While I was researching Timothy Treadwell for a comment, something very interesting occurred to me yesterday. I began to research in the usual for our generation, I pulled up google and began typing T-i-m-o-t-h-y- -T and the second i typed the T for Treadwell, a google suggestion popped up. It predicted that I was going to search "Timothy Treadwell death audio." I could't believe it. Google suggestions is based on other searches from other computers, so that means that so many people had searched for an opportunity to listen to Treadwell's suffering as he was being torn apart that google assumed I must be searching for it too. This seemed demented and abnormal to me, but I started thinking about modern interests and entertainment and of course, television was the first to come to mind. I searched for a list of the most popular television shows. I discovered that among television's most viewed programs are Bones, True Blood, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Dexter, and Law and Order: Special Victims. These are all shows about death, murder and over all pain and suffering. Video games also came to mind. Some of the most popular video games are Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War. These are all games about war, murder, crime and death. I wondered, why is that what Americans find most entertaining? Too further my research, I googled the worst and infamous name that I could think of, Jeffrey Dahmer, who was arguably the most troubling serial killers of American History. First and foremost, I only had to type J-e for google to predict that I was going to research Jeffrey Dahmer Murders. I clicked on the first link that came up to try to understand what so many people were researching. First was an at depth description of who dahmer was, what he did and what happened to him. It seemed normal until I continued scrolling down to the next section. The site showed pictures of what the police found at Dahmer's apartment! (I knew so many people were researching this because I found links that had been viewed almost a million times.) I wondered why would someone ever post these horrors and who would seek them out? However I found that millions of people were searching for them. This small amount of rough research has really made me question American mainstream interest and entertainment. Why is it that we millions of people search for chances to view pain, violence, murder and suffering? Please Comment with your opinions.
Good job on attacking a dark corner in America's psyche. I don't think there's a good answer as to why we're so seemingly obsessed with violence. An answer could be that we're so numbed by the plethora of torture-based movies and video games that we have to go to actual stories rooted in human suffering to get our blood-and-guts fix. I think a simplified answer is that it's human nature to be interested in things of this subject matter. It's baffling to think that another being of my species is capable of committing Dahmer-esque actions. Reading about it is, I'll admit, very entertaining (in a very sick way). When you add this weirdly natural taboo-thought to America's love for the extreme, the love for in-your-face, shocking movies and a movie director's love for blockbuster $$$, you'll get something that looks like the Saw franchise.
ReplyDeleteAidan, Good topic to explore (and a potential JT topic). In order to plumb the depths of this issue fully, it might be nice to anchor your ideas to a text: the list of top 10 most watched TV shows, an opinion piece on violence, gun control, the Michael Moore movie Fahrenheit 911, e.g. It'd also be nice to hear your hypotheses as to why violence appeals, why Americans are the leading purveyors of violent media, why as the saying goes, "If it bleeds, it leads."
ReplyDelete