Making Sense of Manhunt

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Making Sense of Manhunt

• matteo bittanti DIGRA oh-5

Why We Play The Seductions of Violent
Entertainment
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BugFix

• Why We Play
  The Seductions of Violent
  Entertainment
• Why Do We Play?
  Are We Seduced by Violent Entertainment?
• Wait is it We, or is it Just Me?
• I mean, do I need professional help?

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What is Manhunt? Should I care?
Manhunt RockStar North RockStar Games 11.18.2003,
PS2 4.20.2004 Xbox, PC 18
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The bare essentials

• Third-person perspective stealth action game that
  puts you in the role of a death row inmate forced
  to run a deadly gauntlet at the whim of a
  sadistic cinematographer.
• The levels tend to be structured in a clear,
  linear fashion. Clearing one area gives you
  access to the next area
• Intense graphic violence

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The bare essentials

• By simulating torture and death in its most
  graphic details, Manhunt has become an instant
  classic of gaming sadism.
• Here violence is rectified by more violence the
  usual cliché - the "hero" has to correct an
  imbalance created by the "bad guys" - no
  longer holds.

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Where R the academics?

• Lack of critical studies on games like Manhunt
• Tautological approach Violent games are
  usually dismissed by academics as violent
• On the surface, it is the ludic equivalent of a
  slasher movie
• Yet highly layered with conflicting meanings
• How can we approach a text like Manhunt?

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The virtuous/vicious circle
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PreText

• the fictitious reason/s that is/are concocted
  in order to conceal the real reason behind
  playing Manhunt
• What is the appeal of Manhunt?
• The appeal is constructed among other things
  by trailers, teasers, previews, advertising,
  game covers, marketing

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Text

• the game itself and the experience of playing
  it
• What is the game like and what does it feel like
  playing it?
• What is the game doing to me?

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ConText

• the set of facts or circumstances that surround
  its fruition, reception, and distribution
• What does the game do to culture and what does
  culture do to the game?

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Guess what?

• Text fairly recognizable
• PreText pretty unclear
• ConText rather unpredictable

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How do I study it?

• Text games studies, film studies, narratology
• Pretext psychology, anthropology,
  neuroscience, sociology
• Context cultural studies, media studies,
  ethnography

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PreText

• Goldstein (1998) offers a distillation of the
  various accounts that have been offered to
  explain the fascination for aggressive play
• A) biological/physiological
• B) psychological
• C) social/cultural

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PreText

• Biological/Physiological
• To discharge energy
• To achieve desired level of arousal/stimulation/ex
  citement
• Hard Wired tendency to practice adult skills
  and roles
• Hormonal and genetic influences

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PreText

• Psychological
• To engage in fantasy/imaginative play
• To experience flow
• To come to terms with violence, war, death
• To achieve a desired emotional state
• To experience and express intense emotions
• (10 more)

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PreText

• Social/Cultural
• Direct modeling by peers or family
• Indirect modeling influences of media, marketing
• To belong to a club
• To exclude oneself from (negative reference) a
  group (e.g. parents, girls, boys who
  disapprove the game)
• As a reflection of cultural values dominance,
  assertion, and aggression
• (10 more)

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PreText_Link
Jeffrey H. Goldstein Why We Watch. The
Attractions of Violent Entertainment Oxford
University Press, 1998
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Text

• To analyze the game we have several
  useful tools
• Game Studies
• Game Reviews
• Walkthrough, Guides, Faqs
• But also disciplines like film studies (!)

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Text

• Title Man Hunt Fritz Lang (1941)
• Press release Manhunt explores the depths of
  human depravity in a vicious, sadistic tale of
  urban horror. To create the morbid atmosphe-re we
  took inspiration from the dark side of
  entertainment, from reality show to snuff
  movies, including blockbusters like 8 MM,
  Se7en, The Running Man.

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Text

• Cover
• Introduction (Full Motion Video)
• Cut Scenes
• Theme The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Hard
  Target (John Woo, 1993), Surviving the Game
  (Ernest R. Dickison, 1994), Final Round (George
  Erschbamer, 1993)...
• Sound Brian Cox as Starkweather

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Text

• Urban setting The Warriors (Walter Hill,
  1978), 1997 Escape from NY (John Carpe-nter,
  1981)
• Killing Styles My Little Eye (2002).
• Executions The automatically triggered cut-scene
  4-5-second kill animations cannot be skipped. In
  other words, the game forces the player to watch
  every evisceration, every gutting, every
  brutal beheadingwhether he wants to or not.

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Text

• Executions also use a video filter effect--as
  though they're being played back in one of
  Starkweather's gruesome movies.
• Game modeled after a film that looks like TV
• Player/Spectator/Voyeur

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Text

• Phenomenology of the game
• what does the game do to me?

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Text

• The ability of being in control over what takes
  place on the screen, gives the player
  increased control over their own emotional
  states during play (Goldstein, 1998, p. 59)
• ???

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Text

• Because video-game players have more control
  than, say, TV viewers, perhaps the effects of
  violent images are reduced (Goldstein,
  1998, p. 60)
• ???

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Text_desperate gameplayers

• I felt evil, and queasy, and numb. Eventually, a
  strange kind of self-loathing set in, followed by
  a low-level depression. During the final
  stages of the game, I found myself actually
  turning away from the TV during the execution
  animations, waiting for them to be over
  (Scott Jones, GameCritics.com, 2003)
• Is this reaction peculiar to videogames?

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Text_s
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And more Comparative analyses needed?
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Text_Gender
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Text_Link
Carol Clover Men, Women, Chain Saws. Gender in
the Modern Horror Film (1993) Princeton
University Press
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ConText

• Flashback February 2004, UK
• Murder by PlayStation
• 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah is brutally murdered
  in a park. The parents said their son was lured
  to a park by a 17-year-old player of the game
  (Warren Le Blanc), who stabbed and beat
  their son to death with a knife and claw hammer.

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Bingo!

• Text

ConText
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ConText

• When one looks at what Warren did to Stefan and
  looks at the brutality and viciousness of the
  game, one can see links, Stefan's mother told
  the BBC.
• Stefan's father was more specific, telling
  Reuters, Stefan's murder compares to how the
  game is set out, using weapons like hammers
  and knives. If games like this influence
  kids, they should be taken
  off the shelves.

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ConText

• The Daily Mail led the charge, running the
  headline Murder by PlayStation and
  starting a sensational campaign to ban
  violent games.
• Some retailers like Dixons decide to
  remove the game from the shelves.

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ConText

• A few weeks later Local police announced that
  they had indeed found a copy of the game,
  but it was found in the victim's
  bedroom.
• Question How did Stefan come into
  possession of the M-rated game?
• Who bought it for him?
• The result?

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ConText
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ConText

• The level of interest in Manhunt, according to
  a report in the Daily Mail newspaper, is
  higher than it was when the game was
  originally released.
• A spokesperson for HMV, which still stocks the
  game in its 200 stores, told the
  newspaper that demand for the game had
  significantly increased.

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Bingo!

Text
ConText

• Again, is this peculiar to digital games?

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ConText

• Flashback 1993
• James Bulger was a toddler who was abducted and
  murdered by two eleven-year-old boys, Jon
  Venables and Robert Thompson, on Merseyside, in
  the UK.
• Outcome immense public outpouring of shock,
  outrage, and grief, particularly in Liverpool and
  surrounding towns. The trial judge ordered that
  the two boys should be detained for very, very
  many years to come.

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ConText
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ConText

• Had the murderers been watching violent films in
  the days and months prior to the murder?
• Did these movies contribute to making the pair
  act in the way they did?

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ConTex

• As Jamie's death was similar to the death in
  the film, and the father of one of the boys had
  been known to hire this film the week before
  the murder, The Sun newspaper explicitly
  named

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Chucky made me do it!
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ConText

• . as the movie that triggered the killing
  and printed a full front-page picture of the
  menacing Chucky.

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ConTex

• However, no evidence that the boys had
  watched such movies was formally
  presented to the jury, but the case gave
  rise to a national debate about the acceptability
  of violent media.
• Although no films were subsequently banned by the
  British Board of Film Classification,
  several video rental chains voluntarily
  stopped stocking Child's Play 3 and
  other titles listed by The Sun.

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ConText

• Flashback 3 1912
• Boy is to hang for picture play
• Young Bishies Express Robbery Tragedy an Exact
  Reproduction from Movies Slew Trusting Friend
  Waited for Whistle at Long Curve So the Shot
  Would Not Be Heard
• (Philadelphias Record, 1912)

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First Person Shooter

• Movie in question is
• The Great Train Robbery by Edwin Porter (1903)

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ConText

• There were, as it happens, serious reasons to
  question the newspapers claim. ()
  Even if the killer had seen it, the movie
  couldnt have possibly have suggested the
  train whistle ploy, since there is no such
  scene in Porters film
• (Harold Schechter, 2005, p. 119)

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Link
Harold Schechter Savage Pastimes A Cultural
History of Violent Entertainment Saint Martin's
Press Inc. 2005
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TextMix

• Its not that I want to harm anyone () but
  thinking about violence seems to relax me and
  give me comfort
• (John Waters, director, 1995)

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TextMix

• Repetition works, David.
• Repetition works, David
• (Wayne Gale, Natural Born Killers, 1994)

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TextMix

• Despite all the stereotypes I believe that media
  scrupulously avoids glorification of murderers
  and violence
• (Poppy Z. Brite, writer, 1996)

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Faces of Death
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Faces of Death
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Faces of Death
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Game over (?)

• The contemporary viewers ability to suspend
  disbelief in FMV is by and large predicated
  upon the acceptance of more-linear narrative
  structure (There is) only one motivation that
  could circumvent this fact and make it possible
  for the viewer to accept control of the
  narrati-ve as part of the entertainment narrative
  () the opportunity to commit other immoral
  acts, or acts of violence
• (Will Self, writer, 1995)

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Cont_at_cts

• Matteo Bittanti
• IULM University, Milan, Italy
• mbittanti_at_libero.it

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Links

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