Writing Prompt #2 --TV/Movie reaction
Not exactly following the suggestion - but I am pretty good at "bucking the system" by twisting the rules just a bit. There is an entire blog post on that personal revelation!
I have adapted the prompt to : emotion associated with a movie or TV show
I don't watch much TV. Movies I love if they are funny, character driven and not too violent. I walked out of the horse head scene in Godfather and again in Black Hawk Down. I don't know how they even talked me into that movie. Many a movie or show I've tried gets too careless with death and gore for me. Like No Country for Old Men. Love the cast of actors. But the opening scene in a desolate American West. Two cars. Only two cars and two men. They stop and the guy in the tail car approaches and blows the other one off the map. Bang you are dead. In this wide open space, full of emptiness and possibility two men and boom. Now, granted I did not stick around long enough to see the guy hit the ground so i don't know the when, why or wherefore. I just know that I had had enough in 3-4 minutes.
I cringe at the violence in the 30 second advertising slots for the detective shows especially when there are children involved.
I am not denying there are terrible things that happen to people. Horrific, tragic situations. Still I don't want to see imagined, horrific, tragic situations play out in a 40 minute skit broken into commercial segments selling the viewers medicine for depression. And the next week the main players are all fine and redo to go into another episode. There is no reality of healing time, grief, anger, frustration. No regrouping time. Only scenes from next week.
Several years ago, I regularly watched a show I can't remember the name of. Maybe you all can add the name! (I could do a blog post on instant recall if I could remember to.) Heroes, I found it on the web, of course. The players had super powers. The main character was a cheerleader in high school. The combat between good and evil was more of a mental battleground at first but then the story line got really brutal and gory. I quit watching.
I believe the constant depictions violence hardens us, desensitizes us, creates an underlying sense of mistrust and does little to assist in dealing with these situations on a reality basis. And then what is the reality? Is Hollywood creating the reality of our society by telling us this is how our society is? Oh, maybe I should just watch the news. Oh, dear, never mind that.
And then there are the violent video games. Teaching how to kill with animation that looks like real people. Training for...?
Call me idealistic, a Pollyanna. Tell me I have my head in the sand. Okay. And still I'll stick with watching Antiques Roadshow and the shows about personal talents. Why are there no more Doc Martin episodes? I do watch Madame Secretary which can occasionally get a bit bloody. 60 minutes and Sunday Morning. Oh, and Grace and Frankie! And documentaries.