The Most Punk Game Ever Made: Grand Theft Auto IV

Initially, I didn't feel Grand Theft Auto IV was gonna be for me. I've played III and Vice City, but quickly lost interest in both, as the gameplay just seemed to boil down to jacking cars and shooting bystanders. Not that IV isn't that as well, its just the combination of its high and low-brow sensibilities, wicked humor and touching characters make it a true fuck-you-society art piece. This is because of its warped looking-glass reflection of real life: The references to television, politics and the blind-fear of post-9/11 western society are abundant, and hit hard because GTA allows you to fully function in a false-reality, like the Sims with balls. Now obviously the satire of this game was not lost on the average video game reviewer, but what stuck me was how the satire functioned in relation to other art.

Last summer I read an awesome review of Inglourious Basterds by Sean T. Collins (You have to scroll down August 31st to find it). He posits the idea that Inglourious Basterds functions like punk rock, as a "psychic survival mechanism" with which we cope with reality. What shocks me is how those opposed to GTAIV can only seem to latch on to the fact that you can buy hookers and then run them over with your car afterward, when really the game is much more subversive than such a shallow and comic act. Hate television? Watch Republican Space Rangers. Can't stand the radio? Listen to Iggy Pop swear, play an obscure Bowie song and hail the musical taste enhancing effects of scag. Afraid of terrorism? The character you play as is essentially a terrorist, a nihilistic criminal with the ability to search and destroy civilians, cops and other criminals. Just like Collins's article suggests, by simply taking reality and twisting it, making it just that more extreme and surreal, we can laugh and applaud it, as it undercuts the truth we all fear.

But what brings this fact into light as opposed to past GTA's is the realism that functions as the stage for the subversion, like Hitler's regime functions in Basterds. Niko, Roman, Jacob and the rest of the cast are fleshed out like hefty cinematic characters, and react much like you and I would. Its this that lets us buy so fully into the rest of the game, the ridiculous violence and gut-busting humor, because it doesn't really seem like that much of a stretch.

I mentioned Iggy Pop. Besides the fact that he wrote a lot of the book on how to give the fuck-you to society, his presence in the game seems to affirm for me what the creators had in mind. GTAIV is more than a game, its a looking glass wonderland that very much resembles our own. Enjoy it.