M.I.A. owes much of her musical career to songs addressing violent subject matter. She's concerned about "computer games" that depict violence, though, and singled them out as a place where her child will learn about the world.
M.I.A., whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam explained that she "saw violence all the time" while growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, according to a Connect magazine interview spotted by CVG. "My kid's gonna see it, but he's gonna see it in computer games," she said.
In the same fashion as a spokesman for WikiLeaks recently, Arulpragasam drew a correlation between real word behavior and how soldiers understand what they're doing in game terms.
"I don't know which is worse," she stated. "The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan."
She also said that she thinks games can lead to false understanding about how violence works.
"They feel like they know the violence when they don't," she explained. "Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it's like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier."
Do you agree with M.I.A.'s judgments about game violence? Do you think video game depictions of violence are better or worse than those in music? Share your opinions in the comment section below.