Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

Bad to Worse: TV + Games

Although Hollywood films posed a consistently disparaging view of television and its audiences based on susceptibility to political and ideological orthodoxy through the 1970s, an even more devastating critique awaited the cinematic vision of TV when it became linked to games beginning in the 1980s - both literally in the form of consoles connected to TV sets in the home and metaphorically, as in the case of TV game shows and reality TV competitions.

In two films from the early 1980s, Videodrome (1983) and Poltergeist (1982), the domestic TV set -- which in each case is perhaps not accidentally connected to an Atari game console -- becomes a conduit for sinister forces to enter the home. Both films were also produced shortly before the video game industry crash of 1983, when home gaming systems showed their first signs of posing an economic threat to the film and television industries. The addition of game consoles to the domestic TV screen in these two films signifies overindulgence in commercial media at the expense of traditional domestic values. Videogames may thus be understood as amplifying and extending the bad object-ness of television as a feature of American households.

Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist focuses on the television set as a conduit by which evil spirits are able to violate the domestic sphere. Although games do not feature prominently in the film, the presence of an Atari game console on top of the TV set suggests the technology's complicity in the invasion, which takes place after conventional broadcast signals have ceased for the day. In David Cronenberg's Videodrome it is the television signal, not the physical apparatus, that is responsible for undermining a viewer's connection to the real world. The Videodrome broadcast contains subliminal signals that trigger hallucinations in viewers whose actions may then be controlled. Looking closely at the television console in this scene, we see that, in addition to the beta tape deck, the TV is connected to an Atari game console, which figures prominently, along with several game cartridges, when the television set appears to come to life.

From Games to Reality
TV "game shows" are notoriously inexpensive to produce and and readily integrated with the marketing strategies of network sponsors. They have also been consistently associated with the worst contributions of television to popular culture. In 1961, U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair, Newton Minow's famed "Vast Wasteland" speech specifically called out "a procession of game shows" as evidence of television's unrealized potential. Films about TV have often featured the conjunction of TV and games as resulting in an even more vile and unredeemable form of mass entertainment. Prominent examples include Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994), which revived cultural memories of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, highlighting the lack of ethical standards among ratings-obsessed network executives and their sponsors. And in 1987, long-time TV actor Paul Michael Glaser (best known for his role as "Starsky" on the ABC series Starsky and Hutch) directed The Running Man, set in a dystopian sci-fi future where a hyperviolent game show blood sport has taken over the role of prisons.

As the genre of reality TV gained popularity following the Writer's Guild of America strike of 1988, these shows, which thrived on sensationalism and spectacle, provided filmmakers with an easy target for critique. Daniel Minahan's Series 7: The Contenders (2001), for example, combined the reality TV game show and blood sport premises of Death Race 2000 (1975) and The Running Man (1987) to portray a television show in which ordinary citizens are supplied with weapons and pitted against each other in a televised fight to the death. Although it was originally conceived as a weekly TV series, Series 7: The Contenders constitutes a particularly blunt example of the cinematic critique of television, drawing aesthetic inspiration from both game shows and reality TV to create a hyper-violent mashup that portrays both television and its audiences as lacking in moral and ethical standards.

Mark Neveldine's Gamer (2009), in turn, created an explicit bridge between the hyperviolence of televised blood sports and the world of videogames. This expository sequence from the movie Gamer is equally condemning of tabloid style television and the gaming industry. Michael C. Hall plays Ken Castle, the creator of "Society'" a Second Life-style multi-user virtual environment in which users control human avatars instead of computer-generated ones. Interviewed by a tabloid journalist (Kyra Sedgewick) on a live TV infotainment interview show, Castle describes his new project, "Slayers," which places "volunteer" death-row inmates in real-world life-and-death combat situations where their bodies are controlled by middle class teenagers. This scene is remarkable for its technical explication of the "Slayers" system as well as its preemptive trivialization of a broad range of ethical concerns, based on repeated assertions of individual choice and agency for participants. The broadcast is ultimately interrupted by a radical group of hackers known as Humanz who speak directly to the TV audience, opposing the technology of "Slayers" and advocating a return to organic human existence.

Gary Ross' film version of the popular young adult novel The Hunger Games (2012) extends the premise of televised blood sports to take place in a dystopian fascist future society in which teenagers must fight to the death as part of a televisual strategy for maintaining order among the masses. The fascist kitsch that adorns the opening ceremonies of The Hunger Games resembles Leni Riefenstahl's documentation of Nazi rallies and Olympic games, drawing a clear link between televised pageantry and totalitarian government. The individual agency available to participants in the games continues to be a central source of narrative tension throughout the film, as is the potential for mass rebellion against an oppressive social order. Arguably, this aspect of the narrative logic of The Hunger Games represents a dramatic shift in the conception of television audiences from the passive dupes and morons of A Face in the Crowd and Being There, as well as the impotent rage of Network, to pose a viable threat to the social order if it can only be catalyzed by the virtuosic survival skills and personal integrity of a teenage girl.

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