(no subject)

[shadowkat]

If you want to know why I loved Brian Lynch's writing and Urru's art on Spike Shadow Puppets and Asylum, and why I'm looking forward to Angel: After the Fall, go read elsie marvelous review which can be found here: http://elisi.livejournal.com/297149.html?style=mine#cutid1

Am avoiding the Heroes debates, mostly because I think people are ignoring the fact that what we see on tv reflects what is going on in our world. Like it or not, we live in a misogynistic, chauvinistic, racist society. Heck, name one show on TV that doesn't reflect that in some way. I can't think of one. Better yet, name one advertisement.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep. I see the flaws - did last year and even posted on them. This year is actually a lot better - we have Monica and Maya who are not cheerleaders or strippers. And neither Nikki nor Claire are playing those parts now. Plus there's a nifty line in this week's episode stating that cheerleaders are people with power and strength, which I found amusing yet also true. In high school they were the power group. Wonder if that was a reaction to the woman's comments?

I think art is a subjective experience. And if it is good art? It's bound to offend you on some level. That said, I have troubles seeing the worthiness of shows like the Bachelor (which makes cringe since I find it demeaning to both sexes) and Big Shots (equally demeaning to both sexes). On the other hand I guess there's something to be said for being offensive to both genders as opposed to just one.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I just had a friend point out the amount of violence toward women depicted in 'Supernatural'
http://sisabet.livejournal.com/365275.html
they have the download to links of a video that showed how disturbing the images are, and how ubiquitous they are....
I'm not criticizing 'Supernatural', but it did seem to tie into the discussion here.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this today, (not directed towards you but more towards people like your friend and others online)...and it occurred if the people who spent so much energy tabulating the violent acts against women in television, books, art or film - expended some of that energy in volunteering at a rape crisis center, writing letters to congress about rendition clauses/unfair immigration/human rights infractions, or got involved in the fight against breast cancer - how great would our world be? Instead they waste time whining about things that offend them on tv shows, with a view to do what exactly? Censor them? Chide others for enjoying them? What does this accomplish? How does making people aware of the number of violent acts against women in a tv series help anything?

Supernatural is a very violent tv series. Men, women, kids are killed on it. It's horror. But so was Angel, Buffy (god, have you counted the number of violent acts on that one?), Firefly (apparently if the series continued, we would have seen an arc about Innara being raped), BSG (at least three rapes on that one), Xenia, Hercules, Smallville, Lost, Heroes, Moonlight, Blood Ties, Dresden, Forever Knight, Criminal Minds, Numbers, CSI, the nightly news, daytime soap operas, Life, the list goes on.

I think the violence in these shows is a realistic depiction and reflection of the violence in our world. Granted most of us are lucky not to see it or deal with it. Thank god. But it does exist. And the desire to hurt others exists inside each of us. TV, Films, Books, and art are in a way a means of dealing with that urge without actually hurting anyone. A cathartic release of that violent energy inside each of us. I admit that I get cathartic thrill when Buffy kicks that demon into submission or slays the vampire.

People argue that the violence depicted on films, tv, and books inspires people to do it. I disagree. I think the violence was there prior, I think what is depicted is a reflection of what we are feeling and we play it out in a safe way - to see what would happen if we did so and to be very glad we didn't actually do that.

It's funny - I read an article in a mag recently about the strew of violent films that have come out. Each more violent than the next. Eastern Promises (one of the most violent films of recent years) 3:10 to Yuma, the Assaination of Jesse James, The Kingdom, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, etc. They said that this was a reflection of what was going on in our country - the anger, the frustration, the sense of powerlessness. The feeling of being victims. Watching people going to war and dying. Unforeseen terrorist attacks. A government we don't trust and fear. The violence erupting onscreen is a symptom of that.

Art that offends is sometimes, in my view, the most interesting. Because as deevlish put it so well above - the point of art is to get a reaction.
Granted there are extremes - I have no interest, for example, on seeing any of the "torture" porn films - that is more than I can tolerate. But the makers of those films did make a good point - we are only showing you what is going on, what you fear - the extreme version of it sure, but it is there all the same.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree with you: that if people are concerned about violence against women then they should do something pro-active about it, and not just complain about some of the instances of it on TV (because invariably they pick on some shows but not others).

There are shows that I find too violent/negative to watch, but interestingly they are NOT the horror/Sci-fi action shows. I cannot tolerate 'Law & Order: SVU' because they spend 45 minutes of each show depicting in graphic detail violence against women and children, and then they spend 10 minutes at the end arresting the bad guy (it seems to me that that arouses more prurient interest than seeing a vampire beheaded).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

I wish people would be more pro-active than re-active about this. Not that I'm much better - I keep hunting ways to help and admit it is not easy. Several years back when I lived in KC (it was oddly easier to do this in KC than NYC) - I volunteered for battered women's shelter and for a group that aided women in obtaining "orders of protection" against their abusers. Haven't been able to do much in NYC unfortunately, outside of send letters via the internet and ACLU to congress on assorted human rights issues - which is at least something.

Really agree with you on the procedurals - which I find far more violent and far more disturbing than the supernatural/horror/sci-fi tv shows. CSI - spends a lot of time depicting in graphic detail how a woman has been raped and murdered or kept hostage. As does the Law & Orders. Criminal Minds is amongst the worst in this arena - it's basically about serial killers and spends a lot of time showing us what the serial killer does - again in graphic detail (that was one of the reasons Mandy Pantikan left the series - he found it exploitive with little to no value.). Without A Trace - the victim will sometimes survive and we don't always see everything that happens. The Closer - we seldom see what happens to the victim - the concentration is on the detectives solving it.
Cold Case - does go through what happened to the person and again in graphic detail.

I used to whine about Supernatural - until I actually sat down and gave it a chance. I realized once I did what they were doing and that the show wasn't as misogynistic or violent as a lot of other shows I'd watched. I can't for example watch 24 any more. The torture scenes began to get to me. Nor can I watch most of the procedurals without cringing. The violence feels more real in those shows, more exploitive and more graphic for some reason than it does in the fantasy shows. Not sure why.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I never could watch '24'.
I always preferred old fashioned detective novels, where they open w/a murder (so that was out of the way right off the bat) and you spent your time just thinking about clues with the detective, who was not a coroner and wasn't looking at the corpse for his clues.... Preferably ones like Lord Peter Wimsey who were charming and funny and kept his hands clean.

Now days they try to get us to feel like we are really there at the autopsy, which isn't really any place where I'm dying to be (except on 'Heroes' because the Cheerleader's autopsy was really very funny). I think I just prefer the fantasy, I like my fiction to be fictional.... I can't stand 'true crime', or anything that is trying to be terribly realistic.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I watched 24 intermittently. The only season I think I stuck with all the way through was the third one - with Tony and his wife, and Paul Blackthorn as the villian.

When the procedurals started - I sort of liked them - with Prime Suspect, Murder One, Law and Order, Homicide: Life on the Streets, the Profiler, and in book form - Patricia Cornwall's Kay Scarpetta series. The problem was like any hot new trend - the networks went overboard and soon all I saw were procedurals. And...here's the thing the hyper-real wasn't that real to me after a while - CSI is eye-rollingly wrong at times. Forensic pathologists do not, I repeat, do not interview, interrogate, or arrest suspects. That's what cops and homicide detectives do. The pathologists just assist them. Bones - is laughingly off at times - because there is no way in hell that a pathologist would be allowed to go interview a suspect. She stays in the lab. She might get to do some leg-work but nothing like what that show depicts.

Prime Suspect, Murder One, Hill Street Blues, Homicide Life on the Streets and Law & Order were actually fairly realistic and did stretch the boundaries of belief. You could not in those shows convict someone based on a fingerprint impression from a wall or a hair fiber. CSI makes me laugh - whenever they do fingerprinting - I know for a fact that you can't get a fingerprint off most of the surfaces they manage to.

At least with fantasy or science fiction - the suspension of disbelief is more or less up front, you know what the lies are and just want them to be consistent in their universe. In procedurals - the universe is ours and if you know anything about criminal procedures or forensic pathology, you'll find what appears on screen to be funny. Criminal Minds - sigh, it makes the Profiler look like Shakespeare and I wasn't that in to the Profiler.

I do miss the old style mysteries - Moonlighting, Remington Steele, Scarecrow and Mrs King, Murder She Wrote - even though I admittedly got bored of them after awhile too. The problem is the networks discover a tv format that works then go crazy copying it - the publishing industry does the same thing with books - to the point that it loses it's uniqueness and allure and finally goes out of fashion once the next trend takes off.

Also agree on "true crime" - I liked it for a while, when I was much younger, but the older I get the less I tend to like the true crime stories - they feel less interesting and more exploitive and make me cringe. Again it might be another symptom of market saturation or overdose - the true crime trend started in the 70's with Helter Skelter and Patty Hearst and went into hyperdrive in the 90's with the OJ Simpson fiasco and all its off-shoots. It's not doing as well now. People have finally begun to lose interest or maybe with the War in Iraq and the constant reports of terrorism - people just want to escape from all of that when they watch movies or books or tv shows.