Has anyone noticed that pretty much every single TV show on these days seems to have, as a pre-requisite to the creation of every episode, some dead person in it, who was likely killed in some grusome and nasty fashion?
Bones, NCIS, CSI... Need I go on?
I wonder how much all of this constant exposure to death and gore is effecting us. I remember when I first watched "The Silence of the Lambs" and was grossed out when they used Vick's Vapo-Rub on their noses to hide the smell of the body they were looking at. In a movie, with an R rating, shown in Theaters only, they didn't even really show the body. That was about 20 years ago.
Now, we see on prime time TV every night, bodies being dismembered in the most graphic ways, full-on autopsies with internal organs strewn about - and we watch it all while we're eating dinner.
I must admit I like several of these shows, but it occured to me tonight - WTF is wrong with us? I just watched the new Bones, where a body left in a grease bin and cooked slowly over 2 weeks fell to pieces, skin sloughing, organs falling out... Compared with the modesty of Silence of the Lambs, this was about as graphic a thing you can imagine.
I'm not for censorship at all. I just wonder what happened to nuance and subtlety. I remeber that the looks on the faces of the actors, and the simple action of putting on Vick's vapo-rub under their noses being way more graphic and disturbing than watching a corpse being dimembered on TV tonight. Have we become so unimaginative that we cannot handle nuance anymore? Have we become desensitized?
6 comments:
If you ever stood next to a homicide victim, especially an old or "messy" one, you would understand the need for the Vicks. Another one we used was fresh coffee grinds.
And yes, we have become desensitized. If it doesn't excite, incite, or sensationalize, they won't bother showing it.
But I feel much safer knowing that I won't have to see Speedy Gonzalez, or have guns blow up in Yosemite Sam's faces!
Goob,
I'm wondering, isn't that the POINT of those shows!!? We watch them too, but now expect that level of grossness.
Now if they incorporate a dead, stinking corpse into 21/2 Men or Big Bang Theory, THEN they've gone too far.
Anon,
and Uncle Remus won't rear his racist, nappy head either, so we are safe from all the worlds harms now, right?
Where's Alfred Hitchcock when you need him?
He's the body they are wheeling away in the scene
BTW- Watch SNL tomorrow night
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