The British Board of Film Classification has issued a statement concerning the next instalment of Call of Duty, which uses a North Korean invasion as its backdrop. They call for a 'responsible narrative'. This is rich.
We are now at the point where the entertainment industry, which has spent decades gleefully simulating the slaughter of brown people in exotic locales, suddenly discovers a conscience when the fictional victims might be white Europeans. Or perhaps it is simply that Pyongyang has better lawyers than Baghdad. The irony is exquisite.
We have no problem with digital recreations of the Fall of Rome, the Napoleonic Wars, or any number of real historical atrocities, so long as they are safely in the past. But suggest a future conflict, one that touches on present anxieties, and suddenly the guardians of public morality demand restraint. This is not a call for ethical storytelling.
It is a panic reflex. The modern intellectual class, having lost faith in any grand narrative, now seeks to micromanage the fictions we consume, as if tweaking a video game plot will somehow redeem a civilisation in decline. Meanwhile, actual wars rage on, and real refugees drown in the Mediterranean.
But by all means, let us focus on the proper framing of a digital fantasy. This is what decadence looks like: a culture so saturated with simulacra that it mistakes the map for the territory. The Victorians, for all their hypocrisies, at least understood that there was a difference between a novel and a war.
We have lost even that distinction. The BBFC should save its breath. The game will sell millions, the controversy will be forgotten, and the next Call of Duty will find another geopolitical hot button to exploit.
And we will all pretend to be shocked, again. That is the real game we are playing.
