h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

my and Gruesome #1 like to watch this.
I don't understand it at all. It is invariably about serial murderers with the most depraved and gruesome murder methods. Quite often we'll see at least one victim literally begging for their life.

It completely distresses me - I keep thinking "what if that was a gruesome?" but watches it every night while I'm trying to do OU stuff. But I can always hear/see the TV.

So - why do people watch this stuff?

I have the same question for what passes for "horror" these days, torture porn. The Saw and Hostel films and others like them. I once enjoyed a good slasher flick, like the Halloween films and Friday the 13th. But this new era... I'll pass.

I don't watch many TV crime dramas, but I don't doubt some of that visceral inhumanity is bleeding over into TV as well.


Maybe it's just the expected "inflation". The things that got audiences excited before just doesn't cut it anymore.

oh gosh yes - films reached a new low with the Human Centipede...

Criminal Minds doesn't generally show the violence on screen but it is strongly suggested.

but that's the point - it's not the violence, per se, it's knowing what those people are doing.

And it's not lost on me that it seems to be 90% of the time it's violence against women.

It just makes my blood run cold.

Actually, that's something we regularly discuss at home: what became of the good old over-exeggerated, totally implausible and unrealistic TV violence of the past? It's all far too realistic these days.

when they used to kidnap women by putting cholorform on a handkerchief!

Oh yes.

And on the other hand there are also the good old movies with hundreds of bullets fired which never hit anyone.

And then, of course, there was Bud Spencer.

I watched Criminal Minds once (on German TV). Well, maybe one and a half times. The script was so bad, I felt like putting my hands over my ears and screaming. The half time I watched it was before I realised it was That Programme I Watched Once With The Terrible Script.

Of course, it may just be that the German translation was badly done. But the content must have been the same or it wouldn't fit the pictures. I suspect that with absolutely EVERYTHING being dubbed in Germany, the translating and dubbing industry is very overworked and the quality often suffers.

The makers of big blockbusters will invest a lot in good dubbing, but B movies and TV often get the short straw and some translations seem to be done by computer.

The most convincing argument for the existence of intelligent life on other heavenly bodies is that they haven't contacted us.
Maybe they have been following our tv programmes?

I'd love to post a link to a specific YouTube clip from Futurama, When Aliens Attack (Season02, Ep03) showing Lrrr, Emperor of Omicron Persei 8 becoming enraged when the broadcast of the late 20th century TV program, Single Female Lawyer featuring Ally McNeal abruptly ends and he threatens to destroy the Earth if he doesn't get to see the final episode.


Mehh... Here's the full episode.


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2f0t46_futurama-12-when-aliens-attack_fun

I have to agree with Lrrr: C+

I watch enough 'murder' TV programmes that I've compiled a spreadsheet to keep track of which episodes I've seen. But this is mainly Midsomer Murders so not exactly the same class of murder. Even when it's a serial killer it's more like a pantomime. We like Death in Paradise for similar reasons.

Endeavour and some episodes of Lewis have disturbed me enough that I won't watch them on repeat (in both cases it's what we have been told, rather than what we have seen or heard, that has bothered me). But it's the 'whodunnit' aspect that interests me. I don't enjoy watching people suffer and I'm not that intrigued by the forensics.

So I can't explain Criminal Minds. My own daughters like CSI (which has some pretty gruesome stuff) but I like my murders wholesome. Death by tomato soup is, I think, my personal Midsomer favourite.

Mol

even when Midsomer Murders despatched (a very young) Orlando Bloom by pitchfork it was quite tasteful, even though onscreen the whole time.

Lewis and Endeavour at least have the redeeming features that it is not relentlessly gruesome. There are gruesome bits (the one with the chap bricked up in the farmhouse wall was distressing) but I can handle that because of the unrelentlessness of it, plus well, Stg Hathaway and Endeavour and Thursday('s voice)

I might say that it is mostly the same reason for many police/crime drama - there is a puzzle or mystery of sorts involved.

But in the end, it probably boils down to these shows being formulated for somewhat specific mindsets. If you don't "get it", it isn't written for you. Just as I don't "get" romance, many ideas of comedy, opera, Shakespeare and day-time soap operas. No one had me in mind when they created them, but a large enough number of other sorts of people.

Here's a mystery: I KNOW I responded to Mol's post 13 yesterday but my post has inexplicably disappeared. (Did I post it in another thread as a non sequitur?)


Because of my unsuccessful attempts to muffle my scoffing, I'm not allowed to be in the same room at my parents' when my father watches any of the CSI shows. I only watched CSI that once. IIRC correctly, amongst other literally incredible plot points, this episode featured a disease that affects not just Scandinavians, but specifically only people from Norway; and a crime was solved closely zooming in on an image on a real estate web page. The image was of the main den/living room of a large home. On the mantel was a family portrait. In that family portrait they noticed some detail. I can't quite recall, but it may have been a reflection in someone's glasses, but maybe it was some other detail. Regardless, this was observed in a 180 x 300 pixel web image.


ENHANCE!

I loathe CSI - mostly because the dialogue is so stilted while the experts stand around and explain the most basic details of everything to other experts so the viewer doesn't think "ohhhh they did it by magic". It just kills any semblence of realism (!) that they otherwise might achieve.

Plus in CSI they have the appalling Grissom. He would have a fork in his eye within about 5 seconds of me meeting him. He is a terrible leader and a bloody awful team member. Not realistic in any way shape or form. (see also NCIS - Abby. Who I really want to kill. With a pin.)

actually Criminal Minds is the same - but I just can not be in the room when that's on.

Well, that's probably the reason why we don't have TV at home. We do own the actual electronic device, but it is only connected to a DVD player and various Nintendos (and not a sattelite dish or similar thing to actually get TV programmes).

It would seem that "crime drama" isn't your genre, Sho. Though you personally might find something like Bones, Rizoli & Aisles, and a couple of others with different casting orientation more plalatable.

I have mostly enjoyed the Star Gate shows, but one just ended with two huge and ugly aliens slapping each other to death. Slaps, no fatal other damages.

I guess that really serious 'slapping hands' can best writing at times.

It's impossible to watch any WWII films with my bro-in-law who not only knows everything but isn't afraid to use it either

"Hey, that plane/jeep/tank/gun wasn't built till the tuesday after these events took place, you morons! "