Gods and Monsters

We become what we consume, or do we? Art as a mirror.

When I was younger, everything seemed to be black and white. Literally.

The first TV I ever watched was a black and white set. That continued for several years. There were regular adaptations of classical books, like Scrooge and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Many of the shows I watched on TV were simple, and mostly wholesome, like Little House on the Prairie. This was in the advent of colour TV and idealistic dreams of a simple, family life.

But there were many Westerns as well. The other side of the Little House on the Prairie coin, with the veneer of respectability removed.

There was a lot of killing in these shows, usually of ‘bad people’ and mostly of Indigenous Americans (previously termed ‘Indians’, as in Cowboys and Indians: the good and the bad, the black and the white, so to speak).

N.B. The influx of Europeans into the Americas led to many nations and lands being razed to the ground in the name of European progress, and European sensibilities, also known as Global Capitalism.

Which led me to thinking about death, murder specifically.

For a nation that doesn't do personal talk about death, grief and loss, we Brits sure do like watching crime and murder shows. Why is that?

Is it because as British people the stench of death is sewn into the tapestry of our history as a nation, but we do not generally look at the back of the fabric where the knots and the lumps are as we have our gaze directed towards the glorious, so we are repeatedly told, images of triumphs that is the thread of world domination?

Death is in our historical blood as British people. Indeed, as humans, we cannot escape it. It is our only guaranteed destination. Most people wish for a peaceful end, many are granted this oft unspoken wish, others are not.

We all get to the terminal end of our life lines by one means or another, that much is guaranteed.

Yet, the inevitability of death on a personal level is rarely spoken about in polite society, yet we are surrounded by books, stories, and multiple TV programmes that focus almost singularly on the occasional violent end of some lives.

Should we ignore the reality that these shows mirror, and live in the Little House on the Prairie world? I don’t think so.

I’ve just had some thoughts about it lately when I realised that seeing simulated death on screen does not shock me. In fact, I may be numb to it depending on the circumstances.

Here are some of the death-centred shows I have watched, and enjoyed (does that sound wrong to say that? Bear with me.):

Happy Valley

Killing Eve

Peaky Blinders

Why did I enjoy them? For the cruelty and the painful way that people die? No. Not at all.

I became hooked on the series because of the living people, the ones who navigate (or cause) the violent deaths. I’ve become slightly obsessed with their motivations and the way they exist in the world before and after each death that punctuates their own time lines.

Is it all about the people though? Their personal relationships are what drive the stories, and not necessarily the deaths that occur along the way.