Zachary Small argues Grand Theft Auto is the most American video game because it captures the American impulse to test limits and do whatever you can get away with.
Where this was said
At 45:47 · chapter starts 45:13
Two contributors arrive at the same American truth from different angles. Zachary Small sees Grand Theft Auto — a game where you're dropped into a fictionalized American city and given total criminal freedom — as the ultimate expression of the American impulse to test limits and see what you can get away with. Elisabeth Vincentelli, who has witnessed demolition derbies in person, describes losing her mind screaming as cars smashed into each other until only one remained. Both find the American character in sanctioned mayhem: the pleasure of destruction within a structured frame, the P.T. Barnum instinct for spectacle.
One is a video game that lets you commit any crime in a fictionalized American city. The other is a real arena sport where the whole point is to destroy everyone else's car. Zachary Small and Elisabeth Vincentelli each came to the same conclusion from different angles: America loves sanctioned mayhem.
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