Game on

SWEDISH DAD TAKES GAMER KIDS TO WAR ZONE: A Swedish father has come under fire for taking his two sons on a trip to Israel, the West Bank and occupied Syria in order to teach them the reality of war.

local

So reads the current headline in the Swedish English language news site The Local.

“…..like so many other dads, Helgegren had to have the violent video-game conversation with his two sons, Frank and Leo, aged ten and 11 respectively.

“We were sitting at the dinner table last autumn, and my kids started telling me about this game they wanted to play, the latest Call of Duty game, and told me about the guns and missions,” Helgegren told The Local on Friday. 
So Helgegren struck a deal. The family would take a trip to a city impacted by real war. The boys would meet people affected, do interviews, and visit a refugee camp. And when they came back home, they would be free to play whatever games they chose……………..
………………..When the family returned to Sweden, Frank and Leo decided not to play Call of Duty after all. They also said they would like to go back one day.
I have received messages calling me the worst parent in the world, saying that I am traumatizing my children, that I am a pompous bastard, and that I should be doused in napalm,” Helgegren told The Local. “I didn’t really expect such a reaction.”
This caught my eye this week because I’d been mulling over some recent articles on photography, image censorship in the news (particularly given the current situation in Gaza) and, of all things, video games. ‘The Local’ article is worth reading because it highlights many of the contradictions that surround the issue of what is and is not ‘permissable’ to show in news.
Helgegren's sons on a tank in Israel. Photo © CM Helgegren,

Helgegren’s sons on a tank in Israel. Photo © CM Helgegren,

Two recent articles on this topic are worth your consideration: ‘The War Photo No One Would Publish (When Kenneth Jarecke photographed an Iraqi man burned alive, he thought it would change the way Americans saw the Gulf War. But the media wouldn’t run the picture’ in The Atlantic, by Torie Rose DeGhett  And also a companion piece by Carolina A. Miranda in the LA Times ‘Why Kenneth Jarecke’s gruesome war photo needs to be seen’ which provides some useful context for thinking more widely about the ways we view such imagery.

I’d like to think I’ve got a clear idea in my mind about what photography is, and is not, what it can be, and do, and what it can’t. However it would appear that my thinking is well out of date! Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that thanks to digital technology the evolution of photography is rapid, and surprisingly diverse.

I was interested to see an article in the BJP at the back end of last year reporting that the World Press Photo are changing their competition rules in light of the ‘controversy’ over the winning image by Paul Hansen, which attracted criticism for its ‘over manipulated’ aesthetic which some described as looking like a ‘movie poster’.

Image © Paul Hansen

Image © Paul Hansen

I was curious to see what rule changes there might be, and how these changes will impact on entrants. Fact is there’s a long (and I’d argue noble) tradition of darkroom ‘work’ done on images, dodging and burning, adjusting contrast and sometimes doing it very locally on the photograph to completely change the emotional and aesthetic impact of the content. It’s long been accepted such manipulation is ‘honest’ and appropriate, but maybe this is about to change.

I had read this whilst still mulling over another BJP article on Marcus Bleasdale’s collaboration with a games developer to highlight human rights issues (unfortunately the original article has disappeared and is no longer available on the BJP website so I can’t reproduce the accompanying graphics):

“It all started with the comic,” says Oslo-based photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale. “I was kind of struck by how the artist had taken what had been quite traditional black-and-white photographs of Congo and made these different visuals, and as a result he had managed to take the message to a different demographic.” Produced in association with Christian Aid’s youth initiative Ctrl.Alt.Shift and graphic artist Paul O’Connell, the comic was published in 2009 and narrates how Congo’s natural resources and people are being ravaged.

For the past decade, Bleasdale has been documenting the issue of conflict minerals, which are used across a wide array of electronic devices, including cameras, tablets and game consoles. He has published two books – One Hundred Years of Darkness and Rape of a Nation – and has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Alexia Foundation Award for World Peace and a bursary from Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute to continue his work in the Congo. Yet Ctrl.Alt.Shift’s initiative allowed for his images to reach a younger audience, who might not have seen them had they remained conventional documentary images.

The experiment was a success and, says Bleasdale, it led him to start thinking about other ways to adapt his images to reach these new, often younger, audiences. “My niece and nephew never buy a newspaper or a magazine, and they probably never will. They don’t consume news in the way we did, so I was looking at how I could get to them. How can we – journalists – get that message to them? The answer is we have to take that message and give it to them on a platform they participate on and in; be it a tablet, a smartphone or a game. Or all three.”

So on the one hand there’s the WPP trying to respond to criticism and restrict ‘over manipulation’ whilst at the same time one of the worlds most notable photojournalists is collaborating in the dramatic alteration of some of his images to the point where they lose all resemblance to a photo and are ‘reduced’ to comic strip visuals. Making the real ‘unreal’. But in so doing quite possibly making an emotional connection with a section of the community that might otherwise ignore mainstream journalism.

Coincidentally I’d recently stumbled into a portfolio of what were described as GTAV landscapes. I had no idea what this was, so being curious had a peek. And was astonished at the lush images I was seeing. As a non-gamer, I’d not realized that not only are the graphics in Grand Theft Auto gloriously realistic, but you can capture them using the in-game camera the iFruit.  A quick scoot around the web revealed several sited devoted to these ‘unreal’ landscapes. It was a bit of a surprise to see computer generated landscapes being used and shared as if they were ‘real’.

Digital outdoors: Mount Chiliad, the highest peak in Grand Theft Auto V (Picture: Phil Rose/Caters)

Digital outdoors: Mount Chiliad, the highest peak in Grand Theft Auto V (Picture © Phil Rose/Caters)

All of which brings me somewhat closer to the point of all this: an article I ‘d noted in On The Media/ TLDR – ‘Should War Crimes in Video Games be Punished?’  and echoed in another article in The Guardian: ‘Should Gamers be Accountable of In-Game War Crimes?’  On the face of it it might seem rather pointless, but in the light of Bleasdale’s successes in reaching a different demographic through his altered images, and a willingness on the part of gamers to ‘make real’ the CGI landscapes of their games as demonstrated in GTA, I’m inclined to ask ‘why not’.

The sanitizing of language used to describe the effects of conflict such as  ‘collateral damage’ or  ‘friendly fire’  ‘servicing the target’ ‘smart bombs’  or ‘ethnic cleansing’ seek to detract from the reality being described. The more pejorative ‘human shield’ uses this euphemistic labeling to impugn those accused of it. And the soldiers themselves, off on a ‘tour of duty’ are certainly not undertaking a tour in the sense that you or I would. But all of this language together with the absence of images of the real effects of war, such as Jarecke’s from the Iraq ‘theater of operation’, keep us comfortably distant from the reality of war and its consequences.

From the Guardian/Red Cross article:

“There have been two stand-out (games) examples. In Modern Warfare 2’s notorious No Russian mission a US soldier is embedded with a Russian terrorist organisation and must take part in a mass killing at an airport. Success means blending in with the terror squad, and it’s up to the player to decide whether that extends as far as shooting civilians. The sequence was brave, but also clumsily handled, exploitative and incongruous; however, it did place the player in a position where many felt they genuinely had to weigh up their moral proclivities with the demands of the gameplay mission.

Much more intriguing, though, is the scene in Yager Development’s criminally overlooked shooter, Spec Ops: The Line, where three soldiers are stranded in a wrecked Dubai facing a crowd of angry locals. In a scene reminiscent of the Black Hawk Down incident, they must decide whether to shoot their way out or face death. Although actually, it’s more interesting than that, because the first shot fired sends the group fleeing – something the player won’t know until they commit to pulling the trigger. And vitally, those who point their gun in the air before firing get the same dispersal effect without casualties. In the heat of the game, facing a furious mob, many players will take the lethal option – but they sure as hell think about it. It is these sorts of split-second decisions that really suggest something about the complexities of combat.”

Having worked with young people (and adults) for decades teaching photography, one thing I’ve noticed is a surprising lack of awareness of their rights (civil & political rights and legal rights as photographers, and often also their human rights). We are raising a generation in whose names wars will be fought, but who have no clear idea of what the ‘rules’ of such conflicts are, and who will likely be ‘insulated’ from the dreadful realities of those events.

Game on © John MacPherson

Game on © John MacPherson

A huge step towards better understanding the implications of the actions taken on our behalf could be achieved through computer games. It wont stop wars, but it might help inform a new generation about the awful realities that ‘hide’ behind the sanitizing language being used, and the dilemmas, and consequences, facing those who prosecute wars in our name.

A news photograph may seek to portray some ‘truth’ and manipulation may, or may not, alter its integrity, but it is testament to the ‘elasticity’ and power of photography that a gross overmanipulation of an image to the point of it being a cartoon may help reveal a ‘truth’ of a different sort, and one that has a fundamental and educative effect on the viewer.

Carl Magnus Helgegren should not be vilified for educating his children. Unlike many of their peers, they now realize war is not a game, and that ‘smart bombs’ are only as smart as the people who use them.

 

 

Author — John Macpherson

John MacPherson was born and lives in the Scottish Highlands. He trained as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards, before completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and then qualified as a Social Worker in Disability Services. Along the way he has cooked on canal barges, trained as an Alpine Ski Leader & worked as an Instructor for Skiers with disabilities, been a canoe instructor, and tutor of night classes in carpentry, stained glass design and manufacture, and archery. He has travelled extensively on various continents, undertaking solo trips by bicycle, or motorcycle. He has had narrow escapes from an ambush by terrorists, been hit by lightning, caught in an erupting volcano, trapped in a mobile home by a tornado, kidnapped by a dog's hairdresser, rammed by a basking shark and was once bitten by a wild otter. He has combined all this with professional photography, which he has practised for over 35 years. He teaches photography and acts as a photography guide & tutor in the UK and abroad. His biggest challenge is keeping his 30 year old Land Rover 110 on the road. He loves telling and hearing stories.

Discussion (2 Comments)

  1. tonemeister says:

    Thoughtful article again John, thanks. I wasn’t aware that Marcus Bleasdale’s images had been used in Comics and the game/gamer collaboration etc, but I’d guess he has a point about how youngsters these days obtain their news and the effect that has on the method of news delivery.

    • Hi Tony – thanks for stopping by. Aye I guess like all pj’s looking to widen their opportunities he needs to consider all sorts of stuff, but I thought this was a particularly interesting way to use photography in a different way that has some societal impact.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.