The Only Good Nipple Is A Dead Nipple

EW did a piece awhile ago about the increased presence of violence against women on telelvision that I remember finding really interesting. It argued that while sexual content is slammed by the Standards & Practices departments post-Janet-nipple, violence, and specifically violence against women, has run rampant, especially on the crime procedurals (CSI, etc) all the folks are watching these days.

Myself, I don't watch those shows, they bore me to tears (ooh, ANOTHER way to detect semen!), but I get the appeal. You get to feel all smart and shocked and so forth. Whee.

Anyway, I was reminded of the EW article last night when I watched some of that new FOX show Prison Break. And yes, obviously I was watching Prison Break in anticipation of group showers and so forth, so we can move past that. The show's terrible, I don't get the mostly positive-to-mixed reviews it's gotten. But Wentworth Miller is dreamy, and the only NetFlix movie I have right now is Bergman's Cries and Whispers and I wasn't up for existential despair last evening, so I watched Prison Break.

And I've apparently turned into an old person. At least, bitching about what I'm about to bitch about makes me feel like an old person.

But around 8:30 on a network television channel I watched a black woman, gagged and bound, stumble for her life through the woods only to be shot in the leg and fall, then beg desperately for her life, bloodied and desperate, only to be shot in the head with a graphic spray of blood.

I mean, am I being unreasonable? If I were watching a film I'd rented, or basic cable even, I probably wouldn't have been so offended. It's well-documented that I love some good gore, and am a slasher-flick aficianado. But I really felt like this was crossing a line. A silent, communally-agreed-upon line. Christ knows I'm against censorship. But there has to be some sort of standard of expectations - you can't just inject a horrible scene like this into your ridiculously plotted prison soap opera at 8pm on FOX. That's Simpsons hour!

I get that these are the bad guys, Mr. Showrunner, and you need us to know how bad they are, how far they're willing to go. But this scene was just an excuse for excessive sensationalized violence to maybe get somebody to stop the channel for a sec. We'd only just been introduced to this character, I gathered, so the audience had no attachment to her; she was there merely to be gagged, bound, bloodied and shot on national TV.

And that's ugly business. But then, as much as I love The Simpsons or Family Guy, this is FOX after all, the company responsible for giving Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity a platform.