While the rest of the world has more pressing concerns, American moralists have finally become enraged by the 'Hot Coffee' mod for GTA: San Andreas which allows players to access a previously blocked interactive sex scene.
Last friday the notorious National Institute on Media and the Family issued a bizarre 'National Parental Warning' about the modification. (I'm imagining air raid sirens going off throughout Middle America, children being rushed home from school, angry parents carrying lit torches and gathering outside videogame shops...) In it, spokesman David Walsh proclaims:
"While San Andreas is already full of violent behavior and sexual themes, the pornographic sex scenes push it over the edge"
Okay, I know these people are an easy target, but let me get this straight: blasting innocent pedestrians in the face in order to steal cars, or engaging in drug deals and then slaughtering everyone else involved - these were to be frowned upon but were not quite of 'National Parental Warning' status. Yet a character having consensual sex with a girlfriend, in a challenge where the aim is to ensure her pleasure? This - one of the only human interactions in the game that doesn't involve violence - is the least acceptable act.
Walsh is also widely quoted as saying:
"Can you imagine the impact of 13, 14 and 15 year old boys literally enacting this scene?"
Here's what I think. A fraction of GTA players will go through the fairly esoteric process of finding, downloading and instaling the modification into their game, they'll give it a quick play, have a laugh with some friends, and then they'll forget about it. Or perhaps they won't forget it - perhaps they'll remember that the crudely realised and daftly portrayed interactive fumbling provided a few moments of calm in an otherwise incomprehensibly hostile environment. Perhaps it will invite them to put their adolescent gangland fantasies of death and retribution into some sort of context.
God forbid, eh? God forbid.
