AS Photography
Jude White
The 11%
Following my more light-hearted work from my prior shoots, I decided to create something slightly more political, in defence of gamers against accusations made against us. I am often infuriated by the way the mainstream media uses video games as a scapegoat for many horrific crimes, such as school shootings, because the accusations made by such organisations are blatantly false. Statistics show that in fact, the news itself causes more violence than any other form of media. I decided that I would create a critical piece about the attitudes of the media and those ignorant enough to follow it blindly. I decided to create a series of edits combining games controllers with weaponry, ridiculous-looking contraptions which are designed to be equally as ridiculous as the very opinion they stand for. I elected to combine these images with a statistical title, for added emphasis. The title refers to the percentage video games make in the violent media consumed by murderers; coming in at 11%, they are the least popular form of violent media with killers. On the images themselves, I have employed some quotations from tabloid articles that reflect the viewpoint I am attempting to satirise. I chose my font to appear similar to a ransom letter, as this link with crime again refers to the viewpoint I am mocking; that video games cause crime. The edits for these images involved photographing both the weaponry (the firearm is a replica I own) and the controllers, then using the quick-selection tool to remove the backgrounds from both images. Then, I cut both images in half, resized them and joined the halves together.
This tabloid quote is particularly ridiculous; Emwazi is an ISIS executioner, and 'Duke Nukem' is a game where yo upaly as a satirical, overly stereotypical american; unlikely to be the thing that radicalised Emwazi or drove him to commit such crimes.
In an equally ridiculous quote, the author completely ignores the likely underlying mental instability of the boy, instead using video games as the primary concern.
I admittedly cut some of this quote out, as whislt ridiculous anyway, the last part sounds even more ridiculous out of context; this is not something all players, or even most players, do. The quote completely mis-represents the game, and shows a lack of understanding as to how the mechanics of the game work.