The American Social Metaphor Of "Grand Theft Auto V"
The American Social Metaphor Of
"Grand Theft Auto V"
"Grand Theft Auto V" (Grand Theft Auto V) is a crime-themed action-adventure game produced by the US R Star Company and released in 2013. The game was enthusiastically sought after by players all over the world as soon as it was launched, and won many industry awards with its outstanding graphics and artistic design, wonderful original soundtrack, ups and downs of the plot, rich details and successful character creation. As of 2020, GTA5's total sales have exceeded 110 million copies, making it one of the best-selling games in history. At the same time, GTA5 has also caused a lot of controversy. Critics pointed out that it promotes violence, objectifies women, induces crime, encourages anti-social thoughts, and even parents ask the sales platform to remove the game. As everyone knows, under the savage and violent cloak of GTA5 is Robin Hood's chivalrous spirit. Through absurd narratives and exaggerated methods, the game criticized the rampant consumerism, condemned the greed of the powerful and the corruption of politicians, revealed various social contradictions and problems in contemporary America, and embodied the mainstream values and world outlook of American society.
Story Background
The background of GTA5 is set in a fictional American city named Los Santos. In the game, the player manipulates the three protagonists to follow the development of the plot to carry out criminal activities such as stealing, robbery, assassination, gang fire and other crimes in Los Santos. They are: the bank thief Mike who lives in the rich area, and the drug dealer Cui who hides in the suburbs. Buddha, Franklin, a young African American from a slum. The three protagonists represent different classes and ethnic groups, and they also have their own troubles. At the beginning of the game, Mike inadvertently offended the Mexican drug lord Martin in revenge against the personal tennis coach who had affair with his wife. In order to compensate Martin for his loss, he had to go back to his old business and robbed a jewelry store in cooperation with Franklin who wanted to make a lot of money. After learning about this, Trevor went to Los Santos to look for Mike. After that, the three protagonists step by step were involved in a FIB (Allusion to FBI), International Intelligence Agency IAA (Allusion to CIA and National Security Agency NSA), Private mercenary company Meriweather (insinused the American Blackwater Company), wealthy businessman Defan, Chinese gangs and other forces participated in disputes. What's interesting is that GTA5 is interspersed with a lot of political metaphors, and its themes roughly include: racial issues, powerful capitalists, ideology, history and current affairs, Sino-US relations, etc.
Tricky Racial Issues
The issue of racial discrimination has a long history in the United States, and its impact on society as a whole is deeply rooted. For American game companies, racial issues are like a hot potato. Under the pressure of "political correctness", most game companies are careful in character and plot design, and try to avoid touching racial red lines. The GTA series of games that satirize American social reality as a selling point are bolder in dealing with this issue. Like the previous games, GTA5 has arranged related sections to express the views of the production team.
For example, at the beginning of the game, Armenian car dealer Simon played the race card when he tricked Mike's otaku son Jimmy into buying a car with loan sharks. He first found fault and said that Jimmy had insulted him, and Rama, a member of the African gang who worked for him, immediately cooperated, accusing Jimmy of cursing himself as a nigger out of nothing. Jimmy was panicked and denied it. Rama warned Jimmy: "This gentleman (Simon) is an international businessman and a multiculturalist." Later, Simon put pressure on Jimmy again in the process of persuading Jimmy to buy a vehicle: When Mike came forward to teach Simon for his son, the other party still didn't forget to play the racial card and criticized Mike as a racist.
While satirizing some people in American society using skin color, religion, and ethnicity to carry out moral kidnappings to satirize political correctness, GTA 5 also does not forget to criticize the related police abuses. During the mission called "Eye in the Sky", Trevor piloted a helicopter to find the target person with a face recognition device. When the instrument scanned Franklin who was squatting on the street, the instrument displayed "Nude in public." Trevor asked in surprise what was going on? Franklin explained embarrassingly that once he was arrested by the police and left a criminal record because he wore low pants and revealed a little underpants.
This passage may seem exaggerated,
but it is more absurd in reality than it is. In March 2019, an
African-American student in Colorado was suddenly questioned by the police
while cleaning outside his house. They accused him of using assault weapons to
pick up trash, and the police who came for reinforcements threatened him with
guns; In May 2020, Amod, an African-American youth in Georgia, was shot dead in
the street by a retired white police officer who lived nearby when he was
jogging in the community and was suspected to be a thief. In June of this year,
George Flo, a middle-aged African-American man Ide was arrested by a white
policeman on his knees to death for using fake US$20 bills. This triggered a
wave of anti-racism and anti-police abuse protests sweeping across the United
States. It was an outbreak of such conflicts after a long period of
accumulation.
Regrettably, due to the
pressure of political correctness, apart from the above-mentioned passages and
details, GTA5 did not give more play to the issue of race. In October
2018, R Star co-founder and screenwriter Dan Hauser pointed out in an interview
that the political environment in the United States makes the development of
new works very difficult. He likewise stated: "It is hard for us to
utilize games to parody anything. Many things you see today are absurd without
being satirized, and they happen so frequently that one thing will become
obsolete within two minutes."
Damn Capitalist
In the world of GTA5,
capitalists are mostly portrayed as exploiters and speculators who pursue the
maximization of profits and regard morality as nothing. This is particularly
prominent in the multiple assassination missions in the game.
In the mission of
"multiple assassinations", Hongmu Tobacco was subject to a class
action lawsuit initiated by emphysema patients. The company paid for four jury
members who could influence the verdict. Once Hongmu Tobacco won the case, the
emphysema Patients will have no money to pay for medical expenses. Players
need to get rid of the four bribed jurors to ensure that emphysema patients can
win the lawsuit. In reality, tobacco companies once had power throughout
the United States, and once had an influential lobby in Congress, allowing them
to evade supervision for a long time, and in lawsuits with smokers, they can
always overcome danger. Beginning in the mid-1990s, more and more
Americans began to realize the dangers of smoking, and the situation where the
tobacco giants were all-handed began to reverse. In 1997, the California
court ruled that Lori Lard Tobacco Company should pay a smoker US$1.5 million,
setting a precedent for American tobacco companies to publicly compensate
consumers. Since then, the anti-tobacco movement has swept across Europe
and the United States, and tobacco compensation cases have been out of
control. In recent years, although the traditional tobacco industry in the
United States has been declining, electronic cigarettes, which are also harmful
to health, are rapidly conquering the city and cultivating a new generation of
smokers, repeating the game of capital and power.
In the mission "Cruel
Assassination", the head of the product department of the software giant
Façade (which alludes to Facebook) profited by selling customer information,
and players need to kill him. After the mission is over, the stock prices
of Fruit Company (which alludes to Apple) and Multihard Computer (which alludes
to Microsoft) will change. It can be seen that the producers of GTA5 do
not trust Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and other companies, and are pessimistic
about the issue of privacy protection in the Internet age. They believe that
driven by interests, it is difficult for technology giants to practice the
concept of "technology for good". What is embarrassing is that
the bridge segment in this game has become true. Four years after the
launch of GTA5, the Australian media exposed a confidential Facebook company
file in 2017, showing that the company provided advertisers with private data
on 6.4 million teenage users, helping advertisers target young people with
precision. The scandal caused an uproar. In 2018, a British company called
Cambridge Analytica was exposed to unconventional means to obtain information
and data on Facebook's as many as 50 million users, and use these data to
predict and influence public choices in political activities. Even more
chilling is that this company was once employed by the campaign team of US
President Trump and the political group that promoted Brexit.
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