Junot Diaz is a gamer, and sometimes that pulls more cred around here than winning the Pulitzer Prize (which Diaz did for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is required reading around these parts). But something shook us when we read his dissection of Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. In his op-ed piece, Diaz lambasted critics of the game who hailed it as a triumph on the scale of The Godfather or The Sopranos (we would’ve used The Wire, since there are so many more allusions made to it in the game than its brother HBO series). While his arguments made sense, we still have a problem with Diaz’ reasoning behind those arguments. Namely, that a video game can’t have the layered nuance of character or environment a show or movie can. Bah, we say. Bah!

OK, let me be clear: I love GTA IV and I have no doubt that it is art, but an equal to “The Sopranos” or “The Godfather”? Narrative art of that caliber is distinguished by its ability to re-organize our preconceptions, to shift us into a world that’s always been there but that we’ve been afraid to acknowledge, and I’m not convinced that GTA IV pulls off that miracle.

GTA IV for all its awesomeness doesn’t have the sordid bipolar humanity of “The Sopranos,” and it certainly lacks the epic flawed protagonists that define “The Godfather” and its bloodier lesser brother “Scarface.” Successful art tears away the veil and allows you to see the world with lapidary clarity; successful art pulls you apart and puts you back together again, often against your will, and in the process reminds you in a visceral way of your limitations, your vulnerabilities, makes you in effect more human. Does GTA IV do that? Not for me it doesn’t…

Well, in the same way a film can’t define a character as well as a novel because there are only so many minutes to develop them, a game in which you’re going to control the main character is going to be different than something you watch. And in that way, GTA IV allows us to feel closer to Niko Belic than Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano. And in that you get to make Niko the character more accountable, and thus more human to you than someone on television. That’s where the game’s “lapidary clarity” comes from—yourself.

There are sections of GTA IV where you make the call whether to hurt or help someone, which is something you wish you had during the Sopranos (we would’ve given Artie Bucco such a slap). As you grow within the game, discovering how you mold your Niko to become a digital version of your bad ass, you develop a moral sense that is on par with classes on the “Duality of Man” that David Chase or Francis Ford Coppola gave us. Only this time, you have become the vigilante so they hit home more. And again, while we agree that the breadth of game’s story falls short of the show or movie, it’s this association you make with Niko that makes the heaps of praise put upon GTA IV worth every word.

Sorry Junot, we love you and all, but we have to go with the critics here. Although you do make a good point about GTA III being more ground-breaking than IV. We’ll give you that.

‘Grand,’ but No ‘Godfather’ [Wall Street Journal]
Image [SF Chronicle]