Mafia II, District 9...and swearing and censorship in movies and games.

This is something that has bugged me for a while. Swearing in both videogames and movies seems to be steadily heading towards dropping f-bombs every second word.

Personally, I have nothing against  violence and/or swears when it would typically be appropriate, but sometimes I find the sheer volume of excessive gore and cursing just turns me off of a film or game entirely.

Take District 9 (which I will review shortly). I really enjoyed that film, though I felt the action-heavy big robot scene dragged on a bit and felt tacked on.

The one single thing in the whole film that grated for me was the cursing - sometimes justified (I'd be swearing too if someone wanted to cut my arm off), but by the end of the film, where one of the bad guys was inserting obscenities into every sentence, it felt a little strained.

Can't the bad guy just say "Then just kill him." rather than "Then just ****ing kill him."?

Or "I'm going to kill you." rather than "I'm going to ****ing kill you."?

Or "How do I open this thing?!" instead of "How do I ****ing open this ****ing thing?! ****!"

>_> <_<

There were also plenty of gory body explosions that were a little gratuitous, but performed more to give a sense of power than out of mean-spirited sadism - no problem with that.

Then similarly in the videogame world, I was recently playing the Mafia II demo and I've gone on to purchase the game new, something I generally don't do. However the demo was very impressive and the first game had a fantastic story. Despite playing more curse-heavy games like The Getaway (every second word in that game is literally an F-bomb, ridiculous) I was still struck by the level of cursing in the game.

Now, take a scene from the demo - you ("Vito") and your Mafia colleagues (Joe and Henry) have to assassinate some kind of mob boss as he shows up to a whiskey distillery. Things go wrong and his workers are able to drag him inside as you ambush his car, leading to a long gunfight and the distillery catching fire.

During this exchange many swears are dropped, mostly by Joe, who is easily the most foul-mouthed of the lot. He screams curses and bellows furied insults as bullets spark off of the car he's crouched behind. It all feels justified and very intense.

Then, after taking out the enemies, he calls on you to kick a door open. "You first Vito, you're the ****ing war hero."

Hmm, little unneccessary maybe, but he's a coarse guy, so it makes sense.

Inside the distillery there's more swearing. Eventually the target is reached, and there is a cutscene that is both violent and swear-filled, but with good reason - the cornered boss begs pitifully, then sneakily wounds his would-be killer before finally being shot. It manages to be very uncomfortable viewing for all the right reasons, and Vito's expression flickers uncertainly as it plays out before him.

Unfortunately, this is followed by Joe literally swearing at everything that happens afterwards, however mundane, as if the dialogue writers gave up with their adjectives. I dawdle for a moment as he carries the wounded man...

"What the **** are you doing Vito?" is my reward for slowing down for two seconds to grab a Tommy Gun - even though Joe isn't actually moving himself at the time either.

Outside, I bump into a pedestrian and he barely stumbles. "Watch where you're ****ing going!"

Then I apparently drive too slow in the car (though I'm not being chased). "You drive like my ****ing grandmother!"

The list goes on, leaving a distinctly District 9-esque vibe of "was that one really neccessary?"

The short of it? I think both swearing and violence can be used very effectively to convey mature and thought-provoking messages, but I think care has to be taken not to cheapen the impact by throwing in lazy swears every five minutes. If anything I think that really detracts from immersion and any kind of meaning being conveyed.


* On a related note, Mafia II's collectable items are apparently made up of 50's Playboy pin-ups. Really I have no idea what they were thinking - it seems laughably tacked on and, as a gaming website put it, apparently put in to make sure to alienate the female audience.

There are no GTA-style prostitutes in the game and Vito can't fist-fight women due to his own personal morals (though he's free to shoot them and run them over...)

Of course the silly side content apparently had to be put in just to make sure that girls can't just enjoy the story like guys can after all...and guys can't share the game with their partner or families without feeling uncomfortable.

Very lame "collectables", 'nuff said ¬_¬