Professor Noel Gallagher gives lecture on game violence

by Kyle Orland { Jul 4th 2008 at 5:00PM }

Rock star and noted media violence expert Noel Gallagher used a recent public appearance to speak out against the influence of violent video games, according to the BBC. While accepting an award at London's Silver Clef Music Awards, Professor Emeritus Gallagher mentioned games as one possible cause for the prevalence of youth-oriented knife violence throughout England.

"People say it's through violent video games and I guess that's got something to do with it," said Gallagher, whose wide-ranging, cross-cultural sociological studies on the relationship between media exposure and real-world violence have changed the way we all look at this complex problem. "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised [sic] to crime because they're playing these video games, it's really, really scary," he added while adjusting the Amalfi Prize hanging around his neck.

Gallagher is the best-selling author of Burning the Razor's Edge: How Super-Skunk Smoking and Our Knife-Obsessed Media Landscape are Turning Our Kids to Crime.

[Thanks, GunForHire]

Tags: gallagher, music, musician, noel-gallagher, oasis, rock-star, science

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

HighFiveJesus @ Jul 4th 2008 5:05PM

i smoked some super skunk last night

good band too.

bigsofty @ Jul 5th 2008 8:19AM

"Professor Noel Gallagher"... ROFL! :D

BigD145 @ Jul 5th 2008 1:59PM

I hunger for watermelon.

BIGGEN (LIVE-PSN: BIGGEN1103) @ Jul 4th 2008 5:06PM

hack=tripe

Darayz @ Jul 4th 2008 5:08PM

So ... much ... sarcasm ...

aristokrat @ Jul 5th 2008 12:52AM

This has to be one of the best Joystiq articles ever written. I think I'm going to make it my homepage so that I'll have a laugh whenever I'm down.

Haggard @ Jul 5th 2008 6:57AM

Agreed, I loved that :P

SoulBlade @ Jul 4th 2008 5:11PM

not you too Noel..

colin @ Jul 4th 2008 5:11PM

i can't find that book on amazon ... link plz?

mezzanine @ Jul 4th 2008 5:12PM

At least he's less irritating than Liam.

Johnny Bloom @ Jul 4th 2008 5:13PM

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/2241/facepalm2ic7copyrl2.jpg

juju187 @ Jul 4th 2008 5:17PM

im gonna smoke super skunk and jack him for his medal

Ethan @ Jul 4th 2008 5:19PM

I think I might need to be re-sensitized to crime, perhaps by watching re-runs of gilmore girls.

Huey2k2 @ Jul 4th 2008 5:25PM

This just helps to reaffirm my hatred of Oasis.

j.howlett @ Jul 4th 2008 5:25PM

we got 99 problems, and a bitch ain't one

Stevo @ Jul 5th 2008 2:37AM

LMFAO! http://youtube.com/watch?v=mrDIOVXx-y8

Trevsweb @ Jul 4th 2008 5:26PM

what a wanker... seams like oasis need to get their head out of their arseholes and start playing good music like they did about 5 years ago. what a lamer

tony @ Jul 4th 2008 5:43PM

five years ago? more like 15...

Shadow El @ Jul 4th 2008 7:57PM

More like never.

Dracard @ Jul 4th 2008 5:28PM

Those fucking eyebrows...

Noshino @ Jul 4th 2008 8:40PM

you mean those that you lack?

Jareco @ Jul 4th 2008 5:31PM

Now Kids, don't discredit him just because he has no real degree in, except in Rock 'n Roll...

Behind his overexaggerating, there is still a point: The more you watch, or participate digitally in violence, the more you get used to it. And that is the problem. Kids with a low level of containment, do not respond so well to desensitising their aggression level.

ComradeTrotskii @ Jul 4th 2008 7:53PM

I'm gonnae chib ye in the puss if ye dinnae shut up.

RustyNailz @ Jul 4th 2008 5:34PM

Is this for real ?? or sarcasm ? cause as a joke its not really funny ,if true then its just pathetic.

zeldazeppelin @ Jul 4th 2008 5:40PM

i agree with you

Winwood @ Jul 4th 2008 5:39PM

Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit ... but it's still funny :)

A Pissed-off English Gamer @ Jul 4th 2008 6:00PM

But extended sarcasm is kind of different in an awesome way.

tony @ Jul 4th 2008 5:42PM

i don't think you the joystiq staff quite understand how much of a problem violent crime has become amongst young people in the UK. it really is shocking. i don't know if any of you have seen the recent reports on the killings of jimmy mizen, rob knox, ben kinsella and most recently laurent bonomo and gabriel ferez (all in london, depressingly) but it does prompt a lot of reactions like this. all of these guys who have been murdered are under the age of 25, in fact, aside from the last two, they're all under 21, teenagers, even.

i don't agree with noel gallagher, i enjoy a lot of his music, but he is essentially a twat. but i can understand why people of his generation associate violent crime amongst young people with video games, being a medium that has only really emerged in the last 20 years. those 20 years are the formative ones of the people who are both the perpetrators and victims of these crimes. i don't think video games are the problem, i think it's a decay in the way some young people are brought up interacting with other people, due to their parents, teachers and friends being replaced with a screen, be it TV, video games or the internet. it's not the images they see on those screens that cause the problem, it's the lack of human interaction. there is a lack of empathy in a lot of young people in this country. that's not to say we're all vicious killers, most of use are normal, well adjusted individuals, but there's an increasing number of people in my generation who just don't understand how to be with other people. noel gallagher didn't have 500 TV channels, the internet and a spread of games consoles for his parents to fob him off with, so he doesn't understand that.

anyway, rant over. i don't agree with him, but i understand why he and a lot of older people say the crap they say about these things. that's life.

ryan @ Jul 4th 2008 6:18PM

thanks for the lesson in violent crime, but this is America. People get shot taking their dog for a walk. If there's one thing we know very well, it's violent crime.

HighFiveJesus @ Jul 4th 2008 6:45PM

tony is smart

Noshino @ Jul 4th 2008 8:43PM

If you wanted to get 3 stars...

"i don't agree with noel gallagher, i enjoy a lot of his music, but he is essentially a twat."

There, THAT would have been enough...

LaughingTarget @ Jul 4th 2008 10:24PM

Most violent crime in America is concentrated in four cities and 54% of it is concentrated within a very narrow socio-economic and racial mix. You don't get shot for walking the dog, you get shot for being poor, black and live in Washington DC/Detroit/St. Louis by someone else who is poor, black and living in Washington DC/Detroit/St. Louis.

Also, I am not an American and I already know this guy above is full of shit. The UK crime rates have little to do with video games but with major social issues. The UK has an incredibly liberal immigration policy, creating strife among frequent newcomers that can't hack it in an economy not set up to accept a large population growth. It also doesn't help that the UK has a lenient court system and poor policing that is reflected by a 10% conviction rate in violent crimes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/may/28/ukcrime.immigrationpolicy

For comparison, American courts have double the conviction rates. There is a lower conviction rate in the United States for murder, which could explain a lot about crime trends. The UK exceeds the United States in all crime statistics with exception of domestic abuse and murder.

The UK conviction rates have been dropping since 1997 or so whereas the US rates have increased. Not surprisingly, the inverse rings true with crime rates with the UK's crime rates increasing over the same timeframe vs the US dropping.

Violent crime in the UK was up 5% in 2007. Violent crime in the US was down 1.8% in 2007.

It isn't just UK vs the US, the UK has the highest crime rate of every post-industrial nation. It is the leader.

If video games were any indicator, then both the US and UK should have registered a marked increase in violence. Such is not the case. It is the quality of the policing force, court system and the US cracking down on immigration that have helped the US avoid a crime problem.

P.S. - Guns have nothing to do with either. Since banning guns, the UK's overall crime rate has nearly doubled and the murder rate went from 8.7 times the murder rate in the US in 1981 to 3.5 times the US murder rate in 2002. US rates have declined drastically and the UK murder rates are the highest in 100 years. Something clicking about the fallacy of weapon control policy, be they guns, knives or golf clubs?

LaughingTarget @ Jul 4th 2008 10:25PM

Clarification, I am an American, I have no idea how I added "not" to that statement.

Sabi @ Jul 5th 2008 1:16AM

how dare you downplay the great Noel Gallagher and his wisdom....tsk tsk tsk.

He isn't wrong because he said, " I guess that's got something to do with it,"

Note something and not everything....you listed more than just something in your comment.

Noel is pretty smart, was int he slammer himself for a while. so he probably knows a thing or two.

Lord Bowser @ Jul 5th 2008 6:09AM

Laughing Target,

I need citations to take you seriously. To me, everything past the second paragraph seemed full of shit. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but you do seem to enjoy making up facts in imagination land.

t_m @ Jul 5th 2008 9:36AM

Laughing Target is mostly right. So is Tony.

There are lot of factors in play, violent media probably being one of the lesser ones. However people have been so shocked by the recent spate of (incredibly vicious) killings that they are searching around for any answer.

Actually, violent crime and knife crime in the UK has also dropped in the last few years, but much less than in the US. However violent crime (and knife crime) among the YOUNG has shot up incredibly rapidly.

A lot of it is due to drinking, and gang culture among poor, disaffected kids. But there have been several very vicious murders carried out by groups of very young kids.. and a lot of people find it almost impossible to imagine how they could do it.

Of course, in the US they've had the same games, movies, music, and crime among the young has fallen. However this is mostly due to the rise in abortions. The UK on the other hand has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in europe.. so thats a lot of unwanted, poor, genetically inferior kids being pumped out.

LaughingTarget @ Jul 5th 2008 10:03AM

Lord Bowser -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6906554.stm

Note the chart, violent crime is up 5%. Overall crime is down, but crimes people care about, such as being attacked, either for violence sake (violent crime) or for their money (robbery) is increasing.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1170336.ece

Murder rates in the UK are at historic highs. The article is a few years out of date, but the murder rates haven't been dropping by any significant levels. The biggest worry a UK citizen has is that a major segment of murders are random killings, something the US doesn't contend with. US murders tend to be by someone the person already knows, a third of UK murders are by random strangers.

I'll quote Martez over at our website: "I usually don't try to debate LT as he tends to be right most of the time." I don't make anything up.

Skor @ Jul 4th 2008 5:43PM

Hahaha, oh Noel...

Ethan @ Jul 5th 2008 7:58AM

Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel!

wesley johnson @ Jul 4th 2008 5:46PM

i wanna know how anyone was able to decipher anything that guy said.

juju187 @ Jul 4th 2008 6:01PM

that he said super skunk and might smoke pot

Alex @ Jul 4th 2008 5:48PM

Coming from a guy who fights his own brother, I think we don't need to worry...

Also:
Dear Noel, RETIRE ALREADY! DAMON WON! ALSO GRAHAM, GO TO HELL!!!

Stevie Dunbar @ Jul 4th 2008 6:37PM

Is...

Is that you Alex James? Blur reunion anytime soon?

No? Okay. :(

Sabi @ Jul 5th 2008 1:20AM

Seriously Oasis is great their new album is gonna be great.
Blur has a few good songs, and everything else damon did was great. but oasis still was better. If anybody wins anything it should be Richard Ashcroft. He's the genius...

BPM [MKWii: 2578 3585 8392] @ Jul 4th 2008 5:54PM

I don't believe video games are the source of all society's woes, but I do think they can be a contributing factor. But not moreso than violent TV shows or movies.

Media, overall, has gotten progressively more vulgar and explicit over the years. Is it no wonder we've become so desensitized to such things?

However, I firmly believe the biggest factor is how a kid is raised. Parents cannot use TV and video games to be their babysitters. They need to let their kids play with other kids.
Don't let the media be the teacher, either. It's up to the parent to teach the kid between right and wrong, factual and fictional. I think many problems arise when people cannot realize the difference between reality and fantasy.