Cindy Chaffin is not the only person miffed about VH1's Music Behind Bars, an immensely tasteless concept that ignores the feelings of crime victims and their families, adding insult to injury:
- Families of Pennsylvania crime victims are in an uproar over a new VH1 documentary series that spotlights prison music bands--outfits made up of murderers, rapists and other unsavory inmates who are serving out their sentences in various lockups.
Called Music Behind Bars, the program is hosted by The Practice's Dylan McDermott and produced by Arnold Shapiro--the man behind CBS' Big Brother and Rescue 911 and a Oscar winner for his 1979 prison doc Scared Straight. Shapiro bills the series as an unglamorous look at life in the clink and the power of music as a means of rehabilitation.
However, families of the victims say the program is an affront to the memory of those whose lives were forever altered, and in some cases ended, by the criminal musicians. The families also say the show demonstrates an extreme lack of sensitivity and taste on VH1's part.
"I couldn't believe it...it was like slapping me in the face," an angry Mary Orlando told the Philadelphia Inquirer after seeing the cable channel's advertisements promoting the show.
The first episode of Music Behind Bars is set at Pennsylvania's Graterford State Corrections Facility and focuses on a heavy metal band called Dark Mischief, one of whose members, Christopher Bissey, gunned down Orlando's 15-year-old daughter and a friend at Lehigh University in 1995.
For Orlando, watching Bissey prancing around with other band members on prime-time was sickening--especially given her daughter loved music and dreamed of one day becoming a dancer.
....After protests by victims' families, Pennsylvania's House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution calling on VH1 to donate profits from Music Behind Bars to the state's Office of the Victim Advocate.
Article comments
1 - Jacob Lalonde
Sadly, I don't think we have been that far from televised bloodsport for almost a decade. Look at Ultimate Fighting Championships where one of the only two contest rules is "no eye gouging" as if otherwise someone might think it fair game. I think there is room for a documentary on music and inmates but the brash VH1 clearly doesn't have the sensibilities for such a sublte topic.