Romanticizing Crime

Somebody made a point recently. Dexter. Weeds. Hannibal. Bates Motel. Breaking Bad. The Sopranos. CSI. Snapped. Game of Thrones. Bones. Vegas. Sherlock. Sons of Anarchy... 

There are a lot of TV shows either making CRIME relateable and borederline justifiable by glorifying the person doing the crimes OR they are making the "catch the criminal" mentality so "by the book" and common place that the crime itself become desensitizing.

And this weird thing happens when a bunch of people watch and like the same show together. They start making jokes about he show, discussing their favorite episodes... They become FANS.

So what then ends up happening is like what has already occurred with ME. I'll put myself on the chopping block as a guinea pig example of this. 

My friend Alex and I liked watching Hannibal together Seasons 1 and 2 when it was on. Right THERE that's already a weird thing to say. You liked a show about Jeffrey Dahmer's life and the way he killed people and why. Which ISN'T what I "like" about the show itself, but what it ends up sounding like. 

What we usually end up discussing is the behind-the-scenes of WHY Hannibal does what he does and WHY his "friend" Will stays and what Will is planning. 

But then there are people on the internet much like with the show Sherlock -who then proceed to make jokes, make light of, make merriment with... MESSED UP THINGS. The4se shows are Dark and Heavy. But they SEEM like they're made up. Like saying, "Well Hannibal doesn't really exist..." Or "THAT crime has never occurred that way..." But it's a LIE. 

And I ended up making a blog post a while back because of this because I found some funny jokes about the show Hannibal and thought they were amusing. But at some point you have to realize what's going on behind the scenes of our culture. 

1. Crime is becoming "comfortable" 
2. Crime is being "belittled" or made to seem "not that dark" 
3. TV is distancing us from the Reality of Crime 

In Bates Motel within the first 2 episodes Norman's mom was raped on her kitchen table. Then that character played it off like it wasn't that bad -because in the story she had been raped in the past (which was revealed many LATER). We then proceed through the show and "pinpoint" the moment in our mind like, "Ok that occurred so that's one of the things that leads to foreshadowing to why Norman snaps." It becomes A Fairytale.

Dark Acts like those shown in Game of Thrones have become our modern Grimm Tales. And yet they are STILL our Reality. Things like that HAVE happened and ARE happening. Maybe we should be more mindful of that and maybe treat these things with the gravity and weight they deserve. Violence, Pain, and Suffering are NOT for our amusement.