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LA Ute
08-24-2013, 07:15 PM
Megan McArdle is an economist and commentator on mostly economic issues. I was struck by this piece, Why is the Golden Age of television so dark? (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/why-is-the-golden-age-of-television-so-dark-.html) She begins:


The Official Blog Spouse and I are nothing if not loyal members of our television-watching demographic. "The Wire" is our favorite show of all time. We watch "Boardwalk Empire," "Game of Thrones" and "Homeland" together; I also watch "Mad Men" by myself, as Peter finds it too dull. We are working our way through "Breaking Bad." I really do like all these shows, and yet, when I watch this list I have to ask myself: Why does almost everything we watch involve criminals and violence? No, not just involve them, but elevate them to the center of the story?


We are in a golden age of television, I am told, where television shows are taking the risks, doing the interesting things that are no longer possible in movies that need so many tens of millions of dollars to cover the cost of production and marketing. I largely agree with this assessment. So what does it say about modern society that it considers shows about meth cookers, crack dealers and gangsters to be the finest mass market entertainment we can produce?


Gangster art is not new, of course; it was one of the earliest staples of the talking picture. But the gangsters in those films were not allowed to be the heroes while continuing to be gangsters; the film was required by the code to cast judgment on them (and deliver a comeuppance, or a conversion, or preferably both, in the end). I’m not saying that Vince Gilligan approves of Walter White’s descent into sociopathy, but that’s not the main emotional action of the series. The main investment we have in this show is seeing whether -- and how -- Walter White will get himself out of his latest career-induced predicament. Where is the moral alternative effectively dramatized? His hapless wife? The endless, pointless dithering of Jesse? The latter became so annoying that I’d rather have seen him joyously return to cooking meth; that would have been more entertaining, and more plausible....


What is the attraction of these sorts of stories? At first I thought that it was sheer novelty; here’s one world we don’t know anything about. But that can’t be right, because there are other types of stories, like historical dramas, that would be quite novel if done well. Eventually I decided the truth is this: We watch so many crime dramas because there are no big stakes in middle-class American life. The criminal underworld is one place where decisions actually matter -- and can be shown to matter, dramatically.


McArdle admits to watching all the shows she wonders about. I watch Homeland, mainly because I'm a sucker for spy stories. The other shows she mentions have a tendency to draw me in, too, but I haven't really watched a full episode of any of them. Their production quality is undeniable. But I am wondering about the shows' attraction for me. Anyway, I recommend McArdle's piece. It's far from prudish; she's just asking interesting questions. I don't know the answers yet.

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 12:04 AM
But really, the golden age? People are overreacting because they all got caught up in crap like LOST and Heroes. They think it's a golden age because they are so excited to have shows with plots that make sense again.

Whatever. Why is what everyone is calling the golden age so dark?


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Diehard Ute
08-25-2013, 01:00 AM
Whatever. Why is what everyone is calling the golden age so dark?


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Why was everything in the golden age of the 50's and 60's nauseatingly fake happy? ;)

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 01:46 AM
Why was everything in the golden age of the 50's and 60's nauseatingly fake happy? ;)

5-yard penalty for delay of game (not to mention attempted threadjack!!).

Again, the question: "Why does almost everything we watch involve criminals and violence? No, not just involve them, but elevate them to the center of the story?"

concerned
08-25-2013, 08:36 AM
5-yard penalty for delay of game (not to mention attempted threadjack!!).

Again, the question: "Why does almost everything we watch involve criminals and violence? No, not just involve them, but elevate them to the center of the story?"

IMHO, it is a fad; it will wear itself out when it is no longer new. But the reason is that it provides an opportunity to explore compelling characters in intense and different circumstances, and to explore different aspects of personality and experience. (Not the only opportunity, but a dramatic opportunity). It goes back to the question every lit professor asks every freshman about Paradise Lost: why is Lucifer a more compelling character than God? Why are Raskolnikov or Macbeth compelling?

BTW, I am now halfway through the second season of Breaking Bad, and the intensity of watching Walter White's descent and loss of his good qualities is very hard to watch. I cant watch more than one episode at a time, and we keep rooting for him to make a different choice and find a way out. It is hard to watch, which is part of the reason it is such compelling drama.

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 08:38 AM
IMHO, it is a fad; it will wear itself out when it is no longer new. But the reason is that it provides an opportunity to explore compelling characters in intense and different circumstances, and to explore different aspects of personality and experience. (Not the only opportunity, but a dramatic opportunity). It goes back to the question every lit professor asks every freshman about Paradise Lost: why is Lucifer a more compelling character than God? Why are Raskolnikov or Macbeth compelling?

BTW, I am now halfway through the second season of Breaking Bad, and the intensity of watching Walter White's descent and loss of his good qualities is very hard to watch. I cant watch more than one episode at a time, and we keep rooting for him to make a different choice and find a way out. It is hard to watch, which is part of the reason it is such compelling drama.

I think you are probably right, but I should disagree in some pointed way in order to keep the thread going. Let me get back to you.


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NorthwestUteFan
08-25-2013, 09:20 AM
Why do people pick and choose the shows they include in The Golden Age of TV? There are a number of outstanding shows during this same period which are not exclusively dark and sinister. Friday Night Lights comes immediately to mind. That was a fantastic show and should be mentioned in any discussion of the best shows from the last decade.

OrangeUte
08-25-2013, 10:00 AM
I don't understand the complaints. Some of the great dramatic television over the years has been dark or dealt with crime.

Not all of television can be Little House on the Prairie and Seventh Heaven. Being back Dr. Quinn? I think not. Maybe we should have more shows like Walker Texas Ranger - or is that too dark because it deals with crime?

I think the problem is that some of today's shows have the bad guys as the central characters. There is a misperception that these shows tend to focus on those criminals in ways that glorify a life if crime. They don't. That kind of reporting is the equivalent to the old fireside a that played the queen records backwards so we heard "learn to smoke marijuana" being pumped into our children's ears.

I watch the shows that are compelling. Breaking Bad is one of those shows. Game of Thrones is another as well as Homeland and Boardwalk Empire. Surprisingly those are not network shows. In addition I watch The Good Wife, Suits, downton abby, Sherlock. and some sitcoms. Not all that is on tv is dark.

Plus, I would call this the Golden Age of Television with a lower case "g" and "a". It's good television and some is incredibly compelling. But there have historically been television shows nearly as good or some maybe even better than what is on today.

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 12:04 PM
Not all of television can be Little House on the Prairie and Seventh Heaven. Being back Dr. Quinn? I think not. Maybe we should have more shows like Walker Texas Ranger - or is that too dark because it deals with crime?

I watch the shows that are compelling. Breaking Bad is one of those shows. Game of Thrones is another as well as Homeland and Boardwalk Empire. Surprisingly those are not network shows. In addition I watch The Good Wife, Suits, downton abby, Sherlock. and some sitcoms. Not all that is on tv is dark.

I think you've hit the key point. I'm just interested in why we find those things so compelling. No judgment here.

BTW, outside of social arch-conservatives and BYUTV, I don't think anyone's trying to bring back those super-wholesome shows.


Why do people pick and choose the shows they include in The Golden Age of TV? There are a number of outstanding shows during this same period which are not exclusively dark and sinister. Friday Night Lights comes immediately to mind. That was a fantastic show and should be mentioned in any discussion of the best shows from the last decade.

The phenomenon that fascinates me is that the dark shows are the ones on which everyone (especially our intelligentsia and cultural elites) are heaping praise -- gushing, really. They're not doing that with Friday Night Lights, unless I'm missing it.

Diehard Ute
08-25-2013, 02:49 PM
They certainly did with Friday Night Lights. It was a very highly thought of show.

I think part of the appeal is that is part of society most people don't experience in person.

You also have to look at the audience for many of the shows. Most are on subscription cable channels. That garners a different type of viewer than those who watch broadcast or basic cable channels IMO.

Which is darker, Breaking Bad or Honey Boo Boo? ;)

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 03:30 PM
The examples you choose - Paradise Lost, Macbeth, Crime and Punishment - are evidence that this is not a fad. This is what drama is - violence, vice, sex, greed, sin, redemption. Rinse and repeat. The real question is - why are we pretending that this is something new? I have two answers so far: (1) We always believe our drama is something new because we are continually pushing the limits on what we are allowed to show and discuss. (2) We believe we have something new because it's suited to our times. NYPD Blue would seem very outdated now, but in its time, it got all the same kind of praise that The Wire does now.

I agree with Orange - there have always been good shows.

I'm still thinking this through. Do you really think "MacBeth" and "Breaking Bad" are just two examples of the same genre? I'm doubtful, but willing to be convinced.

McArdle:


This leaves us with murder and related felonies. Crime and war are the only two places where the stakes are still life and death, or exile. War has been, um, done to death, and it’s expensive to shoot well. So what makes the perfect television drama for the novelty-seeking sophisticate? A crime drama -- told from the point of view of the criminal, often a criminal with a surprisingly ordinary, bourgeois domestic life, which serves to heighten the novelty. Not to mention the dramatic tension offered by a secret life....

These shows are well done, very well done. They are novel. But they do raise a question: What do you do for an encore? We are perhaps approaching a time when the criminal underworld will feel as, um, done to death as the hard-bitten World War II sergeant and his platoon of wise-cracking but basically patriotic all-American boys. I think back to films such as "Peyton Place" and "A Summer Place," which sort of shamefacedly argued that while premarital sex might be a bad idea, the people who engaged in it were after all people doing something natural and even understandable. And then the movies of 30 years later that celebrated premarital sex, and condemned the senseless prudery of earlier generations. What will crime dramas look like 30 years hence? Will we be celebrating meth dealers too? I know that seems totally incomprehensible -- but then, imagine trying to explain to your grandmother, in 1950, that 60 years from now, mass entertainment would be celebrating the beauty of gay marriage -- and not as a gag.

I don’t really think that this is the most likely outcome. But still, it worries me that this is the moral and emotional landscape where so many of my peers seem to feel most comfortable -- one that forces them to suspend, at least for intervals, their judgment of people who are outlaws and ruthless murderers.

Of course, that worry is not enough to make me stop watching the shows.

These are interesting points.


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Applejack
08-25-2013, 04:58 PM
I don't watch many of those shows LA listed - I have watched a couple of seasons of Mad Men, but I think it is dull.

But I have seen every episode of the Wire - twice. That show is considered one of, if not the best shows of all time for a reason that has nothing to do with violence. In fact, most people who dislike the Wire don't do so because it is a violent show, but because it is slow - it is mostly dialogue. The Wire is a classic because it immerses the viewer in a world that is both familiar and foreign in a way that makes you question all sorts of assumptions about how the world is. The criminals are not the heroes, but neither are they the villains. So too the police, the union, the schools, the government, and the media (OK, the media gets a pretty harsh critique).

Thus, saying that the Wire "elevates" crime and violence is wrong. The Wire uses crime and the accompanying violence to suggest that all institutions are less than the sum of their human parts. That is a pretty heady motif for a TV crime drama.

GarthUte
08-25-2013, 10:37 PM
Who decided that this is the Golden Age of television?

LA Ute
08-25-2013, 10:56 PM
Who decided that this is the Golden Age of television?

Just to clarify, McArdle said:


We are in a golden age of television, I am told, where television shows are taking the risks, doing the interesting things that are no longer possible in movies that need so many tens of millions of dollars to cover the cost of production and marketing.

She's not extolling this as a golden age, just stating the premise accepted by many, and asking, "If this is a golden age, why are all the celebrated shows so dark?"


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Scratch
08-25-2013, 11:08 PM
Who decided that this is the Golden Age of television?

Comcast.

Jarid in Cedar
08-26-2013, 12:13 AM
Two crime shows to add to the list of excellent TV:

Numb3rs and Person of Interest.

Haven is another good show that I don't quite know how to classify. Closer to Lost I would guess.

I don't watch much tv. I haven't seen a single episode of Breaking Bad. Person of Interest is probably the only network site that I have watched consistently in the last several years.

LA Ute
08-26-2013, 06:52 AM
Two crime shows to add to the list of excellent TV:

Numb3rs and Person of Interest.

Haven is another good show that I don't quite know how to classify. Closer to Lost I would guess.

I don't watch much tv. I haven't seen a single episode of Breaking Bad. Person of Interest is probably the only network site that I have watched consistently in the last several years.

We have become big fans of Person of Interest. We DVR it and watch when we can. Also "Blue Bloods," which we watch with our daughter. That's about it as far as TV shows go, although recently we discovered a BBC show called MI-5. We've ordered the DVDs from the first season and will see how we like it.

LA Ute
08-26-2013, 07:11 AM
Are they both dramas? I think so, but I haven't seen Breaking Bad. Maybe it's funnier than I think.

No, obviously there are differences. I'm just saying that exploring crime, death, violence, etc is not new.

I suppose BB is kind of a long-running tragedy, but I haven't watched enough to know.

wuapinmon
09-06-2013, 03:46 PM
I would think that the previous four decades gave us a feeding tube of situational comedies that explored virtually the same themes ad nauseum along with police procedurals (procedure being the key part of that) that bored us into thinking that seeing someone's ass on NYPD:Blue or mildly clever one-liners to start CSI was entertainment.

We now have some real fiction on tv, and it's compelling, well written, and explores aspects of humanity that the common man doesn't want to inhabit due to consequences, but has always been curious about. There's a bit of vicarious tantalizing revenge fantasy inherent in watching Walter White plow his Aztek into the drug dealers who killed a kid, or Dexter plunge his knife into the chest of someone who murdered innocent people.