Grisly Photos of Miniature Crime Scene Models from Feature Shoot
So I watched the local news. Principally this consisted of a run-down of the day’s murders in Las Vegas accompanied by film from the various murder scenes. These always showed a house with the front door open, some police detectives shuffling around, a group of neighbourhood children standing on the fringes, waving happily at the camera and saying hi to their moms. In between each report the anchorman and anchorwoman would trade witless quips and then say in a breezy tone something like, ‘A mother and her three young children were hacked to death by a crazed axeman at Boulder City today. We’ll have a filmed report after these words.’
- Bill Bryson, from The Lost Continent
A REASON FOR HUMAN FASCINATION FOR GORE?
There were, however, aspects of Roman life that look alien to us. It was a slave-owning society, and the savagery of the games held in the Colosseum are legendary. Yet I would argue that it’s our technology that sets us apart from the Romans in these regards. We loathe slavery on moral grounds, but the functions once performed by slaves are oftentimes today performed by machines, and we have hardly weaned ourselves from our fascination with gore. Instead of seeing the real thing, however, we simulate it and broadcast it on television and in the cinema. There may, incidentally, be an evolutionary reason for this fascination. Birds will flock about if one of their number is caught by a hawk. Perhaps we’re genetically predisposed to observe such things from a safe distance, because we may learn how to avoid a similar fate.
- Tim Flannery from Here On Earth
Can a show about murdering women actually be feminist? About The Fall, from Salon, which I have yet to watch.
Anyone seen it? The article sums up why I can’t be bothered with Dexter — not that I could put my finger on it before, but if I’m ever going to have time for a show about murders and stuff, it would have to be empathetic towards victims, because the older I get, the less time I have for mindless gory entertainment.
