Friday night. Sitting down to watch a movie, I flicked about as I usually do (I used to try and watch three at once, but with ad-break convergence I don't really bother any more). I happened on a deep and meaningful murder mystery.
The scene I flicked to was where a weeping woman talked of how to tell her son that someone was dead. And that's where it hit me.
Why on earth would this be entertainment? Through the medium of movies, we are dragged through emotional scenes, given glimpses of heartbreak and grief, shown family members in deep despair. The woman acting the part did very well. But is it entertainment? Should such a devastating event as the death of a loved one be reduced to a two-dimensional caricature?
Do we become desensitised to the reality of grief by watching it in neat, 3 minute TV scenes?
How is it entertaining?
I stopped watching a lot of the crime shows a while back for the very reason that it seemed to make me callous to the human realities behind the whodunit. The real human relationships and loss were secondary to the shallow discussion of which family member/close friend/ former lover had been the guilty one. They also seemed to go for ever more sensational deaths and situations, which just served to harden you all the more.
All entertainment to a certain extent makes you an observer of life rather than a participant in it.
Sometimes, however, it feels more like manipulation than observation.
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