It’s not the violence that is entertaining but the morality play that goes along with the violence that makes it seem so satisfying. In your typical violent TV show, the beginning is usually some grisly violation of the peace. This violence ruptures our sense of complacency, and defines the “bad guy” as unambiguously bad. This is often followed by several more instances of gratuitous cruelty, arrogance or brutishness—preferably mindless and inexplicable—calculated to develop the despicable character of the villain and intensify our hatred toward him. Then, the hero “takes him down.” We enjoy the “bad guy’s” humiliation, and whatever tit-for-tat cruelty that makes revenge so satisfying.
At first blush, the satisfaction we take in this retributive violence would seem to be an affirmation of our innate sense of justice. And it is. Only, the way the violence tends to get ratcheted up on television, and packaged so as to deliver one emotionally satisfying wallop one after another, this commercialization of our moral instincts tends to become an insidious form of manipulation. In order to make the bad guys appear bad enough to justify the depiction of evermore extreme forms of violence, there is a strong temptation to pick on groups that are already disadvantaged and demonized in society.
For years, blacks were the villain du jour, contributing enormously to the association of blackness and criminality in white people’s minds. Now, drug dealers and “Muslim terrorists” are the socially acceptable objects of our hatred. However, the portrayal of drug dealers as whacked out, stone-cold killers makes people think that all drug dealers are much more dangerous than they really are and should therefore be “dealt with” by being severely punished. Likewise, the portrayal of Muslims as irrationally fanatical and violent, grossly misrepresents the way Muslims actually are, and greatly impedes their ability to get along in society, just so Hollywood can make a quick buck.
In order to increase the emotionally entertaining “punch” that revenge dramas deliver, any moral complexity surrounding the “criminal” or his victim has to be stripped away. In real life, people seldom commit crimes without some solid motive. Portraying the villain as seeking revenge for his own very real and just grievances undercuts the perception of the villain as pure, hateable evil; and so it has to be stripped away. In real life, villains are often victims of prior injustices—child abuse, humiliation, discrimination, exclusion, or disproportionate punishment for past minor crimes—and they are often seeking revenge for injustices perpetrated against them. Likewise, the victim is not always wholly innocent. Sometimes they trigger violence by acting disrespectfully; other times, they become targets because seem to represent the oppressor class.
Stripping away the moral complexity of people’s actual motives tends to present a view of the world as an inexplicable and dangerous place, and where “good” and “evil” are locked in mortal combat. As such, TV crime dramas legitimate punitive violence by portraying the world as a violent place where violence is appropriately met with violence.
Whether intentional or not, these moral oversimplifications become a kind of propaganda. In the TV series 24, for example torture is represented as justified by continually portraying situations in which there is a ticking time bomb, the terrorist knows where it is, and its whereabouts can quickly and easily be obtained through the use of torture when, in fact, this almost never happens in real life. Nonetheless, the portrayal of these improbable scenarios as typical not only enables us to enjoy the depiction of torture as morally justified, it tends to convince us that torture is justified across the board. Likewise, when violent crime is stripped of its social and moral complexity, and presented as the personal immorality of the perpetrator, it tends to make punishment seem the normal, natural, and inevitable response to every offense.
Nowhere is this clearer than with the crime of murder. If you have grown up on a steady diet of American TV, chances are you have seen portrayals of tens of thousands of killings. Murder, that staple of the crime drama has become emblematic of “crime” in America, actually account for less than one half of one percent of all crime. Indeed, the typical murderers is generally portrayed as a cold and calculating act by a morally reprehensible person driven by profit or revenge.
Generally, “typical murderers” are portrayed as stone cold killers—psychopaths who kill easily, with alacrity, and for little reason—and who, if not stopped, will kill, and kill, and kill again. In real life, multiple murderers account for less than 5% of all murderers; and serial murderers—which are the stock fare of television crime dramas—account for less than 2% of murderers. As a result, we tend to view “murderers” as subhuman monsters who can not be reasoned with or rehabilitated, and who must be locked away forever or exterminated.
In real life, however, the vast majority (about 80%) of murderers are family members—absolutely ordinary people just like you or I—who, in a moment of extreme anger, jealousy, confusion, intoxication, and/or the accumulated stress of a history of abuse, strike out and kill a person close to them. About 15% of murders take place among mutual combatants during the course of turf battles in the criminal underworld, and so are a direct result of our prohibitionist drug policies.
One of the results of this use of violence as entertainment is that it tends to convince people that retribution is the only viable response to transgressions against the moral order. As a result, we have become one of the most punitive societies on earth. We are one of six countries who try children as adults and sentence them to death, and we are the only country in the world who sentences children to life in prison without possibility of parole. (We actually execute more children than all other countries combines.)
We no longer view even minor criminals as human, and so we have abandoned any attempt to rehabilitate them. Indeed, the punishment we now inflict on prisoners is no longer intended to deter or sequester; it is designed to “break” people in ways that keep them permanently trapped in the system. Things like repentance, atonement, mercy and forgiveness—which were once at the forefront of our thinking about justice—are now almost completely absent. We no longer punish to correct; we punish in order to cause suffering; and we do so because we take pleasure in it.
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