What the heck is UP with network TV's depictions of death?!?!?

It's not enough these days to simply have an actor lying still. Nooooo, they've got to be lying there, eyes wide open in absolute terror, in a maelstrom of gore, with "Die, b*tch!!!" written in blood on the wall... perhaps with a murder weapon sticking out of them and an organ or two exposed. ...And if we're talking a CSI show, the corpses might be in such horrid shape that an actor simply won't do. Might have to go with a dismembered, decomposing, char-broiled latex prop... complete with maggots and mushrooms!!!

...Am I the only one who has problems with this?!?
[Edited 10/2/06 22:27pm]

Oddly enough, my mother and I were just discussing that recently.

"Pushing boundaries"---"Ground breaking" When does it go too far?

Lucy and Desi had to "sleep" in twin beds.

Jeanie's costume couldn't show her navel.

Two people could die from one shot and not bleed.


Is enough ever enough?

Lammastide said:

I do not watch shows with violence. "Lost" is as violent as I get.

Lammastide said:

Violence can be ugly, dirty, gory and unsettling, and it should be portrayed as such. No sense in sugar coating such things, ESPECIALLY in CSI. I don't like the show, I think it's all flash without any real substance, but for a show involving forensic detectives, clearly the abrasions, markings, cuts, and in general all things related to the crime scene must be examined for them to solve the case.

Lammastide said:

I have a major problem with murder as entertainment, which kind of rules out approx 75% of all TV

Yes; I agree with Charlotte.

I can barely watch most of the news these days - it just wasn't so graphically shown when I was younger - and I only skim the headlines on the internet news.

I know I am squeamish, but I also know that whatever you put into your mind comes out in some way eventually.

savoirfaire said:

Yeah, but geez! I can see if we were talking a real-life forensic science show on, say, the Discovery Channel or Court TV. But we're talking an entertainment show on prime-time network TV. Can't they cut any corners? I mean, Perry Mason did.

I flip flop here...

When someone gets shot, having the actor grab his torso like he has nothing more than a stomach cramp is probably diminishing the reality of the violence, and chances making it seem like shooting someone is no big deal...

At the same time, showing someone twitching with each bullet that flies into their chest and then seeing the blood-splattered walls behind the victim should not be necessary to convey the unpleasant reality of the act...

i loved the way french and saunders spoofed one of the last
series of "Silent Witness" by having a body on the table at
the autopsy which had been run over by a tractor, lol.

just a huge body with a giant tractor-tire indentation all
across it.

and then they stood poking in it, trying to figure out what
the cause of death might have been.

Television and Visual Media has lost any moralistic value.

What sells is all that matters.

Even the 9pm Watershed we have in the UK seems to be fading

Cable / Sky are the biggest culprits for that.

The thing is, people are fascinated by being made to want to vomit at Grossness.....

I find it interesting that this trend just keeps moving forward. Yet one damn nipple flashes the screen for 2 seconds and the US riots.



f*cked up thinking I tell you.

there should be more deaths and murders on sitcoms. not to go into a lot of detail, but let's just say the series finale of "friends" would have been a lot different had i written it.
[Edited 10/3/06 6:29am]

Anx said:

Anx said:

don't mess with my friends, mister!


(even if they last season and finale was rather lame)

endorphin74 said:

ooh, i knew that was coming

ok, how about "everybody killed raymond"?

Anx said:

Had I written it, they all would have died in the pilot.

Lammastide said:

Lammastide said:

I was wondering how long it would take you to discover CITY-TV.

Someone pointed out how it's reall hard to escape the victimization of women on TV, movies, books.

It's true. These shows don't promote it, but they glamorize it by virtue of showing it constantly being done to beautiful actresses. And they'd have you believe that nothing ever happens in the world but people being killed.

IstenSzek said:

endorphin74 said:

absolutely.

Anx said:

much better, you can kill off all those fucks

The North American entertainment industry is deeply and profoundly fucked up. Blood, guts, gore and general violent mayhem get the go-ahead in most forms of entertainment without a blink. Movies, TV dramas, cartoons, the news, you name it. But a not-even really naked tit? God forbid, that might warp the children.

Even things directed at a younger crowd have the same problems. Take the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I love them, but let's be honest -rotting, animate corpses, cannibalism, sword fights, whippings, beatings, prison, skeletons, and more are key plot points in the movies -movies which have been deemed appropriate for a 12 year old. But if Elizabeth were to reveal a bit more than cute cleavage, or Jack's, er, "flamboyancy" were to mean something a bit more than sporting eyeliner, like a taste for the young Will Turner, then they'd have gotten an adults-only designation. What crap.

Ace said:

Dumb question: Is that you or Stanley Tucci in your avie?

Lammastide said:

It's the Toochmeister!

NDRU said:

EXACTLY! Even more than the insanely horrid depictions of death, it's the frequency and fashion that get me. If a Martian learned about our culture from TV, he'd think psychopathic, blood-soaked murders were as routine as eating or yawning.

Ace said:

Tucci rules. (Although that whole Edie Falco affair had me angry at him for awhile. )