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Unpunished
3/29/2007
I was watching the season finale of Battlestar Galactica when I noticed a certain plot commonality between it and many other current TV shows. Rome, Heroes, Lost, BSG, and several others all share one disturbing thread: more often than not the villains win. Well, not the villains exactly in the classic sense but more the jerks. The manipulative, pitiless, Machiavellian schemers, on whatever segment of the good-bad continuum they perch, always seem to come out on top and rarely ever get their comuppins.
In the past is seems that such characters were always satisfyingly punished: killed, foiled, or soundly confronted with their hollow, destructive lives, but no more. Now they more often portrayed as happy, well-adjusted, or even justified in their actions.
Perhaps television has merely become more shaded with the various tonalities of right and wrong. Perhaps the longer story arcs used in today's shows are merely allowing punishment to lag quite a bit behind misdeed.
Perhaps.
A grimmer assessment might be that television is simply mirroring our times. It does seem that a lot of people in the world are doing exceedingly bad things these days and getting away with it. From the villainy of Bin Laden to the highly questionable ethics of the Bush administration, accountability and punishment seem to have become elusive.
- When will Bin Laden be punished?
- Why didn't Sadaam's trial and execution feel like justice?
- When will CIA agents who snatch innocent people off the street be brought to trial?
- When will detainees at Guantanimmo be given proper legal treatment?
- When will those who manipulated evidence for the case for the Iraq war be held accountable for their deeds?
As the list stretches on one has to wonder if pop culture has responded by depicting the "jerk" in a more sucessful, if not favorable, light. Has the classic "good guy" become an anarchonism?
Just a thought...
3/29/2007 | Permanent Link
