What is it with television programs nowadays? Sunday my husband was engaged in an early-fall orgy of football watching, and in between plays the networks were heavily promoting their fall TV lineups. What a bunch of violent and icky stuff! I suppose they trot out the edgiest ads for the edgiest shows out of belief that a football audience will like that sort of thing. More than one was tagged with the special notice “Viewer Discretion Advised”. This for shows that took place in such cheerful settings as hospital ERs, coroner’s offices and crime scene investigations. Like, no kidding, watch a show about a forensic anthropologist with the un-ironic title “Bones” and you might see something disturbing.
More than anything it reminded me of the episode from Huckleberry Finn when Huck falls in with the Duke and the Dauphin, a pair of actors and con artists. The Duke creates flyers to draw in crowds for a show. "So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare…He said he could size their style." At the bottom of a handbill full of hyperbole, in large letters he prints LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.
“There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!”
One thing I’ve learned in my 41 years, whenever the news programs introduce a story with an admonition that “some viewers may find this material disturbing,” they mean ME. I use that as my cue to check out. Never once did I listen to or watch something after a warning like that and not regret it.
But how did we get to the point where I have to worry about exposure to violence not just in the news, but in prime-time television shows that are ostensibly entertainment? Why are people so fascinated by programs about dead bodies and surgery? The only way to successfully watch something like that is to keep telling yourself it’s fake. But I worry that when we do that, we’re hardening our whole culture, driving any sensitivity to pain and suffering right out of ourselves. I’d rather preserve my thin skin by avoiding such high exposure to violence when I can. So it looks like I’ll have plenty of opportunities to exercise my own discretion this fall, by keeping the television off.
