Evil on TV

I wonder that too... but then again our brains are different..

What do you mean "evil"?

The more strict and puritanical a society the more wild its underbelly. Such as, alcohol consumption in America. We have a huge alcohol problem here, and yet one of the highest drinking ages in the world.... If you read smut stories from the Victorian era, they are fouler and more perverse than most modern pornography. Dracula, anyone (no really, read it with this in mind and you will instantly see what I mean).

As we have a neo-con swing in our society, you will see the "things that hide in the shadows" grow to monstrous proportions. When it swings the other way, it gets much more out in the open but also milder as it is mainstreamed. My point is, the tighter restrictions you try to place on people's personal lives the more the people who were doing what many people see as "evil" rebel.

I would think it would be due to the fact that 'society' doesn't really want to admit that there is very little that it can do about Evil.
Or at least 'society' won't accept the only way to tackle Evil is to have Phsychological assesment of all children while they are in the schooling system.

But that will never happen as the people who have been affected by the actions of Evil people are in the minority and unless the majority of people are affected by evil then nothing will ever change.
After all how many parents would allow their kids to be phsychologically assesed?
I doubt very many would....for fear of some slight or slander on their parenting skills.

I believe 'society' owes it to all its citizens to protect them from evil.

I know if i had kids i would not want to spawn an evil little ***..who may grow up to abuse their own kids or somebody elses.

You only have to look at the news and see that Evil is showing its head in ever younger people.
Look at the killers of little Jamie Bulger R.I.P aged three yrs.

They abducted him killed him and put his body on a railtrack to try to hide what they had done.and I'm notsure but i think those kids were only 10 and 11 years old......(correct me if i'm wrong)
http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics3/bulger/


And the benefits of having an assessment like that would also identify children at risk of abuse from their parents or who may actually be going through abuse...

I have no concept of evil for I do not believe it exists. The idea that evil exists and is caused by an outside force over which we have no power is why so much bad stuff happens. Humans, collectively, are solely responsible for what we do or do not do.

That does not mean I don't know right from wrong. I still need some sort of example of what exactly it is that you are talking about when you say evil on tv. Mostly what is in my head is Law and Order SVU, but the "evil" people are the bad guys and they always get caught (why I love that show!).

Psychological assessment of every child in school is probably the scariest idea I've heard since I heard Bush's press conference yesterday, but they already do that and it hasn't helped a darn thing. For one thing, a lot of the most dangerous kids are very quiet and well-behaved and know how to sweet-talk adults, while the kids who are "trouble-makers" have mild problems like needing attention or being insecure. If you notice, it's always the scariest crimes that are committed by someone who all the neighbors describe as "I couldn't imagine him doing anything like that, he always kept to himself, seemed like a nice guy, etc etc etc" and suddenly you find out he has a dungeon for children in his basement or whatever.

Well i haven't heard Bush's press conference so i can't comment on that

But i don't think the idea of phsychological assesment is scary at all after all the system tests children on their intelligence and have health checks,so why not check out their mental stability.

I know in our schools a child only gets to see a phsychiatrist if they are having problems at school and it is not an assesment it is an interview where the phsychiatrist is constantly looking at his watch.

I do agree with you that some of the scariest crimes are committed by people who have always 'seemed like a nice person' and there are a heck of a lot more of them out there that NEVER get caught because the thousands of people out there who do survive abuse are too mentally damaged to even talk about or even tell anybody of the abuses they have been subjected to.

But these 'seemingly nice' people are being described by family, friends and neighbours who are in no way professionally qualified to asses the mental stability or phsychological problems of anybody.
Which is why these 'seemingly nice' people are not getting the professional help when they need it.....before they commit the crime....

I guess when I was thinking about a psych assessment I had something like the Tom Cruise movie where they catch criminals before they commit a crime in mind. And also that they would be in your permanent record, where they'd be sent off to colleges like your test scores and disciplinary files.
That's just disturbing to me, since there would be stuff in mine that has no relation to who I am today. Nothing criminal, of course, just things that wouldn't give you the right idea about me at all!

I guess that's the worst-case scenario though. I guess if the purpose was to diagnose and treat before anything went very wrong, and the records were kept like medical records-- confidential and not viewable by anyone but the mental health people, not even teachers-- it could work okay. It just seems like it might result in overmedication and stigma. Also, therapy for someone who doesn't seek it out themselves can do more harm than good.

What evil are you talking about? I must admit I'm confused.

I am confused as well.

Perhaps she was referencing the violence and gore that is depicted in alot of the television shows they show now in the evenings...take CSI or Law and Order SVU and CI.....which I should add are some of the programs I tend to watch but the violence and gore they depict is heavy stuff.

Also the sexual content on TV in general has gone up, not just cable networks but some regular TV shows....again though, we watch a show called Rescue Me on FX on Tuesday nights at 11pm. It depicts some pretty intense sexual scenes (as in like R rated not not rated--no parts are shown just the action of it) and violence and the like.

I am thinking though I cannot begin to ascertain what she could possibly be refering to as I'm not her.

But that may well be what she means.

It attracts us as human beings, the violence ect ect....

As for there being no evil in existance, I'm in a way to disagree with that. I do believe evil exists and I believe that good exists. I believe in heaven and I believe in the other not so nice place.

I believe in God and the Devil.

So evil on television, not so much. Sex, Violence and gore yeah it might be getting a bit overboard. But I'm privy to watching it myself so I can't say much.

I never understood why the overwhelming majority of crime shows involve murder. Why can't there be mysterys of all sorts? Its not just TV either. How many times have we sat down with a good murder mystery novel? Isn't that rediculous - curling up with a comforting good old murder mystery? Are we so desensitized to crime/violence/evil that watching or reading about the less isn't even interesting? I'm included. I watch crime shows all the time.

...not sure if I hijacked this thread or not.

I don't define that as evil either. There are far worse things on this planet than someone kissing/kicking someone on television.

Sex being seen as evil both amuses and disturbs me. We all got here somehow, and it was not by sliding down an oiled-up rainbow into our parents' windows while they were sleeping because a faerie heard them say "I love you".

A lot of the violence is heavily edited on television as well, and where it isn't, there are parental adviseries or very similar warnings.

I think that the reluctance to talk about violence is due to the fact that most of the violence on television (barring violence shown on the news) is fantasy.

The same violence seen in movies shoved into the light of reality makes it disturbing because it really happened.

A bunch of heavily made up people get slaughtered in a movie? It didn't really happen. You step out of the theatre/your livingroom, and know that your local teenagers are for the most part okay.

They get slaughtered in reality? That weirdo's still out there. Your friend may have teenagers. You may have family in that area. The killer isn't necessarily sedentary, and what if they move to an area near you and set their target age a little higher? What if it's a group of people as opposed to one?

The fantasy of the movie leaves you thinking that itcouldn't happen anywhere. It was fake, and you feel secure afterwards. A false fear with no actual danger involved (barring ear damage, depending on how loud you chose to set your system's volume).

Something happening in reality leaves you with the fact that whatever it is COULD happen anywhere, to anyone, and people find it very disturbing.

Oh no I don't classify it as evil, or else I wouldn't watch it.....and I agree that I wish crime dramas would involve more mystery (which actually CSI and CI seem to wander more towards mystery than the other crime dramas do.).

But I was inferring that maybe that is what she meant???


To me evil is just as pure in the evil black sense as good is pure in the white sense, when we are talking about those lines.

I don't know about TV being evil, I think that if anything it's just gotten more violent and gotten more sexual content. Which to me isn't evil.

I don't even know if that makes sense the way I'm trying to explain it......

I believe it is because we tend to see murder as the biggest crime. I do not believe it has changed much, save for the crimes being gorier today as they were in the past. I used to have a mystery "guess the culprit" book from the 1950s and it involved murders (and photos, fake of course). They were usually very clean ones (bludgeoning, but with items blocking the wound), poisonings, etc.

Part of it probably has to do with the fact that people gowing up reading "The Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew" want programming which does not stay right in line with "who robbed the doughnut shop" or "which twin broke Mr. Jenkins' window?". Also, in a lot of crimes where someone was present, violence usually occurs.

I may or may not be desensitized, but I'd find it pretty boring if a crime show was a robbery while no one was home and the neighbor called the police and caught the perp with a handful of swag ten blocks away.

It does. lol

I'm still not sure what she means.

Was there something "evil" about his conference?

You're right - it isn't anything new. I must be in the minority, but I would love to see some mysteries that didn't involve killing and gore. Without that shock value, the writers would need to use their imagination.

I have seen some like that recently (though I can't remember the name of the show. this was a month or so back and I don't watch much TV), and I agree that a one-tracked story rewarmed with different characters gets boring fast.