A Rant on the Racial Codes of Grand Theft Auto
My initial feelings toward Grand Theft Auto (GTA) were not positive because of the fact that I had heard about how GTA centers its narratives around urban street violence and other promiscuous, immoral behaviors that users can “choose” to participate in. These factors of the game did not interest me, partly because as an individual who is “content” with my daily lifestyle, I’ve never posed the question:”What would it be like if I could be a rebellious outsider X?” Nor have I ever seriously said to myself: “Uh, I wonder what it would feel like to do [X] and [Y] whenever I want to without getting caught and without consequence.” However, my friends, who had previously played GTA during their childhood, really encouraged me to play the game with an open mind, by expressing the fact that I could do whatever I wanted to do in GTA, and that the options that are available in GTA would expand past engaging in violent behaviors. Counting on the latter statement, I, along with my group, decided to watch each other play the game. Within the first fifteen minutes of watching my group mates drive stolen cars and shoot other “gang-bangers” just to earn a quick buck or to retrieve stolen property, I realized that GTA is a game that was not meant for me.
Unlike what my friends had said, for the first number of levels, the offline version of GTA forces you to be a certain character, and most of the time, that character just so happens to be a male who is racially coded as “other.” More specifically, these male characters tend to ⎼⎼respectively or concurrently⎼⎼fall under these categories: urbanness, “ghetto” blackness (e.g.. exaggerated slang and cursing), immigrancy (demonstrated through accents and broken English), poverty, and lack of education (e.g. the need to earn money the hard way because the character didn’t go to college). Not only was I, a black woman who is not “video game savvy”, forced to embody a male character with these personality traits and social backgrounds, but I was also thrown into the storyline with limited options as to what I was able to. I couldn’t just roam around the city because if I want to help my character (a low income black male high school graduate) take control of his own life and rise out of poverty, I needed to allow him to perform the stereotypical means necessary to obtain the wealth that he wanted ⎼⎼like robbing banks and stores or forming strong relationships with those who are well-known in “the streets.”
When it was my turn to play GTA in my group, I honestly struggled from the first minute I held the controller. I accidentally crashed my car into poles and into people. It was, overall, not a great experience. However, it was interesting to see how the world of GTA is racially coded in such a way that attracts young, white males who desire to obtain the stereotypical personalities and behaviors of the racial “other” online, even though most of them, prefer to dissociate themselves from those same things in the real world. In contrast, S. Craig Watkins, in “The Power of Play” offers a different lens for looking at how young black males digest urban/street gaming. Instead of separating the luxury and ideals of a video game from the ways of real life, Watkins suggests that young black males tend to allow the “power and persuasiveness of [black masculinity and urban social mobility to] skew their values and…profoundly influence [their] lifestyle choices and behaviors” (Watkins 147).
Thus, although GTA was not an attractive game for myself due to many reasons, (some of which I discussed before), I understand how the harmful representations of blackness in the game can be perceived as great because it, nevertheless, still offers some form of representation of black individuals and people of color which not many video games today offer. The idea of being able to finally take control of their own narrative by fighting for the wealth and the luxury that they may not have access to in the physical realm also presents GTA as desirable for young black males.
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