You become what you behold

That ominous insight is from cultural guru Marshall McLuhan, and if true we are in big trouble. Our television and movie fare is red in tooth and claw now. Time magazine says that TV dramas have become addicted to blood. It is drowning in dumb, mindless violence. Cinemax's “Strike Force” has already stacked up 208 corpses in one season. Time also diagnoses the creative ways of the grim reaper: impaling, knifing, poisoning, stabbing and in “Game of Thrones” strapping buckets of rats to prisoner's chests, stolen from Orwell's torture scene in “1984”. The NY Times says that gore flows freely in both broadcast and cable. It also points out that it is absurd to pretend that a gun culture is unrelated to popular culture. Is this how we escape from boredom? The late Neil Postman said we were “amusing ourselves to death”. We're not amused. This is our living rooms we're talking about and I, for one, have disinvited these monsters into our home. The Times says that Americans love to watch death, even when it's real. “Some can gaze and not be sick, But I could never learn the trick. There's this to be said for blood and breath, They give a man a taste for death.” A.E Housman