Brothers Grimm & Video Gaming ?

Hello, everyone,

today I read about the highest court of the U.S. using the cruelty of the Brothers Grimm tales for making up a court decision on video gaming …

You can read it for example here : http://minnesota.publicradio.org/co.../2011/06/are_violent_video_games_the_sa.shtml

I don't know what to think about it … Despite public belief, I tend to see the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm rather NOT as stories for kids - and therefore rather for grown-ups or even for adults.

And to say that the Odyssey and the Illiad would be tales for children is imho just ridiculous.

Alrik

Those stores were, at least in part, meant for children when they were collected in the early 19th century (the collections were even known as "Children's and Household Tales").

I don't think its healthy to totally totally ban these things from childrens books either. Why should we be so incredibly afraid of violence and sex? There should of course be limits on what we expose children to, but not everything should be sugarcoated.

And there are stories that I suspect can have a stronger impact on childrens psyche than those collected by the Grimm brothers, like The Little Match Girl.

It is always a bit of the same story.

A difference between a communauty gathering around a story teller (as it was the case for popular tales in those times) and people playing their game insulated from certain influences.
Even now, tales are often read or told by parents directly to their children (bedtime stories), allowing modulation and reaction to children's attitudes. It gives guidance to parents as it allows to know more about their children.
Another difference is that tales are part of a cultural lore, meaning that parents often know the tale before telling them, giving them reference points. Different from video games for which the content is unknown to the parents before playing them.
Of course, one (the bad parenting/nanny state school) could tell that parents should play the games before allowing their children to play them and stuff but still different from tales as tales are nothing new, rather permanent in their forms and acquired knowledge when a grown up.

Face it, the video industry is a huge business and in these economical times, people will come up with various shaky rationalizations in order to maintain the cash flow.

The other point is that greek mythology is known to be tales told to children (was told to adults too)
Famous greek mythologist (name cant recall at the moment) started his recount by telling that it is the stories as his mother told him when he was a child.