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# A philosopher files Grand Theft Auto next to de Sade
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/depraved-daisy-dixon/
- Published: 2026-09-29T16:04:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-29T16:04:41.000Z
- Description: Daisy Dixon’s Depraved treats games as full participants in the history of dangerous art, not late examples.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: books, philosophy, Grand Theft Auto, censorship, ethics, Game Studies, Art, Literature

In the autumn of 1785, over 37 evenings in a Bastille cell, the Marquis de Sade wrote *The 120 Days of Sodom* in miniature letters on a 40-foot scroll and hid it in a gap in the wall. That scroll—lost in the storming, mourned with “tears of blood,” now a French national treasure—is where [the excerpt Lit Hub ran in August](https://lithub.com/from-marquis-de-sade-to-grand-theft-auto-a-brief-history-of-depravity/?ref=killscreen.com) begins, and *Grand Theft Auto* is where it ends. It comes from *Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art*, the new book by Daisy Dixon, an assistant professor of philosophy at Cardiff University who specializes in immoral and dangerous art—and who keeps a studio practice in painting and sonic sculpture on the side. [Lit Hub's announcement post](https://www.instagram.com/p/Db8s9V1jnFA/?ref=killscreen.com) is what put it on our radar.

![Cover of Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art by Daisy Dixon](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/depraved-cover-hi.jpg)

The US cover, from [Viking](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/812984/depraved-by-daisy-dixon/?ref=killscreen.com).

What makes the book worth your shelf is structural: games sit inside the argument rather than tacked on at the end. The *Grand Theft Auto* series—waterboarding scene and all—gets the same treatment as the Lady Chatterley trial, Mapplethorpe's Senate tormentors, the porn wars, and the Whitehouse crusades: every era is convinced it has finally found the artform that will corrupt us, and every era's enforcers overreach. Dixon's warning cuts both ways: “the very gatekeepers of supposedly depraved art can also be dangerous.” The book is out from [Faber in the UK](https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571383221-depraved/?ref=killscreen.com) and [Viking in the US](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/812984/depraved-by-daisy-dixon/?ref=killscreen.com).

Games have been the century's favorite moral panic, and the panic is older than the medium. One only need look back to 2012 via [Kurt Vonnegut's letter to the book burners](https://www.killscreen.com/kurt-vonneguts-letter-book-burners-slaughterhouse-five-has-much-teach-game-censors/), and how it wrestled with what *Grand Theft Auto V* actually asks of its player in [our reading of its nihilism](https://www.killscreen.com/inglorious-nihilism-grand-theft-auto-v/). A philosopher of art doing that work with games in the room—as material, not as scare quote—is still rare enough to be news.

Every era finds a new artform to panic about; we cover the people making this one worth defending. The free newsletter is one game and one argument a week.

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