tired of being tired

for years I have been tired of movies and TV glorifying evil and wrong doing of
one kind or another. now I am not just going "l don't want to watch this," I am
on the attack.

The latest thing to piss me off was an ad for some new movie I think its called
Widows looks like these women are going to do a major heist to pay for the
funerals or whatever something like that.

A lot of movies and TV over the decades have glorified thieves and worse who
use a lot of skill, evade clever countermeasures, and so forth. The laudable
thing is skill, determination against obstacles, self control and discipline to get
all this done. But all this is in the service of evil. "thou shalt not steal."

Some of them modify a bit, its a reformed thief or a reformed pirate who now
works as a privateer, sort of a hired gunslinger for a maritime country at war
on the high seas, the conduct is that of a pirate, but its essentially a mercenary.
Or they are intelligence agents. all this to excuse the activities of stealing and
killing and lying.

In the process doing all this with a license to do so gives you a vicarious thrill
that seems less guilty. even heroic. and you want to go join up with some
agency or mercenary group or secret operations group so you can live like this.
James Bond is a good case in point, and partly on their own and partly in
imitation of his influence most likely, the (male at least and its usually male)
protagonist is a classy sleazebag who sleeps around. (Captain Kirk of  Star
Trek was a case in point in the sci fi scene.)

There was a poem about a highwayman, a robber of people on the highways,
who had a lover who some of the king's soldiers (before there were police)
knew was his gal, so they tied her up with a gun rigged to her so she couldn't
escape, and were going to take him and hang him of course but she got her
finger on the trigger and killed herself, warning him with the shot. When he
found out the next day, he killed himself. Sounds all very romantic and
heroic and shit like that, but, eh, the guy was a bad guy. There might or might
not have been a political angle on his behavior, but that wasn't made clear.

Glorification of banditry has gone on in several cultures. In the USA politics
of a sort played a role. Left over bushwhackers Quantrill's Raiders were viewed
as heroic by unreconstructed confederates and their (and anyone's) daring
was appreciated. This gang after the Civil War continued their lifestyle without
any reasonable hope of changing the outcome already settled. Persons who
had been with Quantrill went on to train or corrupt others and ride with them,
and these in turn converted others, so some generations down the road,
various high profile bandits and murderers such as Jesse James and Dillinger
and Bonny and Clyde had a pedigree of association going back to Quantrill's
Raiders.

(Clyde was a bit unusual he seemed to have access somehow to one of the most
advanced type rifles of the time, military stuff. The possibility of some kind
of conspiracy involving unknown people with an agenda existed in his case,
and in the case of the Fleagle gang which I think also tracked to Quantrill's
Raiders by way of a chain of association of persons to persons over the
many decades. The man who shot Fleagle was a banker who had kept a gun
that had belonged to Jesse James in his desk, old, unused, not cleaned likely,
and it misfired, which is why he wasn't able to continue to fight correctly
and his son and another bystander were killed and Fleagle lived, to kidnap
a doctor to treat his wound, then murder the doctor. Sounds like an
unreconstructed closet confederate type or at least a romantic oriented in a
wrong direction squared off against a more evil version of the same thing and
lost.)

Back to fiction: Movies and TV did preach a lot of right vs. wrong, but
were increasingly violent with right vs. wrong being an excuse for the
violence and the thrills the viewer had. Every week a gunfight something
that might happen a few times if at all in anyone's life even a gunslinger's
life wouldn't be filled with that much violence, at least one often more
than one shooting a week.

movies addressing organized crime and gangsters were moralistic and tended
to have them come to a bad end. A few had some gangster "redeem" himself
so to speak by some great patriotic action or something. This was probably
propaganda that was a nod to the cooperation between American forces
and the Mafia in WW II Italy.

This got worse. The Godfather series was bullshit the average Mafiosi
doesn't live high on the hog or attached personally to those who do so
they benefit from being part of the lifestyle living in his mansion as a driver
or a guard or an adviser. the focus on family was also bullshit, the family
the Mafiosi is to be loyal to is not his own, but the "family" gang and
head thereof he belongs to. One guy said that if his wife was having a baby
and you were in the hospital with her and you got the call you were to
leave her and deal with the "family."  not your personal family, the gang.

Good for nothing unchaste headstrong to stupid drug and booze chugging
bastards were glorified increasingly such as Easy Rider, and meanwhile
the violence level crept up, till you had the slasher flicks. At this point
there was no redeeming feature in the protagonists (the slashers) their
opposition was more obviously heroic.

Part of the problem is that whoever the story focusses on and takes up
most or major screen time, is what the public seems to think is what they
are supposed to identify with. Case in point, Hud, which Newman years
later regretted making and said had been a bad influence.

Now, I suppose there's nothing much new in these complaints. but while
it is still politically correct to denounce violence, it is unfortunately
politically correct to support perversion, adultery, casual sex and so forth.
This played an implied sometimes overt role in the past but now its
really out of hand.

Movies are about boring idiotic people doing boring idiotic things, or
love gone wrong with a lot of loveless sex on the side, or mindless
action movies. Occasionally a decent show will turn up. Often one way
of being corruptive was for those who denounced some evil to look
ridiculous in some way. Another was to so focus on and wallow in
the viewpoint and sorrows and stresses of some protagonist that by
the time he or she gets around to adultery you can sort of identify with
the character (soap operas were real big on that one), in one case
a boy who'd been making love with a poorer girl who loved him,
dumped her for a classier girl and married her. While you can argue
this is a cautionary tale that you can't trust a boy or man and don't
put out till you're married, no hint of him being a worthless faithless
sleaze bag is stated. That was years and years ago and probably
hasn't changed. The soap operas are usually upper middle class
scene as I recall. Very well dressed, big houses, executive level
business men and women, and so forth.