Letters to the Editor
blueskies
Published Letters: 38 Editor's Choice: 2
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Vats of Acid
[Read the article: Our favorite murderer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gary Kamiya hit it on the head when he writes "Its shtick is that it is a show about an American family just like ours -- who are also a bunch of coldblooded murderers whom according to even the laxest moral standards we should loathe. And the king of these monsters is, of course, our dear old Tony."
The big parallel to the Sopranos is the show 24, where the hero, Jack Bauer, is also an evil guy. But since he is the hero, he is given (by the writers) a warm human side to make the viewers like him.
The big justification is that these types of shows are reflections of the "real world", and that watching such shows help people to understand the "real world".
But we now know that 24 was not only a reflection of the world but also had very real effects on people's attitudes towards (and enthusiasm for) torture in the "real world". (See The New Yorker article "Whatever It Takes")
There is no such smoking gun with the Sopranos, but here is a story which is, I believe, instructive. I was listening to NPR, and they were interviewing a writer who had written a book about a big time Sicilian mobster. The writer was talking about how in Sicily there was an attitude of grudging
admiration for these mobsters. Because of this public attitude there was not enough political will to really go after them. All that changed when a whole family was murdered by mobsters, the bodies (mom, dad, and child) were found in vats of acid. After this incident the public woke up, and there was the political will to put many of these thugs out of business.
Shows like the Sopranos that act as PR and product placement for evil, are doing evil. The continued huge popularity of the Sopranos and 24 helps explain the huge level of apathy towards the huge level of evil that is being done in our name. It's hard to get too incensed over bribery and corruption when we've got a soft spot for a murderous thug.
Note the Sopranos is also like the Hells' Angels toy runs. And Al Capone gave out food to the poor, kind of like the Supranos giving out entertainment to the masses.
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George Orwell on Gangstas
[Read the article: Our favorite murderer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For everyone's edification, here is a quote
from George Orwell (click on my name for the
link):
"In America, both in life and fiction, the tendency to tolerate crime, even to admire the criminal so long as he is success, is very much more marked. It is, indeed, ultimately this attitude that has made it possible for crime to flourish upon so huge a scale. Books have been written about Al Capone that are hardly different in tone from the books written about Henry Ford, Stalin, Lord Northcliffe and all the rest of the ‘log cabin to White House’ brigade. And switching back eighty years, one finds Mark Twain adopting much the same attitude towards the disgusting bandit Slade, hero of twenty-eight murders, and towards the Western desperadoes generally. They were successful, they ‘made good’, therefore he admired them."
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What Leoniceno Said
[Read the article: Hillary is from Mars, Obama is from Venus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Leoniceno hit it right on the head.
This article is an echo of right-wing talking points and framing.
Plus it is yet another article about the horse race instead of the issues.
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Oh Pulease
[Read the article: TV's triumphant overclass]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]tomreedtoon wrote:
"Trainman and MrOpEd, I'm expecting you to take the next step and go out and kill anyone who watches TV."
Oh Pulease !
Is that the best you can do? That's like saying anyone who points out the health consequences of smoking should instead just go out and shoot anyone who smokes.
Come on, you can do better than that!
Heather, excellent article by the way...
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Alpha Brainwaves
[Read the article: Should tots watch TV?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From the article:
“You debunk a lot of the popular beliefs about the bad things TV does to kids, for instance, the idea that when kids watch TV they turn into zoned-out "zombies," or catch attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]. What's the evidence that's not true?”
“Those were two things that I worried about a lot as a mom. There are no studies that show television causing attention problems. All we have is a link, an association. The more that I talked to experts on ADHD, I found a lot of reason to think that children who have attention problems are either more attracted to television, or their parents use the television more in their households.”
Actually the idea that TV turns adults into "zoned-out zombies" does have scientific
validity. In the February 2002 issue of Scientific American, in an article called "Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor" (click on my name for the link) the authors discuss TV's effect on brainwaves.
It turns out that adults produce a preponderance of Alpha brainwaves while watching TV. Alpha brainwaves are associated with meditation or daydreaming. Beta brainwaves are associated with normal waking active focus. And Gamma brainwaves are associated with highly focused thinking, such as while playing a musical instrument or trying to solve a difficult problem.
Now it could be that while the brains of adults slow down while watching TV, that TV actually has a different effect on very young children. I don't know, although I did read about a skin resistance study that was done on babies watching TV showing that they were in the same passive relaxed state as adult TV watchers.
I realize that the studies showing a correlation between young children watching a lot of TV and attention problems do not prove that TV causes these problems. But ADD is also associated with slow brainwaves. A coincidence? Perhaps not.