Life and deathLife and death
By Brandon Astor Jones
"It's commercialism gone crazy — for people to profit from something offensive like the electric chair is perverse." — Ros Brennan
The Sydney Morning Herald's June 10 issue carried an article by Michael Evans under the headline, "Electric chair game 'mocks youth suicide'". Accompanying the text, a photograph shows a 16-year-old sitting in a so-called "fun 'n' games electric chair". He has that dazed look of a young man who might find humour in an abortion, but you know he is only kidding because he has his skateboard snugly pressed between his legs.
Nova Productions, the creator of the $2 a pop arcade game, wants us all to know that it is "totally safe", "great fun" and, oh yes, "challenging".
However, Ros Brennan the president of NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens says it is "horrific and quite barbaric". She notes too that it "adds nothing to the lives of young people".
I agree, but then I have a built-in prejudice in this matter. I have spent 17 years on death row in the United States.
One wonders what Nova Productions will do next. Perhaps a starving-to-death game, in which for $3 youngsters can have their stomachs vacuumed of food, then have air pumped in so that they can have that bloated, dying-of-starvation look? Surely that will be loads of fun!
Susan Bastik, the NSW president of the Australian Family Association, says that the game (at the Timezone Family Entertainment Centre, on George Street, Sydney) "trivialises youth suicide — it says it's easy, it's fun to take your life [or someone else's]".
It is as if Timezone has forgotten that Lauren Marks, may she rest in peace, the one-time editor of Timezone magazine, committed suicide two years ago. Everything about Timezone's so-called "Shocker — the fun chair" trivialises life and death.
[The writer is a prisoner in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, Georgia State Prison, HCO1, Reidsville, GA 30453, USA. For the first time in 17 years, Brandon has the real hope of his sentence of death being mitigated. If you can help by contributing to his defence fund or in other ways, please contact Australians Against Executions, PO Box 640, Milson's Point NSW 2061. Fax (02) 9427 9489. Cheques can be made payable to "Brandon Astor Jones Defence Fund".]