A few random thoughts about television shows this morning, since the end of a long winter is in sight, and I have survived it largely by knitting, reading, and–you guessed it–watching television shows and movies.
On Mindless Murder: Why do detective shows always, without fail, focus on murder? Based on the detective shows I watch (admittedly, most of them are British), it seems that all cases in which both police and private detectives are called are murders. Hence the Cabot Cove paradox: a small town, Cabot Cove, Maine, has the highest murder rate in the world, because Jessica Fletcher lives there and she must solve a new murder every week. (Don’t get me wrong–I love Murder, She Wrote, but I think that if a detective is good at solving murder cases, she ought to be good at solving other kinds of cases as well.) What about the cases in which no murder has occurred? Much of a detective’s job, after all, involves sitting and watching people, trying to get evidence of adultery, or perhaps finding a missing person (who often, I would hope, turns out not to be murdered). Even Sherlock Holmes occasionally worked on cases that did not involve a murder of any kind. I would love to see a detective show that doesn’t focus exclusively on that most brutal of crimes. In fact, I find it deeply troubling that so much of our entertainment comes from postulated murder, as if the only way we can amuse ourselves is by imagining the ultimate violence done to another human being. If detective shows would only sprinkle some non-murderous episodes in with their usual fare, I think it would be more realistic, for one thing, as well as more humane, and it would do those of us who watch them a lot more good.
On Evil Collectives: Why is a collective always represented as something bad? Take Star Trek: Voyager. While I find the Star Trek series creative and thoughtful, the Borg (a hive-mind collective that forcibly assimilates/absorbs all entities it encounters) quickly becomes a predictable and hackneyed antagonist. Of course, someone had the brilliant idea of “rescuing” 7 of 9 and integrating her into Voyager’s crew–kudos to whoever came up with that one–but the problem remains that we seem to be unable to imagine a collective association of human beings as anything but profoundly threatening to creativity, kindness, and mutual aid. Perhaps this stems from our Western distrust of collective societies and our American horror of communism. Yet this cannot be only an American issue, since Daleks–from the Dr Who series–are also portrayed as an evil, voracious collective society. My question is this: is it possible to imagine a non-threatening collective, one that is humane and caring? Why is it that we never see such a collective portrayed on television or in films? If we could imagine one (and of course non-agressive collective societies do indeed exist in nature, among bees, for example, and many other kind of animals so we needn’t go far for inspiration), perhaps we could aspire to replicate this kind of mutual aid society in our world.
On Emo SciFi: While I’m on the subject of science fiction, here’s a question that I’ve often pondered: Why are science fiction shows almost always dark? Of course, there’s a really easy answer to this question: it’s dark in outer space. I get that, but why is it that we can only imagine space travel as something in which disasters, emergencies, and threatening events occur? Wouldn’t it be more realistic to sprinkle some humor into the plot of a scifi show sometimes? I realize that we’re living in difficult times, as we move closer to tyranny and nuclear war threatens to erupt in Europe, but isn’t that itself a reason to provide entertainment that is uplifting and amusing as well as thoughtful? For that matter, why must “thoughtful” always mean “something dire is about to happen and the whole crew, or planet, or species could die?” I would very much like to see a science fiction show that occasionally has an episode focusing on disagreements between crewmates (because God knows that would happen on a long voyage–just ask any sailor who’s ever been on deployment), on equipment malfunctions, on anything but the mission ending in a fiery ball of disaster due to an out-of-control collective that is intent on committing murder.
In other words, it would be nice if someone out in TV Land got hold of a new blueprint for their plots instead of recycling the same old trite themes. But maybe that’s my own problem for expecting real creativity from an overburdened medium….
It’s pretty bad when one has to resort to doing math problems to get exposure to new ideas!