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July 06, 2007
New Book: "Porn & Pong" Set for Fall 2008 Release
Damon Brown, a writer who's covered the sex and games beat on numerous occasions, is writing a book on how sex and video games have shaped culture. He sent Sex & Games this summary of his upcoming book:
In Summer 2005, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton followed the path of most American young males today: she became mesmerized by video games. Specifically, sex in video games. “The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games is like stealing the innocence of our children,” she said at an impromptu press conference. Clinton was responding to a special code in the latest Grand Theft Auto game, a code that lets the player’s alter ego essentially star in his own pornographic movie. “I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games… is spiraling out of control.”
What Clinton and other like-minded politicians didn’t realize is the two male-focused mediums of pornography and video games have been and always will be bonded by modern technology and social mores. The landmark porn film Deep Throat blazed theaters in 1972, the same summer that Atari’s Pong began the current video game industry. By 1977, porn helped bring movies into our home the same way Atari got arcades into our living room. The ascension of digital sex symbol Lara Croft, Playboy’s now-staple nude video game “centerfold” and the recent Grand Theft Auto controversy seem predestined when viewed in this context. More importantly, we can use these two expressions to see pop culture, sexuality and technology evolve (or devolve) over the past thirty years, using them to better understand a particular time period the same way an archeologist would examine a cross section of pottery.
Porn and Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Lara Croft and Other Sexy Games Changed Modern Pop Culture will examine American pop culture and sexuality through the lens of video games, using this electronic medium as a cross section to view our history over the past thirty years. This historical narrative will look at more than a dozen games, the cultural events that inspired them, and what impact the titles themselves had on pop culture.
Porn and Pong will be released by popular indie publisher Feral House in Fall 2008. The official website will launch in summer 2007.
Posted by BrendaBrathwaite at July 6, 2007 05:44 PM | Discuss this post on our forums