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![[OpEd]](/v2/images/stories/insight2.png "[OpEd]")
So the newest trend in advertising seems to be the use of video game sequences to promote a product. Sure it's been done in the past, but it seems more prevalent now. The best of these is the Toyota Tacoma World of Warcraft commercial where the mage summons "Four Wheels of Fury" or something. There are no trucks in WoW! But during the Cowboys vs. Giants game, at the very end, there was an entirely different commercial.
The commercial in question is the Anti-Drug commercial where it tells parents to pay attention and that [paying attention] in and of itself is the anti-drug. I am not against this message. In fact I have been pushing this school of thought for many years. When parents pay attention to what their children are doing they are generally better behaved children. That's generally, as in not all cases, but most of them.
In the commercial a kid walks away from the television. His mother asks if he's OK and as she walks past the television the character in the game, who speaks with a Latino accent, looks Latino, has a good deal of tattoos, wears a headband like a gangster and a wife beater t-shirt and looks to be in the Grand Theft Auto series says the following:
You know his friends think I'm pretty cool. I deal drugs and pretty much all I do is smoke weed and cause trouble.
Yes, what an enjoyable game that would be right? Just sit around and make your character smoke weed or better yet to chase the dragon as depicted in South Park in the Guitar Hero episode.
Then he asks if she can restart the game and she says no this game is over. Sure it's an analogy for the drug use or belief that drug use is cool, but it still sends a bad message in my mind about video games. Here's the video on YouTube.
First off, they use a Latino stereotype in the commercial both for the video game character and the family which should be offensive to all Latino people. It shows that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign believes you are either at risk or the cause of a lot of drug use. They specifically aimed a national commercial at you.
Secondly, they make it seem like video games lead children down the path of drugs. First violence, now drugs. What's next? Rape? Pillage? World Domination? Yes, video games make children want to rule the world, just like comic books and Pinky and the Brain.
And yet, they have a point. The "anti-drug" in the commercial is to pay attention to what your children are doing. Of course, taking one form of media (television) and twisting it to blame another form of media (video games) does not seem the proper way to go about things in my book. They could have just as easily used any number of recent hit films, remember the summer of Blow and Traffic, how about Studio 54, Boogie Nights and a good deal of other films. What about all the drug use depicted in all the criminal investigation shows on television? All the drug references in music, let alone the gangster references and talk of cop killing and blasting a cap in someone's ass.
At the rate they are going they will decide that all media should be outlawed and we will live in a fantastic world where there will be no drugs, violence or crime. Of course this same world will have no free thought, forms of personal expression or anything else that separates humans from robots.
Uh oh, I better go. The thought police are on their way and big brother is watching.
One person has commented on this article. 1. Untitled
snorkle256, Registered This is exactly what I rant and rave about. If video games mold people to the exactly what they are playing we would have more gun totting, pinata feeding, space ship piloting, gravity hammer weilding teens on our streets than anything.
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