The Sopranos,
Mad Men, and
Breaking Bad are popular television shows about people who do terrible things. I haven't seen
Deadwood or
The Shield, but perhaps those also fit in this genre. If you read the websites I read, you'd think that these are the most popular television shows; in fact, they're niche entertainments compared to
NCIS or the various
CSI franchises. They're shows for young Bobos, more or less. Two hypotheses:
- Deep down, we see ourselves as morally compromised. We know that we have and use more than we deserve, and we don't want to give it up. We tell ourselves that we're avoiding our just deserts for the sake of our families.
- We like badassery, but we also need an excuse for our interest. The psychological angle gives us the illusion of moral distance. So we can tell ourselves that we're not interested in evil, but rather in the analysis of evil's effects.
There are two motions here: there's a larger structure of judgment, within which the characters' bad choices are shown to be harmful, but scene-by-scene the viewer's enticed by the allure of the anti-hero. I suspect that this is not moral seriousness, but rather the sense of it.
UPDATE: Should have given credit where credit's due. I started on this line of thinking after reading something
Freddie wrote on G+.
2 comments:
I dunno about those two theories.
I was thinking in the reverse. Imagine the perfect man. Luckily, we have one. But even with him the temptation and doubt are what are interesting. Not the perfection and miracles.
So, this isn't just about BoBos. The potential for moral failing, or at least failing to live up to our own and society's expectations of moral action, is a universal aspect of the human condition.
Although, I guess in the biblical case you could say that creation and our existence are what we have and don't deserve, which we don't. God just gave it to us.
Then again, I might be missing your point. Maybe it's just the relative focus on morally compromised characters. I'm just of the mind that moral perfection is uninteresting because it is unrealistic.
The alternative to Walter White is not necessarily a perfect person. As I wrote this, I was thinking about Crime and Punishment, which is a great book. Raskolnikov is a morally compromised character, to say the least, but the book leads him (and the reader, if everything goes well) to an understanding and acceptance of justice -- grace, even. It's not just about Raskolnikov getting worse and worse.
I do think there's a morally serious way to portray the thrill of evil. The point about this particular sort of badassery is that the viewers want to have it both ways: the judgment and the vicarious thrill.
Or look at it this way: I've watched a season and a half of Breaking Bad now. I've seen Walter White pass several points of no return. Why should I keep watching the show? Is there any further thematic development, or is it all about plot from here?
So I'm definitely not demanding shows about perfect people; it's this particular angle on evil that's weird to me. (I'm not sure how to square this with my admiration of Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans.)
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