), it has become the hot thing to blame the mistakes made by themselves on someone or something else, in this case, video games and mental illness. A lot of these comments are unwarranted, there have been studies on video games and real-world violence and they have shown no links between the two. Video Games have always been the go-to-subject when it comes to large-scale acts of violence, becoming in most cases used as a moral panic boogeyman; last year when the Parkland Shooting occurred, Trump sat down with members of the Game Industry, while it didn’t bring legislation forward, it only went onto painting a negative picture.

“The video games, the movies, the internet stuff is so violent. It’s so incredible,” Trump said at the time. “I see it. I get to see things that you would be — you’d be amazed at. I have a young — very young son who — I look at some of the things he’s watching, and I say, ‘How is that possible?’”

Donald Trump, President of the United States

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Over the years there have been similar tactics that have been used to blame the large acts of violence; for example, in the late 1940s, early 1950s there was a Psychiatrist named Frederick Wertham, he wrote a book called ‘Seduction of the Innocent‘ and in his book, it outlined the ’causes’ of Juvenile Delinquency; leading into the Comics Code Authority which forced publishers to self-censor their titles and causing most publishers to drop out of existence due to the loss of sales and consumers. His research was disputed years later, and many just shrugged it off as nonsense; another pop culture icon that was used to whip up a frenzy was music, back in the 1980s a lady named Tipper Gore and Four other influential people in Washington, D.C. founded a group called the Parents Music Resource Center, she served as a member and was well known to be an outspoken advocate. What brought this on was a song that her 11-year-old daughter was listening to, Prince’s “Darling Nikki” from his album Purple Rain; What Mrs. Gore didn’t know at the time was that the song made a reference to Masturbation. After forming the PMRC, the group’s advocacy prompted labels to put “Parental Advisory” stickers on albums; They also insisted that certain music promoted violence, satanism.

In the chart above, this breaks down the Video Game Revenue and the Deaths from Gun Violence; As Reggie Fils-Aime stated when he spoke on the subject “Facts are Facts.” As the years went by, something changed, Video-game violence was once a bipartisan worry, Now it has become a Republican talking point, deployed for tactical political gain to great effect. But, what is to blame is the ideology of a superior race, the thought of one country superior to the other; what I am referring to is the Rhetoric that is found on corporate news outlets such as Fox News, CNN, and the political field. We are living in a hostile environment because of our elected official’s inability to stand up to Racism and Inequality, over the years the United States has become overrun with hate crimes, mass shootings are becoming the Norm; instead of confronting the problem head-on, the problem is pushed back even further by pointing fingers at each other while the problem drops back into the shadows, forgotten until another Mass Shooting or another hate crime is committed. It is time for the Villainization of Mental Illness and Video Games to stop, the use of it as a Political tool has to end. White Supremacy, Racism, Bigotry, and Xenophobia are the real enemy, not people with Mental Illnesses, Immigrants, or Video Games; the men and women who use hate to gain political power are the real enemies of the people.

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