Connecticut town holds violent game burning drive

The town of Southington in Connecticut has announced 'The Violent Video Games Return Program' - a drive to destroy violent video games and other media. The event is backed by SouthingtonSOS - a collective of community organisations in Southington including the Chamber of Commerce, Board of Education, town officials and local clergy. That's right, most of the city's leaders knew about this before it happened and not one of them saw anything wrong with destroying artforms because they disagreed with the content.

Unlike other recent game burning movements however, this one does not appear to be satire. As reported by Polygon, parents and children can bring games, movies and music (and books I assume?) in to the local drive-in movie theater on January 12th, where they will be given a $25 gift certificate intended for use with another form of entertainment, like a water park. The media will then be snapped, tossed into a dumpster and probably incinerated later. According to a press release the funds will be donated by a member of the Chamber of Commerce - a "token of appreciation for their action of responsible citizenship." Which is in no way weird and alarming.

The point of this is apparently to get students talking to their parents. I mean, I don't know how they arrived there - how do you go from 'we need to get parents talking to their kids about violence' to 'let's destroy and burn a bunch of video games and give out $25 gift certificates' without going through the steps of 'put up a poster saying "Hey talk to your kids" on bus stops' or assigning it as homework? As a press release by the collective stated:

"The group's action is not intended to be construed as statement declaring that violent video games were the cause of the shocking violence in Newtown on December 14th. Rather, SouthingtonSOS is saying is that there is ample evidence that violent video games, along with violent media of all kinds, including TV and Movies portraying story after story showing a continuous stream of violence and killing, has contributed to increasing aggressiveness, fear, anxiety and is desensitizing our children to acts of violence including bullying."

And I guess you don't need to make that kind of statement if you just heavily imply it. Since the tragedy in Newtown on December 14th, people across America - and indeed the world - have been looking for answers and SouthingtonSOS are certainly not the first to come to the conclusion (or not, as they claim) that violent video games play a role - even though violence has reduced in the US over the past two decades. The NRA made headlines when their head, Wayne LaPierre, blamed video games and movies for the tragic events at Sandy Hook - and the topic has certainly made its way through the media circus in the past couple of weeks.

No matter what you think of violent video games however, there should never be a concerted effort to incentivise burning or destroying any art form just because you disagree with its content. If they believed it was such a good and upstanding goal no gift voucher would be needed - instead it comes across as an attempt to inculcate children. I want to say 'Only in America', but I could definitely see something similar happening here in Australia. Whether the concept takes off anywhere else however, remains to be seen - let's hope not. To paraphrase the great Shaun Micallef:

Southington - now violence free and made according to the principles which founded Nazi Germany.