"Napoleon Went forth to seek virtue, and when she could not be found he sought power." - Goethe
It never ceases to amaze me that people can be so catty, so very petty. in part, i blame some of this pettiness on reality tv, because in actual reality, i don't remember people being as petty and bitchy as they are now, as if there were a camera crew around ready to capture every pithy, nasty, bitchy comment for posterity and it would somehow make them seem tougher, like one Trumps apprentices. Since the advent of reality tv, people seem to have gotten meaner, as if they were waiting for their close-up Mr. Demille, their moment in the light where they can seem too-clever by half, as if being nasty were a thing for which we strive. I've never been the sort to blame television, film or books or magazines for people's actions - people are responsible for themselves.
The whole "the song/film/book/whatever made me do it" just doesn't wash with me and never has. Long had been those who have tried to connect violent pornography with violent rape, and to some extent they have suceeded in proving that there is a connection of a kind. It is not however, that "pornography made me do it." Reading or looking at a thing you would never normally do would not be enough to drive you over the edge. I would argue that you have to be predisposed in the first place. Yes, they found images of hard core porn in rape cambs in Yugoslavia. Images taped to the walls and reports noted that the women were forced into the very same positions as the porn models and then photographed in such poses. It's a horrible horrible thing to even imagine and to know that there are those who were raped and further humiliated and violated in this way is an unbearable thought. I can't stand it. But i don't blame pornography for it: i think these men were predisposed in the first place, and if they hadn't had the magazines, they would have found other ways of humiliating these women. I don't care if you publish Chain Saw Your Woman Magazine, it's not going to force someone to do that unless they already have some pretty sick notions in their head. I say all this, but i also know that there was, as in Bosnia, a connection and that all of us are influenced by what we see on tv, in film, read in books, magazines etc. That much seems inevitable to me. It's a subtle kind of brainwashing concerning what is socially acceptable what is not. I remember a friend saying years ago that Fox would be the channel to air live, nude executions. I'm sorry to say that we're not far from that now. That that seems pretty close to where we are at, only it's on major networks with shows like Fear Factor - how much closer can we get? I expect snuff films will soon make a major comeback and we'll see bad acting on those too, with little closeups of the directors inner thoughts in the Booth of Privacy that all these shows seem to have.
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