Questioning Plato

When first approaching the subject of whether or not to support the censorship of video games due to their “sexual and heinous violence,” as the 2010 article Plato’s Pop Culture Problem, and Ours by Alexander Nehamas stated, Plato, along with Governor Schwarzenegger, poses a seemingly solid argument for removing artistic violence from the youthful audience. Though there are logical similarities between Plato’s aversion to tragic poetry and contemporary official’s censorship of video games and other visual media that seem to qualify violence as an acceptable mode of societal practice, the real inquiry should not lie in the brutal nature of the video game but in the audience in question. Plato’s Republic offers an agreeable stance on the issues of human tendency toward imitation, especially with younger and less cultured people, but Aristotle’s Poetics presents a counter argument that calls for an understanding that human reason can outweigh human nature, taking away a significant argument for the correlation between actual violence and the representation of it in media.
When taking a deeper look at video games and violence, one should consider the games themselves first but then look to their original audience and those who follow in subsequent generations. Video games themselves have been in use for a number of decades now and steadily get more advanced all the time, much like the development of literature, art, and televised media. No matter the medium, the development process always begins with a primitive idea and ends with a highly naturalistic, though exceedingly dramatized, representation of life. With Homer’s tragedies and modern video games, Call of Duty being a prime example, we are presented with an imitation of life outside of our personal bubble. Each presents an example, both slightly more gruesome and violent than some may wish to experience, of what life is like on the battlefield. No matter how vivid the imagery, however, there will always be a distance between the interactive media and real life. This distancing, therefore, makes it impossible for a human to fully understand the violence they are experiencing and removes the possibility of immediate mimesis.
People do not necessarily learn to act in violent manners because they have seen violence. Human nature has a natural tendency toward violence, making it more appealing as a visual aesthetic. We are also, however, in possession of reason, which allows us the capability of understanding that we are not supposed to act on our violent tendencies. Reason, and the ability to hibernate our animalistic intuition, separates us from the primitive beings that rely solely on imitation as a basis of learning about the world.
Plato argues that poetry, whether regarding Homer or unknowingly referencing modern media, is a poor influence because it shows certain characteristics of reality through fictional means. Though this idea supports the Schwarzenegger’s imposing of fines through its idea that the audience will become more violent from exposure to sadistic imagery, even if in a fictional world, it does not have a basis for the audience’s sympathy toward reason and intellectual understanding. Plato himself states that to understand an a thing that possesses a certain, we must first have the idea of it. To understand violence, especially the necessary aversion to it for a peaceful society, people must first know what violence is. To witness violence in a fictional world, with a clear barrier between the audience and the television or stage that they are watching, allows for a greater knowledge of the subject without the ability for the person to feel the need to participate in the action in reality.
While Plato’s basic understanding of human tendencies toward imitation of actions that we do not comprehend was a valid argument to base human nature, most notably the unrefined mind of the young and naïve, on, Aristotle, in his Poetics, recognizes a more intelligent audience. Aristotle acknowledged ideas of mimesis, but did not make the Platonic assumption that humans blindly imitate everything they witness. Humans, beings capable of reason and independent thought, are able to view the actions in a play or video game before them and deduce the links between them, rather than solely focusing on the characters and actions themselves. In this way, humans are capable of interacting with a video game or a movie and understand the reasoning behind everything they see, as well as separate the acts from reality.
To simply approach the negative aspects of video games from a Platonic point of view would be a mistake. As previously discussed, violence has been present for decades in movies and video games, not to mention centuries in Homeric and other tragic poetry. In some instances Plato’s belief in human being’s unrestrained emulation may be valid, but these rarities may be tied to the environment that the person in question was introduced to rather than the violence experienced in the video game itself. If we are never exposed to violence, we will have no way to judge for ourselves or for others whether it is morally right or wrong. We cannot learn to punish or censor violent acts in reality without understanding them, and video games, just like books and movies, do just that. The 20th century AD is not so different from the 4th BC in that we as humans will learn moral values through experience and education regardless of the medium that serves as our informant.