Moral Panic

A moral panic refers to the reaction of a group of people based on the false belief that another sub-culture or a group poses danger to the society. They perceive that group as being a major threat to their social values and culture. Since these panics often cause social tensions, they are not open for discussion in public.

The major impetus for these panics is provided by the media. Moral panic is often expressed as anger than fear. These panics generally have a variety of outcomes. Moral panics are only semi-spontaneous. The term moral panic is coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 for describing media coverage of Mods and Rockers in UK in 1960s.

The most common themes in moral panics are the influences and behaviors of young people. The term moral panic is of recent one. But many social scientists are of view that the in-depth study of this phenomenon is conducted in 1925 itself.
http://www.iampanicked.com/glossary/moral-panic.htm

ESSAY PLAN

Critical Investigation- Why are villains in video games such as Call of Duty represented to be of a foreign background?

1. Introduction - A brief description of my independent study and a discussion based on representation and stereotypes

My critical investigation will focus on the representations of villains in the video game genre of first person shooters mainly in the game Call of Duty and how they are stereotypically portrayed within the text. I will be investigating how representations of Muslim group are stereotypically portrayed as the villain and how they are viewed by the player. (R)

·         Representations of Muslims

·         Call of Duty

“In-game representations of Arabs and Muslims have to be contextualized in a broader narrative structure that covers Islam as it appears in news and popular media (Karim, 2006; Pintak, 2006; Poole, 2006; Said, 1997; Shaheen, 2000; Wingfield and Karaman, 2002). The dominant mode of representation of Arab and Muslim cultures in European and American media generally exploits stereotypical generalizations and clichés.”

2. Media representations of foreign minorities reinforce stereotypes

Within many texts whether it be on television, film or in this case in video games, ethnic minorities are constantly stereotyped in the media and

"Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the media are not new. They have been a persistent part of discussing the Middle East, terrorism, and Islam... These stereotypes are not restricted to Hollywood films or news media broadcast but also occur in video games."

3. Moral panics and stereotyping

Representing specific cultral groups in a particular way in the media, leading to a pandemic or moral panic.

The Call of Duty franchise represents the muslim people to be the villains and leaders of violence, this develops the concern thus creating a moral panic in our society.

• If you are a gamer, have you noticed how Arab and Muslims are represented?
• Do you think that these kind of images are problematic?
• Do you think that negative images in video games can contribute to negative sentiments towards a group of people?
• Do you know of any examples of games that seek to break down stereotypes?

Do not have to answer all questions, please comment and share your views.

ADDITIONAL WEB RESEARCH

One could argue that as humans we are intrigued by violence, and it is probable that this fascination “satisfies some basic human needs. The adrenalin rush, the satisfactions of imagination, fantasy, and vicarious adventure, probably explain why millions of nonviolent people enjoy violent entertainment.”

Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review of Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries, Appendix A - "A Review of Research on the Impact of Violence in Entertainment Media" (Sept. 2000)


https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1XNSfF06GjbHS7YohCcOP3V69sqm0-svpjg6zZB0tUZA&pli=1

 whether images (or language) are a faithful, mimetic mirror of reality thereby offering some unmediated truth about the world, or conversely whether images are a separate, constructed medium thereby standing apart from the world in a separate semantic zone. (Galloway, 2004: 1)


in-game representations of Arabs and Muslims have to be contextualized in a broader narrative structure that covers Islam as it appears in news and popular media (Karim, 2006; Pintak, 2006; Poole, 2006; Said, 1997; Shaheen, 2000; Wingfield and Karaman, 2002). The dominant mode of representation of Arab and Muslim cultures in European and American media generally exploits stereotypical generalizations and clichés.

On the screen, the Muslim Arab continues to surface as the threatening cultural Other ... He/She lacks a human face and lives in a mythical kingdom of endless desert dotted with oil wells, tents, run-down mosques, palaces, goats, and camels. (Shaheen, 2000: 2, 4)

Video games, as 'cultural artifacts', presumably do not stand outside of these broader tendencies.

http://www.digitalislam.eu/article.do?articleId=1704

Representation of enemy

In the majority of action games (especially first-person shooters), the point of the game is to kill 'others', who typically are 'one of them' (Dahlberg, 2005). The key question, then, is how the 'Others' are constructed by the game.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/publications/16+/pdf/censorship.pdf

Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the media are not new. They have been a persistent part of discussing the Middle East, terrorism, and Islam. These stereotypes are not restricted to Hollywood films or news media broadcast but also occur in video games

http://insideislam.wisc.edu/index.php/archives/10980

Religion and technology: video games in the Arab world and beyond - Interview with Vit Sisler

Patrick Haenni - Religioscope
12 Feb 2009

Several successful games have laid-down patterns that reproduce themselves for ages - for example Doom defined the first-person shooter genre as early as 1993, Dune 2 did the same for real-time strategy genre in 1992, and so on. Each genre implies its own rules of game play, which extend to its representational politics. Secondly, games are produced with their consumers in mind and tend to reflect their expectations and tastes. So, the prevalent notion of the Middle East and Islam as it appears in popular culture and people's imagery is extended into video games. Finally, the economic factor could play a role. Western video games have not been marketed to Middle Eastern countries because of a lack of copyright enforcement there. In Damascus or Cairo you can buy whichever game you want, but it is mostly a copy. So, the producers were generally not concerned with Arab and Muslim audiences' perceptions of their games. Actually, though, it seems that this is going to change...

But, since there is no or limited academic interest and media critique of these games, the stereotypes and clichés are more overt and prevalent in video games. Also, the technological limitations of the medium have to be taken into account.

...but the only interaction possible with the Arab/Muslim characters is to fight them. Moreover, these characters' behavior is governed by artificial intelligence, which follows rules set by the designers - so in many games they fight in an undisciplined way, laugh mockingly after they kill someone or wave AK-47s above their heads. In short, they exemplify 'unlawful combatants' whose activities are considered to be criminal acts. Thus, the misrepresentation is embedded even on the level of a simulation and the rules of the game itself could convey an ideological message to the player. This form of persuasion is unique to video games.




http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_413.shtml

Broadcasters fail to fully represent the range of Muslim voices in Britain, the head of Channel 4 news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne

"making sweeping generalisations about Islam"



http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/20/raceandreligion-channel4

'Muslim Massacre' video game condemned for glamorising slaughter of Arabs

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2776951/Muslim-Massacre-video-game-condemned-for-glamorising-slaughter-of-Arabs.html

Demonizing Muslims on screens large and small.

The Arab Other through the eyes of gamers
A new medium, a creation of the digital era, exerts a powerful hold on the minds of the young.
The computer game employs today’s fast processors coupled with the digital imaging technology that have erased the differences between the real and the virtual on the screens before our eyes.
And because boys have always been fascinated by war and things martial, the hottest and largest segments of the gaming market enable the participant to join in virtual combat, slaying enemies in gruesome, flash-rending ways.

Teyon may choose to call Heavy Fire an “Explosive Arcade Experience on WiiWare!”, but a more apt description would be “Arab shooting gallery.” Whatever narrative or thematic values we may find in games like Call of Duty 4, however meager, are jettisoned in Heavy Fire. This game puts a gun in your hands and a collar around your neck; then it locomotes you from one terrorist-infested location to the next, always directing your attention to the next target. Your job is simple: kill or blow up as many Arabs as you can.

http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/demonizing-muslims-on-screens-large-and-small/

'The portrayal of muslims in video games'

An article on the way Muslims have been portrayed in videogames since the 80s.

Videogames have, often enough, contributed to this rhetoric, but games also complicate and even undermine such universal hatred. Like TV and Hollywood movies, the purposes of videogames are to make money, and to entertain. But that's not all videogames do - games can also teach us how to think about "other" peoples, how to hate "bad guys," and, once in a rare while, how to take a second, more critical look at the Us vs. Them dichotomy that we've been handed by other parts of our culture.


http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2010/08/portrayal-of-muslims-in-videogames.html

http://grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13