Zombies, and other minorities

Big T likes to play on the computer. Like his Dad. Like his friends at school. Now, I’ve gone strictly over the rules for connecting to the ‘net. First of all, he goes through the computer we keep off the kitchen, so we can check what he’s doing. Second, we go on through AOL, which has safety measures that require us to okay any new site he surfs to. Third, once we’ve approved a site, he can't enter any personal info about himself or where he lives. He can talk to his friends through IDs that we've verified over the phone, so he knows whom he is talking to. So we feel like he’s covered in that regard. But we also want him to be able to play in new media, albeit safely.

The last fad was a Runescape craze. Runescape is an online sword-and-sorcery Role Playing (RP) game a la Warcraft, where you play a character and go through an imaginary realm on quests, collecting items and depositing them in your “bank.” I checked it out for a week, first. The only violence you get into is occasionally other players will jump in and kill you and take your stuff. Not fun, but there’s a good object lesson somewhere in there. And he’d have fun after school playing with specific friends, exploring and interacting, and, all importantly, have something to contribute to the conversation at lunch the next day.

Some of Big T’s friends had “paid” accounts, which was the object of the whole deal to begin with, at $5/month. That was right out, at the start, but where’s the teaching opp in just saying, “Awww, he## no!”? Here we did the math together: $5/month = $60/year. $60/year = 2-3 GBA or DS games, or 60 ipod songs, or a day at Six Flags. And with those things, at the end of the year, you have something of significance, while at the end of a year of Runescape you were left with the pleasure of having paid them. Oh, what fun.

Even after he came to the logical conclusion (or at least the one I hoped to teach him was logical), he’d often come home with envious stories of two friends who had such subscriptions, and how they could get thousands in imaginary riches, and weapons, and all kinds of treasures. But when pressed, he admitted that he didn’t think the imaginary freebies were worth the actual outlay of cold, hard cash.

A month ago, this paid off when he noted that one of his friends had cancelled his subscription, (or rather his parents had), and he was out all his accumulated loot before he had had a chance to give it to anyone else, such as free players like himself. And he was out a years worth of real cash. Also, by that point, a once-a-weekend fun exchange with kids he knew online turned into once a month, and then not at all. Problem solved. Until the next problem.

The latest drama came in the form of a question. On the way to my dropping him off to school on one of those deliciously synchronicitous days where he was late and I was delayed, and we could therefore share the ride in, he asked, “Dad, if there was a game where you killed zombies, would that be bad?”

It’s a simple issue. I mean, zombies aren’t people, right?

On one level, I really do believe the concept of cartoon violence not being real to kids. I don’t buy that old Tom and Jerry cartoons encouraged kids of my generation to drop rocks on the heads of cats. I really don’t buy that, in the absence of stronger societal elements normalizing violence in other ways, and in that event the cartoon violence is neither the inciting impetus or a supporting element. Itchy and Scratchy don’t make kids behave badly. Itchy and Scratchy give bad kids-or at least, unsupervised, and misguided kids—ideas on how to perfect their craft. I knew those kids. I grew up with those kids.

My answer to him was to ask what he thought my answer to that would be. As a friend pointed out to me, sometimes kids ask questions because they expect and want the answer to be “no,” and they’re looking for the reassurance of consistency. And he came back with the expected answer that he thought I wouldn’t like it, but that it ought to be okay, because zombies weren’t people.

I was straight with him, or at least I felt like I was. We’ve talked about how some things I thought he might be okay with when he was older I didn’t think were appropriate for right now, just like some things that are appropriate for him now aren’t okay for his little brother. What I worry about is the idea of his being trained to attack realistic humanoid figures, safely labeled as “not really people.” We talked about how slavery in this country was justified because the Africans were "not really people." We talked about the Native Americans who also make up part of our ancestry were also massacred under the banner of their being “not really people.” We talked about how some wars, even into today, have been made palatable by making the enemy “not really people.” Even in the Iraqi war casualties, someone pointed out, victims are given in American lives, not Iraqi lives, as if the lives have a specific distinction and difference in value in death. It just bothered me that the graphics go to such lengths to make it seem real, in scenarios that are designed to kill the zombies, piled up against the arguement of this not being really people.

Am I over thinking this? It wouldn’t be the first time, and Big T is usually the first to let me know. But, as in all things, the point is the discussion rather than the final outcome. If I can get him thinking about the symbolism, and making connections in new ways, I honestly don’t have a problem with the zombie thing. It’s the action without the thought that makes for trouble, IMHO. For now, I take the rolled eyes that tell me maybe only 1/10th of this is actually getting through, and leave the discussion tabled for another day. This is the kind of thing that needs to percolate, for both of us.

So what’s the final verdict? Stay tuned...