1. Anthony Abu Talib
MIT3371
Luke Arnott
Mar. 3rd, 2015
—The Demonisation of GTA San Andreas—
Enforcing the Hegemonic Status-Quo: Trivialising Digital Art and a History of Urban
Cultural Resistance to Oppression
Rockstar Games’ 2004 launch of GTA: San Andreas revived America’s torrid
history of racism and binary exclusion of urban cultural expression. The game, which
superimposed digital art on the existing physical boundaries of Los Angeles, remixed
elements of film and music to relive the tension of early 90s urban California. A surreal
experience accentuating a fantasy akin to entering scenes from Menace II Society, the
game allows its players to experience the drama of urban culture from the inside out, as
opposed to the passivity of film viewing. The game was all too conveniently labelled
violent and antisocial, exacerbating existing bias against violent video games as a
reflective art form. The trivialisation of GTA: San Andreas is a byproduct of ideological
hegemony, which empowers a dominant culture in society over all forms of resistant
sub-culture.
GTA: San Andreas Is a Convergence of Media Remixing Urban History
The reception to GTA: San Andreas, the seventh instalment in the series, was
met with mainstream criticism. Journalists sought to sell their reviews on the most

2. scandalous of grounds. Citing the wording of an IGN review in 2004, Brett Kochenower
notes that GTA: San Andreas, “gain(s) the moniker as a game that wanted to ‘terrify
every parent, outrage every politician, and represent what a real game could do when it
didn't hold anything back’” (4). This stereotypical cold reading typified the mass media
interpretation of GTA: San Andreas. The moral panic that ensued centred GTA in the
crosshairs of politicians and policy makers. Conveniently, the game was blamed for a
variety of social ills amongst young people. After quoting biblical verses on morality,
Alessandro Gabbiadini concluded, “Violent video games such as GTA glorify and reward
immoral behaviors (e.g., murder, assault, rape, motor vehicle theft). Violent behaviors
enacted in the virtual world can also ‘bleed over’ to the real world” (451).
Lost in the plethora of determinist moral panic was the hyperreal art form that is
GTA: San Andreas, one which provided a third person perspective into 1990s urban Los
Angeles, a time of socio-political upheaval, racial tension, and vast injustice and
corruption. San Andreas is a digital artefact that engages its user in a trance of crime,
conflict and choices. Scott Dial explains, “The weapons, characters, and events of GTA
could easily be juxtaposed, via a limited exercising of one's imagination, to real world
events” (21). It is no coincidence that Rockstar North sought out DJ Pooh, co-writer of
the urban film classic Friday (1995) and personal DJ to LA rapper Ice Cube, to narrate
the nostalgic story of Carl “CJ” Johnson in San Andreas (Saltzman). Far from being a
First-Person Shooter or a Role-Playing Game alone, San Andreas is difficult to define
as it borrows so much from a multitude of gaming genres as well as other media such
as film and music.

3. The borrowing and remixing of urban culture is prominent in the game. Saltzman
explains, “If Vice City was likened to an interactive version of Scarface, consider San
Andreas the closest thing to starring in Boyz N the Hood. Gamers play as Carl "CJ"
Johnson, a young man who returns to the inner city slums to avenge his mother's
murder. Johnson soon connects with his old gang which helps him become
reacquainted with life on the streets” (Saltzman). Merging the old and the new, Rockstar
incorporated artists and actors from yesteryear, such as Samuel L Jackson and George
Clinton, with emerging new talents such as Young Maylay. The convergence of media
art forms and its messages is diverse in the game. Amidst the fantasy of enacting gang
violence are the messages of peace and introspection on San Andreas’ KJAH radio,
Micheal Middleton explains:
Eleven stations ranging from reggae to country to hip hop pepper their
‘programming’ with advertisements that offer ironic and satiric
commentary on issues ranging from militarism and gun violence to trade
of blood diamonds and popular culture’s ill effects on society. The
commercials identify and critique, among other things, issues of race,
gender, class, and sexuality. The resulting commentary develops a
narrative that stands in stark contradiction to the seemingly dominant
themes of the game (55).
This perspective elucidates the problem of trivialising San Andreas. It is a rich
digital text that can be viewed and played in a variety of ways which require the

4. personal interpretation and agency of the player (or passive viewer). As Middleton
concludes, “Uniformly negative criticisms tend to oversimplify the manner in which
complex mass-mediated popular culture texts operate” (6). Whilst films like Boyz N the
Hood (1991), Menace II Society (1993) and Training Day (2001) received critical
acclaim for their disturbing, yet perhaps inspiring, portrayal of urban LA and the battle to
survive it, video game depictions continue to suffer from the simplistic genre definitions
of earlier games. San Andreas is often viewed simply as a gang-banging, criminal
fantasy; however, as Scott Dial has deduced, “GTA does not seek to expose the gamer
to the real violence of the real world, it exposes the gamer to symbolic, virtual violence
realistically” (23-24). Moreover, the video game representation of 90s urban life is more
potent than the passivity of film viewing. The realism of user agency in the game is
surreal and allows gamers to touch and feel the life of the protagonist, CJ. San Andreas
simply illuminates the physical, emotional and economical turmoil of inner-city LA in the
early 90s. It is this social divide and real-world suffering that is more deserving of
political focus, not the violent fantasy in the game.
Twelve years after the Watts riots in LA and the Rodney King beating, GTA: San
Andreas and its hyperreal re-creation of early 90s urban life provided a point of
reflection and consideration. Where did we come from and where are we going? Has
anything changed in America? In 2014, riots once again accentuated racial tensions and
social problems in America, this time in Ferguson, Missouri. GTA: San Andreas provides
valuable historical context and analysis by way of its rich convergence of urban media.
From the genres of music with lyrics which cry resistance and frustration, to the cycle of

5. violent crime for survival, to the corruption of police and their disciplinary tactics, the
game questions the meaning of upright ideals in today’s society. American activist
Mumia Abu-Jamal observes that, “words like ‘justice,’ ‘law,’ ‘civil rights’ and, yes, ‘crime’
have different and elastic meanings’ and, depending on one’s social position, require
different tactics to maintain the security of those values” (qtd. in Middleton 65). Playing
GTA: San Andreas maps an interactive script of choices which mediates and questions
the true meaning of these terms. Is it crime or survival? Is it vulgar rap or poetic
resistance? The meaning read from a digital text is rich, not simplistic. This brings to
question why there is a predominantly negative viewpoint in the mainstream towards the
game. Abu-Jamal posits, “GTA offers a reading that, far from monolithically entrenching
hegemonic representations of race, depicts and affirms the potential for radical
resistance to institutional and state enacted discrimination and racism ‘displayed by
America to the black, brown, red and yellow world’” (qtd. in Middleton 65). If GTA: San
Andreas is such a rich reflection of institutionalised racism, discrimination and social
injustice, why is it deemed so irrelevant to the discussion of culture and society? It is at
this point that we need to turn our attention to the reasons that this game is often
relegated to the realm of ‘low-brow ‘and ‘antisocial’, who it serves, and why it tends to
dominate most political discourse.
The Double Standard at Play in Critiquing Violent Video Games That Serves a
Hegemonic Order

6. GTA: San Andreas did not inaugurate the violent game. The 2D gaming of the 80s
and 90s saw controversies during the Street Fighter (1991) and Mortal Kombat (1992)
era. As with those times, a double-standard existed. Games that depicted policing or
authority such as Robocop (1990) or Lethal Enforcers (1992) widely escaped criticism,
whilst their counterparts which did not centre violence within the hegemonic order of
authoritarian power were open to criticism. In 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton jumped on
the anti-GTA bandwagon, noting to the Associated Press that “‘lewd and violent’ games
are ‘spiraling out of control’” (qtd. in DeVane and Squire 264); however, violent games
existed for decades previously, seemingly escaping the watchful eye of government. So
why is it that games that centre minorities resisting authority bare the brunt of criticism?
Lacey Gillentine sheds light on this dichotomy, “Popular culture integrates stereotypical
thoughts and ideas into our value structure. Each generation passes on beliefs, values,
norms, objects, structures and much more to each subsequent generation. Included
among those ideas would be how we process and use information about people based
on race and gender” (2). Not surprisingly, San Andreas’ main character CJ is an African-
American who has suffered gross injustice at the hands of the SAPD (LAPD).
The political outrage against GTA: San Andreas is not unlike the authoritarian
backlash against Bodycount’s 1992 release of Cop Killer. The American government
essentially put itself up against the First Amendment right to free speech by attacking
the right for the song to be sold or played. Making an artistic connection between the
music and the game, Devane and Squire conclude, “The controversy surrounding GTA:

7. San Andreas is situated in broader public debates about the emergence of ‘gangsta rap’
in popular culture, which scholars characterized as a result of the political-cultural
conflict between a mobilized White middle-class and the youth subculture of the
deindustrialized, deskilled inner-city” (264). Beyond the prejudice against the game,
there is a sophisticated ideological and social consequence to the text (Middleton 1);
this is a point seemingly lost amongst GTA’s detractors. Also, it is negligent for Clinton
or like politicians to frame GTA: San Andreas within the lens of violent gaming whilst
excluding the military gaming industry. This hegemonic order simultaneously salutes the
violence of military games whilst condemning the violence of urban resistance to
oppression.
In 2002, two years before the release of GTA: San Andreas, a violent game was
developed by the US Department of Defense. America’s Army was openly proposed as
a recruiting tool. The game designers stated that it was “designed to generate interests
and positive perceptions about the Army and Army services” (qtd. in Middleton 4).
Rather than classify it as a violent neo-colonialist rampage, it was classified as an
“action-combat game steeped in Army values” (Middleton 4). The double-speak
employed in describing the mass murder in military games typifies the cultural bias at
play in society. Murdering the other is entertaining; as one parent notes, ‘‘It’s funny
when the Iraqis are running around on fire after you hit them with a grenade or blow up
a fuel tank. Beware of the head shot, you’re dead. I play it with my 12-year-old
boy.’’ (Allen 43). There are no anti-violence messages in military games, that would

8. defeat the purpose set out by the military gaming industry as instructed by the US
Department of Defense. It is a recruiting tool that normalises violence with no counter
opinion. GTA: San Andreas however, whilst steeped in violence, offers contrarian
opinions:
In one voice over, the DJ commands listeners to ‘put your guns down gangster…
[t]hey don’t make you look tough’ and in another explains that ‘if people don’t chill,
there will be nothing [left].’ This string of criticism culminates by asking listeners
‘where has the love gone? where has the love gone?.’ Likewise other characters
typify violence as both counterproductive and futile thus contradicting the preferred
reading identified by most critics. For example, in the narrative’s development,
violence strikes one of C.J.’s family members. A cinematic scene that follows
induces the player to empathize with C.J.’s loss and reflect on the consequences of
violence (Middleton 60).
So whilst violence exists in GTA: San Andreas, it is not the sole premise of the
game or the ultimate reading; rather, the player is able to engage a complicated text and
develop meaning, be it positive or negative. In many regards, one may condemn the
violence but empathise with the condition of the protagonist. Where are the contrarian
viewpoints in Call of Duty and other military games? These games are inherently bias,
binary, propaganda-laden recruitment tools. In 2011, an estimated 220,000 lives were
lost in the Syrian crisis (Wikipedia), a conflict fuelled by military aggression between the
Syrian Army and its resistors, often ISIS-infused renegades. In contrast, also in 2011,
648 homicides were recorded in the Los Angeles area; of the total, 203 were

9. perpetrated by persons identified as African American (LA Times). Nonetheless, the
military gaming complex reenforces the status quo of neoliberal values whilst GTA: San
Andreas questions a failing government response to social distress fuelled by poverty.
Whilst politicians convene meetings to debate violent video games like GTA: San
Andreas, tens of thousands are playing Call of Duty on the same consoles, being
desensitised to war and its ugly consequences, some of whom will kill or be killed in
future military conflicts.
Apparently, it is not killing that is problematic; rather it is who is being killed. GTA:
San Andreas’ protagonist is an African-American. His main antagonist is Officer
Tenpenny of the SAPD, a scenario mimicking decades of LAPD racism. Whilst CJ
opposes the generically white authority-base, America’s Army opposes a primary non-
white, non-American enemy. This is the problematic at play, not the actual violence.
Social critic Micheal Moore explains, “‘Despite the fact that most crimes are committed
by whites, black faces are usually attached to what we think of as ‘crime’ because
media depictions have generated an ‘image of the black man as predator’ [such] that we
are forever ruined by this brainwashing” (qtd in Middleton 62). This centuries old
ideological slant is imprinted on the minds of American society, thus forever centralising
the body of power. So whilst we hide our youth from the violence of GTA: San Andreas,
should we open the door wide to violent military indoctrination? Georgia Tech professor
Ian Bogost notes that “it’s like tobacco...you don’t really want the Army sitting down with
your 13-year-olds in the back alley” (qtd. in Middleton 4).

10. More than simply associating GTA: San Andreas with violence, a deeper reading
concludes that “in such representations, ‘gangs,’ ‘gangstarap’ music, ‘superpredators,’
‘drug dealers,’ and ‘crime’ provide ostensibly neutral terms with which many White
Americans can continue to process fears of ethnic Others” (Middleton 62). It is for
precisely these reasons that this hegemony must be opposed by cultural acceptance of
digital art forms such as video games, so that they may be studied from the point of
view of the Arts and Humanities. Without such study, politicians will continue to frame
violent games (military or urban) within the broader strokes of normalised neoliberal
politics. A scholarship in such studies would uncover the many hidden values intrinsic to
ideology and culture (Middleton 18). As Henry Jenkins, a leading scholar on video
games notes, “If one imagines 25 years into the history of film, the only thing written
about the medium was whether it was violent or not, you’d think you had missed a large
part of the story” (qtd. in Middleton 17). GTA: San Andreas offers many interpretations to
the game player which allow him or her to resolve the complexity of gender, race,
stereotype and the inherent discrimination and disadvantage afforded to the lead
character. The text is rich in meaning and history, but it is grossly distorted when
stereotyped for political purposes. This reality underscores the importance for more
acceptance of digital art and its ability to depict the culture of the urban, not just the
suburban ‘mainstream’.
Carving a Path for Artistic Recognition of Digital Art as a Reflector of Urban Culture

11. In August 1998, a group of young LA-area artists formed a group called NWA
(Niggaz With Attitudez). Their groundbreaking platinum-selling album (Straight Outta
Compton) dubbed ‘reality rap’ exposed the environment of South Central LA in ways
news media was not willing to. The album, like GTA: San Andreas, was lambasted for its
crude language and disdain for authority. However, the urban exhale that NWA provided
should have been taken more seriously. A few years after its 1989 release, the LA riots
and Rodney King beating would unveil much of the social decay that the young rappers
poeticised. In 2015, some of the groups founders are releasing a feature film named
after the breakthrough album. The hegemonic dismissal of Straight Outta Compton by
those in positions of power sought to blind the mainstream American audience from the
true picture of inner-city urban life, as Ice Cube’s character mentions in a trailer for the
new film, “Our art is a reflection of our reality” (Straight Outta Compton - Red Band
Trailer). Sociologist Theodor Adorno argued the same point as Ice Cube decades
before. As Brett Kochenower explains, “Even though GTA is filled with negative images
and messages, Adorno would see this game as an example of art that allows the
consumer to become absorbed in a world that is a digital copy of their own” (5). The
dismissal of GTA: San Andreas, like NWA’s, is part of the continuing struggle endured
by urban artists to bring recognition to their work.
The main outlets of media are still dominated by a small elite group. In order to
penetrate this imbalance, the urban voice has always had to turn to other outlets, be
they underground or “low brow.” Ice Cube and Dr. Dre explain, “Our music was our

12. weapon and that’s the most powerful weapon you have” (Straight Outta Compton - Red
Band Trailer). The non-violent protests and calls for change in the music were pushed
aside in a sea of criticism of the violent nature of the art form. GTA: San Andreas
incorporates the music of NWA and like artists, combining them with the influence of
films about the era, and presenting all of this media in a digital remix that presents
urban reality from the inside out. GTA’s players are able to fuse the “cultural signifiers
such as film, fashion, music, and slang, to establish a virtual sense of 'place' that
enriches one's overall experience” (Kochenower 5). GTA: San Andreas, violence
included, is a digital representation of urban reality; however it struggles from the
exclusion of the custodians of ‘High Art’, those who seek to keep the balance of power
intact. Perhaps this balance is changing though, Micheal Middleton explains:
The growing recognition by social, cultural, and academic institutions of the impact
video games have on (at least United States’) modern culture attests to the
magnitude of influence the medium exercises. In addition, the increasing complexity
of video games mirrors the development of the same in other mediated forms of
popular communication, like film, as multiple mediums become more seamless (1).
Continuously painting GTA: San Andreas as a violent vice is simply a convenient way to
turn the attention of the larger mainstream audience from the complex variables of
underprivileged urban life in America’s ‘home of the free’. Just as Training Day can be
viewed as a violent resistance to police corruption or Boys N the Hood can be
interpreted as an urban tragedy, GTA: San Andreas is more than just violent. AR
Galloway explains, “While hyper-violent interpretations are possible, those reactions do

13. not represent the text encountered by most audiences, but instead illustrate only one
storyline that audiences may choose and, as such, reflect more about the particular
reader and the preferences and values they bring to the text than it does about the
artifact itself” (1). The murder of Ricky, one of the characters in Boyz N the Hood and
the heartbreaking aguish of his family, do not induce feelings of joy as his bullet-riddled
lifeless body is dragged into the family living room. Nonetheless, it is possible for some
to take pleasure in the violent scenes. The film is an insight into the cycle of violence in
South Central LA and how it affects relationships, positively or negatively.
GTA: San Andreas, beyond the passivity of film viewing, gives the game player the
option to contemplate violence and either agree or disagree, empathise or enjoy. As
Jenkins observes, “All story-telling traditions have included violence and aggression.
The difference [with video games] is that periodically the fighting stops…that forces you
to think about the consequences of violence” (qtd. in Middleton 18). There is an
abundance of interpretation possible within digital art forms. The simplification of urban
depiction in digital art is overtly biased. Whilst the Die Hard film series is continuously
violent, it is acceptable violence, perpetrated by a white protagonist representing
authority (the police). The text is not interactive or subject to change; it is static. The
richness of video games as a media is eschewed by Devane and Squire:
GTA: San Andreas is a dynamic text that requires the player to actively interact with
the semiotic artifact in fundamentally different ways. Some players may shoot
characters or destroy property, while others may simply drive around San Andreas

14. running ambulance, taxi, or police missions. What kinds of meanings do players
make of the game world? Do they see it as bearing back on their lived experiences?
(265).
This point is instrumental. The typical white suburban gamer does not live in or
understand the day-to-day plight of urban dwellers. Without digital art forms to debate
the discourse of urban culture, how would one gain insight into the polemic against
urban artists? David Leonard writes in Colorlines magazine that video games
“represent a modern, sophisticated, multicultural, virtual form of minstrelsy. In other
words, they provide players - a broad cross section of white middle-class suburbanites
and young, urban people of color - with the opportunity to be black athletes or
Ninjas” (qtd. in Gillentine 35). In fact, such crossover of cultural understanding is
essential, because although some gains have been made in race relations in America,
but as the Ferguson, Missouri riots showed, American society is still very much
divided. Ice Cube states, “The same thing that we were going through in the 80s is
what people are going through with the police right now” (Straight Outta Compton -
Red Band Trailer). The discourse that gamers get to negotiate between CJ and Officer
Tenpenny can help connect the dots, negatively and positively, between race relations,
social injustice, corruption and the cycle of killing. In this regard, digital art is
expounding upon urban culture in a subjective manner, one richer and more complex
than the media of film and music that preceded it.

15. The contempt for GTA: San Andreas is a slanted position rooted in a generations
old hegemonic order. The discussion on culture and how it is framed is not exclusive to
the proponents of ‘High Art’ or those in political authority. GTA: San Andreas is a
complex interactive text that negotiates various aspects of social upheaval. Through
the modern video game, a complex discourse can be established that provides insight
and meaning that is interactive. Trivialising the digital art form of GTA: San Andreas is
part and parcel an attempt to subjugate urban cultural expression to the existing
hegemony of cultural meaning. The struggle for its acceptance is not based on bullets
and brawls; this is a smokescreen to divert the mainstream attention away from the
social disparity and violent disposition of urban America. GTA: San Andreas is a
wonderful convergence of urban media and digital art, providing a surreal experience of
inner-city LA, a richness obscured by the violence of hegemonic ideals.

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