VIOLENCE IN TELEVISION

As an advocate for family entertainment, I am amazed at all the violence in television. It makes me sick to my stomach when network executives green light projects illustrating the lowest form of humanity; murder.

Of course, the cop show has been around forever, but the networks aren’t hiding their appetites for destruction with their recent unveiling of two shows in particular:

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER

STALKER

I understand the media ideal of ‘IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS,’ but does that mean we have to fill the stage with murder and call it entertainment? How can anyone in their right mind tune into a show called HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER and then recognize their natural impulse for love and compassion? Why would anyone want to spend an hour of their time with a stalker? I’m not saying we all need to sit around and watch Bambi (which ironically starts out with Mom getting killed), I’m just saying things are getting WAY out of hand.

Have we fallen into such an abyss of carelessness that we view these offerings of murder as entertainment? The question I have is why would we want to arm someone with enough tools so they can get away with murder in the first place? Why would we showcase the ugliness of stalking another human being and then package it up and call it entertainment? What I don’t understand is the viewing public gets sideways and will boycott a program if nudity makes an appearance, but we have no problem with the gratuitous violence of murder? It’s everywhere now.

Dateline and 20/20 used to be investigative reporting, but now they are simply murder reenactment scenarios. Countless television dramas will put guns into the hands of children and we’re okay with it because it’s ‘just a TV show’, but if the nipple were to make an appearance, we’ll flood the FCC with calls of obscenity? Wardrobe ‘malfunctions’ are orchestrated because it creates controversy, but shouldn’t the controversy be reserved for the packaging of murder and labeling it entertainment? To me, that’s obscene. I for one would rather have people run around naked because of some television show than arming the misdirected with a show called HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER or teach the inner workings of being a Stalker. We can do better, can’t we?

Domestic Violence Disguised as Entertainment

We are so used to domestic violence disguised as entertainment, our moral responsibilities are being sold down the river. Maybe Phil Collins had it right when he said, ‘I don’t care anymore…you hear me, I don’t care anymore.”

I left the comforts and steady pay of the cop world drama on LAW & ORDER because the stories of murder began to take it’s toll on my soul. Every day we’d sit around and create more stories of murder. This is how I was using my creativity? The glorification of murder? I decided it was time to tell other stories. Having been involved with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Monica, I finally found my way into the telling stories for children. You could say I am now very protective of ‘my kids’, which are mostly the middle school children across the country, so when a network decides to use domestic violence disguised as entertainment where kids are the center of all the violence, I have to say, enough is enough.

Having grown up watching the original Hawaii Five-O, not to mention a fan of Scott Caan’s, I decided to DVR the new Hawaii Five-O. I know what I am going to get with a show like this, situational domestic violence, guns, murder, and all things network television cop drama. What I didn’t account on getting was a storyline involving situational domestic violence in front of and around a child.

As the author of Saltwater Taffy, a children’s adventure novel that inspires as much as it entertains, I have a big issue with most of the network programming we have today. Like most stories of situational domestic violence…

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VIOLENCE IN TELEVISION

Domestic Violence Disguised as Entertainment