Take Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV too seriously and you'll probably miss most of what it's up to. It's a game, of course, but it's also a biting, unremitting satire. Juvenile-seeming to some, sure, with its lewd and frequently misogynist humor, but no less a scathing sendup of American culture when you strip the top layers away. It's a mirror, but one held up to our silly instead of our serious side. A parody of parodies. A bad-boy-burlesque. That it even offends other satirists (who take special pleasure in calling it sophomoric) simply proves its point.
