I've been thinking about this more as I've come to enjoy crime dramas, true crime fiction, and so on. In these sorts of shows and movies, there's often at least one antagonist who, through some combination of tropes--from a tragic past, to a mental illness cocktail, general loathsomeness, etc.--outshines even the most wonderful of protagonists or side characters, because they're just so hate-able. Now, I could waffle about the misrepresentation of mental illness, the way television and technology makes us more comfortable with gruesome imagery, or how true crime ramps up the scare chord and creep factor dials to 11 to the point where the source material event is totally different from the on-screen proceedings and the entire point of the show is lost in the muck, but instead I want to waffle about a fact that I've come to realize that really disturbs me more than poor writing or lazy character work.
No matter how many terrible people we put on TV screens, they won't stop the ones in the real world.
Obviously, this goes without saying, and I know that my rambling here is hardly a breakthrough in looking at humanity in hindsight. But since reading things like Carrie, and watching the original Twin Peaks and Hulu's The Act, I can't help but feel like us funny meat people are grossly, comically missing the point of the sacks of shit and hellspawn we like to watch terrorize, and eventually crumble, on our funny glowing boxes. The entire point, I find, of characters like Margaret White, Leo Johnson, and Dee Dee Blanchard (at least, as portrayed by Patricia Arquette), is that they are such terrible people that any person looking at them with half an iota of intelligence will go "well shit, glad I don't act like that fucker". Frankly, I feel like that muttered statement between shocked gasps and munched popcorn is a big part of the draw of the crime genre itself; it's a safe way to look at the worst people imaginable, real or fake, and be comforted by the fact that "I'm not like them".
But what happens when people look at these characters and think "Well, we're actually pretty similar"? Watching Leo Johnson in Twin Peaks get paralyzed for being a sexist, wife-beating prick doesn't stop Joe Blow in Washington from taking out his belt and beating his girlfriend. No amount of Margaret Whites has made abusive conservative christian mothers stop hitting, berating, or diddling their kids. Similarly, stealing, lying, child-abuser characters never stopped Dee Dee Blanchard from doing just that to her daughter in real life, and no matter how vile she is as a character in The Act, there will continue to be more people like her doing much of the same out in the real world. I want to know why Leos don't unmake Leos. Why do scumbags sending their kids off to gay conversion therapy camps not change their ways when they see Carrie White being locked in a closet? TV murderers don't make real murderers feel bad; at least, I haven't heard any stories about "Florida Man renounces his cultish ways after watching The Path."
And what disturbs me most about all this is that, being optimistic about human empathy, it really should work! We're a bunch of dumb monkeys, but we can recognize the awfulness of these characters so easily. The rapists of the world make disparaging comments towards the rapists of hollywood cinema, yet they won't have an "oh shit" moment and change their ways. Damnation just doesn't deter. I'm lucky enough to where this is only a hypothetical, but if my autism were more severe and if my mother was a worse person overall, I'm positive that no number of "bad mom" or "ableist prick" characters in media would deter her from doing and saying terrible things to me. And that's harrowing.
So, what gives?
No matter how many terrible people we put on TV screens, they won't stop the ones in the real world.
Obviously, this goes without saying, and I know that my rambling here is hardly a breakthrough in looking at humanity in hindsight. But since reading things like Carrie, and watching the original Twin Peaks and Hulu's The Act, I can't help but feel like us funny meat people are grossly, comically missing the point of the sacks of shit and hellspawn we like to watch terrorize, and eventually crumble, on our funny glowing boxes. The entire point, I find, of characters like Margaret White, Leo Johnson, and Dee Dee Blanchard (at least, as portrayed by Patricia Arquette), is that they are such terrible people that any person looking at them with half an iota of intelligence will go "well shit, glad I don't act like that fucker". Frankly, I feel like that muttered statement between shocked gasps and munched popcorn is a big part of the draw of the crime genre itself; it's a safe way to look at the worst people imaginable, real or fake, and be comforted by the fact that "I'm not like them".
But what happens when people look at these characters and think "Well, we're actually pretty similar"? Watching Leo Johnson in Twin Peaks get paralyzed for being a sexist, wife-beating prick doesn't stop Joe Blow in Washington from taking out his belt and beating his girlfriend. No amount of Margaret Whites has made abusive conservative christian mothers stop hitting, berating, or diddling their kids. Similarly, stealing, lying, child-abuser characters never stopped Dee Dee Blanchard from doing just that to her daughter in real life, and no matter how vile she is as a character in The Act, there will continue to be more people like her doing much of the same out in the real world. I want to know why Leos don't unmake Leos. Why do scumbags sending their kids off to gay conversion therapy camps not change their ways when they see Carrie White being locked in a closet? TV murderers don't make real murderers feel bad; at least, I haven't heard any stories about "Florida Man renounces his cultish ways after watching The Path."
And what disturbs me most about all this is that, being optimistic about human empathy, it really should work! We're a bunch of dumb monkeys, but we can recognize the awfulness of these characters so easily. The rapists of the world make disparaging comments towards the rapists of hollywood cinema, yet they won't have an "oh shit" moment and change their ways. Damnation just doesn't deter. I'm lucky enough to where this is only a hypothetical, but if my autism were more severe and if my mother was a worse person overall, I'm positive that no number of "bad mom" or "ableist prick" characters in media would deter her from doing and saying terrible things to me. And that's harrowing.
So, what gives?
