Last night I watched the first episode of Arrow. I had been anticipating this rather keenly, in fact, I had even seen the first 2 episodes on a plane a few weeks ago and I actually wanted to see it again. I don't do this new-fangled internet thing, I don't have cable, I just watch free-to-air from time to time. I can barely work the TV remote, since I never get to hold the thing, being female and all.
Anyway, I do love a bit of the comic-book hero rehash, and DC's JLA (Justice League of America) was a personal favorite back in the day, PLUS, I admit I like a bit of eye candy and a good fight, so Arrow it was. This is the Green Arrow like nobody ever would have thought of in the JLA of the 1960's. As with many of these re-imaginings, the hero is a dark vigilante with a Secret yada yada, but mmm-mmm does he look good. And the parkour (free running or what have you) is amazing. And the fights are great. And he gets the baddies etc. So that was good.
Then I made the mistake of continuing to watch the next program, The Following. Now, this has been acclaimed as a great drama with great performance from the main character, played by Kevin Bacon, who is a damaged ex-FBI agent who hunted down and brought to justice a nefarious serial murderer who keeps escaping and killing more people. The hook on this one is that the baddie (sorry, I missed his name) is a sort of cross between Hannibal Lecter (genius, charismatic, evil killer) and Charles Manson (the same, but minus the genius, plus he actually does exist) and has A Following of people whom he has in thrall and who will do anything for him, literally kill and die for him. He was some sort of professor and he managed to turn many students to the Dark Side.
So Kevin Bacon is the one who knows most about him and thus has been brought back from his alcoholic depressed retirement to get him. Look, there's all sorts of plot happening, and it's really well acted and very tight and chilling; but it is appalling.
The act of killing is so eroticized it is sickening. This is more than the stylised violence that we have become used to, guns and biffo and roundhouse kicks and what-have-you. In this one episode I saw, not even from beginning to end, we saw the Master whatever his name is, teach a student how to kill a bound and gagged terrified woman, with a knife, almost as a caress, with ecstatic eye-closing etc; a shocking fight between a captured cop and one of the followers, egged on by other followers, involving metal pipes and knives with the cop being stabbed and rescued in the nick of time by Kevin Bacon who comes in guns blazing (well, at least nobody was gettin' it on, apart from the bloodlust, that is); a scene where one of the followers offers his life to the Master as a gift and as punishment for himself because he didn't succeed in his duty, and the Master taking him up on the offer and stabbing him in the most erotic, even homo-erotic, way, all embraces and sighing and gasps and murmurs, while standing on a plastic sheet which had been thoughtfully placed on the carpet by another disciple to avoid bloodstains; one of the male followers beating up on and almost strangling one of the female followers, as some sort of foreplay to violent consensual sex; and there was more, but these were the standouts. Knives and knives and knives; the parallels with sexual penetration were not lost on me. Duh.
We've had vampires all sexed up and neatly packaged for teen consumption; and we've had Hannibal 'the cannibal' Lecter, all Mr Exquisite Sensibility, tucking into a victim's liver, while listening to Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations; and we've had sado-masochism gone mumsy mainstream in good old Fifty Shades; and every time I put on the TV there's more crime and police procedurals and Criminal Minds etc etc ad nauseam. But this is on free-to-air TV, 9.30 on a weeknight. And never have I seen such a juxtaposition of sex and violence and cold-blooded murder, such a blurring of Eros-Thanatos, life wish-death wish stuff, it would have Papa Freud spinning in his grave so fast he would drill his way to China.
What the hell is the matter with us? Why do we want to watch this? Why are these programs being made? Do we really want more and more graphic and disturbing violence? We sure have come a long way from Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express. People getting sliced and diced, so easily abducted and murdered, and hohoho hahaha creepy Dexter only kills the bad guys, except sometimes he accidentally kills innocent people, whoops! That's entertainment, folks, 2013 style.
I am definitely sticking to comic-book heroes. Definitely the buff dude doing the ascending muscle-ups and the parkour chases to get the baddies has it all over this sick stuff. Is it just me?
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