and it’s all because of mr. bond and all the movies i watched! yeah, right. srsly stfu!
here we have my elementary school teacher writing a letter to my parents (in 3rd grade) complaining that i had told some other kids in class that i had watched james bond. no wait, the movie was playing on sunday evening so it was a monday when we all sat down in a circle and talked about our weekend (i wasn’t even the only one who had seen this flick).
even if i think that it was a good idea to inform my parents, i still think this teacher guy is an asshole (that’s some other story) and the way he wrote that letter and i am not talking about that crappy 90s print… it’s just: “whaaat? gtfo!”. he could have called my parents but i guess he wanted to go the offical way telling them what i shouldn’t watch.
I always wanted to do something with this hilarious letter, so here it is: a digital copy of a digital copy that was printed on paper and i call it “the time traveling file”. well whatever, so much for trying to be funny.
okay, back then tv ment a lot to me especially because i grew up with this kid living in my street who’s dad had like hundreds of vcrs at home and all the stuff you needed on tape. this meant endless hours of cartoons, bruce lee, the goonies and here and then a creepy movie. then after moving to germany things got a little different. we had a tv and even a vcr, but you see, either you had cable, which meant a whole bunch of television programs and a lot of cartoons or you just had regular tv with four channels including the regional television program and almost no cartoons. well, we had second and good stuff was so hard to get especially when you had to tape everything off the tv because almost everybody had only one vcr at home. fucking hell, cartoons were so rare that i had to get them from that kid in romania. ain’t that crazy?
i remeber my parents beeing all bitchy about this whole teacher-writes-james-bond-letter-situation, but since i have some pretty cool parents they where like: “son, why did you tell em? next time you talk about your weekend, tell em u watched cartoons and shit.” so i was like “okay. cool.” i don’t want to image what could have happend if i had told em that i already had seen alien, poltergeist, jaws and some other crazy movies. now something out of context: my first movie ever was star wars and i even watched that at a movie theater. fuck yeeah, this gives me street credibility in a matter of nerdish thinking… on second thought, no it doesn’t. that would be so sad. i was only 2 years old when i saw it for the first time but what can i say i was only 2 years old probably sleeping most of the time and it still got me. to be honest with you, i do not dress up and shit but i have a lightsaber hanging on my wall. true story. star wars (only the first three including the toys) is the shit.
the james bond movie my teacher was reffering to, was btw moonraker. lame compared to diamonds are forever which i already had on videotape (my dad taped that for me). i had also watched the deer hunter before i even went to school. that’s one of the creepy movies i mentioned before and let’s be real here, what is more fucked up “the deer hunter” or “alien” or even “james bond”. guess we all agree that “alien” is creepy” but “the deer hunter” is the most terrifing one of them all. why? beacuse it’s basicly a true story, at least it could be one. okay, i can’t say that i understood the movie when i was a child, nor can i say that i understand it now. just kidding, the message is “war is senseless”, right? i remebered this scene where christoper walken is beeing held captured in that cage in the river where only his head is above the water. pretty disturbing for a 4 year old kid, but that’ s just the way it is. thanks to that scene i rememberd the movie after watching “the deer hunter” many years later. whatever.
so here i am today playing videogames where u have to shoot things like aliens, tanks, planes, people, animals, zombies etc. why? i don’t know. these shooters just happen to have the best graphics and physics out there available (remember the days when the packagdesign was awesome but the game sucked cause it was just a bunch of lines and dots) and to be honest, i just like to shoot things. ouhh, police will be knocking at my door tomorrow. i like shooters entertainment and that’s just it and shooting stuff is a part of it.
while modern warfare 2 just hit the stores about a week ago everyone here in germany is arguing about this one level in the game where u play an american agent working undercover for some terrorist guys. you basicly have to ambush a civilian aiport and kill all the people standing in your way, this includes many “civilians” that are panicing around and have no guns, some armed cops and some heavily armed swat teams, but’s that’s not the reason i liked it.
there, i just said it, i kind liked that level, beacuse it is just a well made episode in this game. hell yeah, it was an epic experience. the music was dramatic, the setting at the airport was well chosen, the action when you fight the cops was top notch and the end where your fellas shoot you because they knew u were a traitor/an agent and because they want to fuck around with the us of a. killer! damn, this is even a key episode in the whole story of the game. i remember the first time playing it, i got a “game over” because i accidently shot one of my terrorist fellas. my 2nd try though was better, but here we have the creators morality taking over. you can’t just make a speedrun through the terminal, they even slow you down. okay, it’s about the gameplay as well, cause there are certain trigger moments where you can’t just run around all alone by yourself (ouhh yeeah, i love this bursting jet-engine). hollywood at it’s best.
whatever, over here in germany they sell this game only to people 18 years and older. so it’s a game for adults but it’s still kinda altered. the german version does not allow you to shoot “civilians” and the game will end immediately if you still do it. here i have to say, that even the uncut version asks the user if he or she want’s to play this level. i guess they just cut the part where you kill the innocent and leave the rest as it is. killin’ the authorities.
personally i could never shoot someone in real life. even if i already shot a gun (grandpa’s double-barreled shotgun) i really do have issues touching a real gun. my fingerprints ain’t going onto that motherfucker. and here we have the big difference. one thing is a story, some piece of virtual multimedia art, called a videogame and the other thing is picking up a gun, pointing it at someone und pulling the trigger. i am not a pro gamer and even if i love great graphics, i don’t see it as shooting people. at least not in the first place. it’s just a whole bunch of polygones which reduces the whole stuff to – in this case – running targets. it’s about moves, reflexes and tactics and in the end it’s about the story, cause let’s be honest the modern warfare call of duty games are all pretty epic. so it’s basicly not a shooter anymore, neither is it a movie or a kill-simulator as some people may call it. it’s a story wraped up in a multimedia experience. do i really have to explain this?
so everybody is talking about this (passive) three minute killing spree as if it was the first game ever availible with this kind of feature. this is actually the first time people/gamer talk about “killing civillians” in a game. I call it shooting things like it always was. it’s like playing with dolls, you can dress them up differently but they are still just dolls. so here we have the people that just love videogames and do not care about the whole fuzz cause it’s just videogames, right? there is the anti-violent-videogames-lobby who welcomes these three minutes of an eight hour game, cause now they can point the finger at something. we have five crazy people that are already crazy and not because of videogames, who will probably get their hands on dad’s gun and go rampage in some school and finaly the ones that i hate the most, the guys that love videogames but think that this level should not be in a game. “i am disgusted”, “i played the uncut version, but i did not shot the civilians” or “i know they show this in movies too, but watching a movie is different” oh really, gtfo! what’s your point? anyone seen haneke’s funny games (1996 even if both are the same) or a pornflick lately? so pls stfu!
do you know what impressed me the most in modern warfare 2? it was a couple of burning trees. imagine some suburbia in the us, planes passing by dropping russian paratroopers and there you have these beautifully animated burning trees on the side of the road. now that’s terrifing and not some scene where you shoot running people. remember modern warfare 1? I have a tv set and i read the news. aren’t we all used to this bullshit, but who’s to blame? some videogame (creators)? i don’t think so. over seven million copies of modern warfare 2 were sold on the first day it was released. that’s a lot of money. it not just some videogame, it’s entertainment
so where’s my point, you might be asking. well, i have none, i just love videogames modern times entertainment and modern warfare is a part of it and since i am a hater i thought i should write something. i just don’t get it, there are more important things out there, even more important than videogames. so why keep bothering about it? thank god we have swine flu as a main media target right now, otherwise videogames would be already banned in germany. good night germany and i shall end this post with a quote of some random personality who the kids might love:
guns don’t kill people. people kill people.
