Exploring the Hyper-Violence and Societal Manipulation of Gamer
It is often said that those who view the world in black-and-white have trouble seeing the whole picture, and this goes to show for the streaks of red covering our television screens. Consumer culture runs rampant with the notion that to have is to hoard and to collect is to control. But what does the pursuit of satisfying these desires say about the primal urge for power, and to what degree do humans’ violent tendencies have to show for it? These ideas are explored in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s 2009 science fiction film Gamer. While glazed over with gratuitous amounts of gore, brutality, and overt sexuality, Gamer’s surface-level thrills house a time capsule—a message from the past that is even more relevant now than it was over ten years ago when the movie was released. In this evolving age of technology, government oppression, and civil uprisings, the video game-inspired action flick is a reflection of the fear that currently plagues society today.
