Malazan Empire: Cause - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Taken from the TV thread

Azath Vitr (D, on 02 March 2023 - 03:26 PM, said:

I was reading this in the TV thread and it touched on something I often think avout. TV in the last decade or so, maybe longer, seems to have changed from us loving a group of charming 20/30 somethings struggling with everyday life but who are wholesome and attractive and somehow always living beyond their means to shows where the protagonists might be generously referred to as anti-heroes but are more often than not just criminals. These shows are entertaining but what effect do they have on society?

In the cases above Homelander is not the MC of the show he stars in but he does get serious screen time but his show perhaps does the best job of highlighting that he is not someone to be emulated, even as the show highlights how easy it is for the masses to root for him. However Breaking Bad has you root for Walter White, who becomes a drug kingpin in order to pay for his cancer treatments but that justification quickly goes away. John Dutton from the YouTube highlights I have seen is not a man afraid to break or at least bend the law beyond recognition to defend his land. He honors family highly but should we really see him as a hero or even respectable protagnist. We have shows like peaky blinders, movies like fast and furious that had low level criminals somehow become elite criminals who are actually good because they use their skills for the CIA. Sons of Anarchy is about a 1% biker gang who murder and throw around ethnic and misogynist remarks in every sentence. The show Banshee was about a criminal pretending to be a sheriff who beats up worse criminals.

What effect if any does this have on society long term?

Law and Order teaches me that cops are dedicated and selfless and will fight to protect me. It also excuses the character of Elliot stabler who is simultaneously the whitest knight in the special victims unit, who will stop and nothing to see justice done but also regularly has to be kept away from the rapists' and child molesters when his anger management issues might lead to him killing suspects in the interrogation room. Watching the show I always liked his character, than one day watching a rerun I realized how dodgy his character really was. He often phyiscally assualts suspects to get the information he needs. In the show the suspects are almost always guilty and we as the audience know it but it struck me that it was normalizing a behavior that in the real world would be hugely problematic.

We ape and imitate what we see on TV without even realizing it. The show Friends literally altered the way people speak and studies have shown that people who watch more TV seem to spend more. Watching a 30 something coffee shop waiter / chef / failing tv actor live in oversized apartments with giant TVs, fantastic furniture alters peoples perceptions about how their own lives should look and be. I think the show Will and Grace played a large role in normalizing gay people.

I am not against TV, I dont think watching sex on HBO will cause the fabric of society to collapse but I think it does alter us slowly and sublty in ways that may be hard to see. The same way books can, TV is just currently way more ubiquitious.

I feel guilty posting this but the homeless in America make me uncomfortable. I’m no stranger to the homeless coming from South Africa but at the same time living in a city center in the USA maybe it’s just that they are more near.

The homeless in America feel more dangerous, more mentally Ill, more drug addicted or more unclean in a way that the homeless in South Africa were not.

I feel uncomfortable shopping in stores in the USA with so many items under lock and key. I try to avoid fast food places which seem to have a large clientele of the homeless. I once saw a fight breakout between a homeless man and a server behind the counter when they got into an argument about who smokes better quality weed.

I find hostile architecture like benches in the park purposefully designed to prevent comfortable sleeping to be cruel but within block of my apartment in winter you are almost guaranteed to walk past a homeless person sleeping or past out on a manhole cover in the middle of the sidewalk. I don’t judge him for trying to stay warm but I do think it’s a problem to have a city that thinks the easiest thing to do is just ignore a homeless person sprawled in the middle of a walkway.

I don’t like being accosted by people who stand outside the nearly 24 hour cvs by my apartment every time I walk past. The alcoholics who stand outside the nearby bodega hoping to get enough for a drink.

I feel guilty about my wish they were not there since I don’t know how to fix it and I can’t blame people for trying to survive but at the same time I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to be able to walk 2 blocks without being accosted or having to sidestep a sleeping body.

A friend of mine said something to me recently that took me by surprise. She cried before going to bed, work stress and a general sense of anxiety.
I didn’t expect to hear it.

Also I have cried twice in the last twenty years. When I knew my dad would die and when I was picked up at school at 13 and told my families domestic worker had died. She had worked in my home from at least the day I was born

However this is not me suppressing my emotions because men don’t cry or something like that. The urge to cry doesn’t come for me. Google tells me women cry on average 30-65 times a year and men between 5-17 and this genuinely surprises me. I didn’t cry when my grandfather died because I think it came along gradually enough and sure enough that I processed it over a long time.

So I am just curious, how often do you cry. I didn’t think my behavior was that unusual till now.

Edit: actually I shed a single tear at the conclusion of the chain of dogs when they made it to Arren only to die feet away from safety. I guess I was 16-17