Posted on 03/12/2010 2:05:37 PM PST by Kaslin
NBC's "Law & Order" programs are long established and all over the schedule. But the sex-obsessed vice cops of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" are a breed apart. They exist to be socially provocative, which is to say, to rattle, to disturb. Viewers at home probably weren't ready for the plot that aired on NBC on March 3. These scriptwriters are so revolting that they become almost comical.
As you read what follows, you decided how closely this mirrors anything resembling the world of reality.
Someone was strangling prostitutes to death and leaving prayer cards behind. The first suspect was a perverted man whose wife proclaimed he had converted to Christianity and overcome his sinful ways. The cops quickly discovered the man dismissed his wife as a "prude," and he was cheating on her with a variety of young girls because "it's not a crime to want a little variety" in his sex life, including "toys, role play, and threesomes." Despite his ardor for sexual gunplay as well, this so-called Christian was not the strangler.
Unsurprisingly, the killer was a Bible-quoting minister. During an interrogation by the male lead detective on "SVU," he claimed, "There is a better life waiting for girls like her (a murdered prostitute) in Heaven," that "God put me on this earth to fight Satan's grip on these girls' souls!" And: "Sometimes dying is better than living."
This minister's religious creepiness was off the charts: "Whoever did this wasn't a murderer. Whoever did this sent these girls to Heaven out of love." When he was inserted into a line of suspects, he walked right up to the mirrored windows and yelled like a prophet from the Old Testament: "They shall fall by the sword, their infants dashed to pieces, and their women with child ripped open!"
The prostitute who was brought in to identify him ran down the hall and fell down a flight of stairs, damaging -- surprise -- her unborn baby. When she later identifies the killer and he is convicted in court, the Christian killer screams more Bible verses at the judge. "He who sitteth on high, upon the wicked, he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: This shall be the portion of their cup!"
Now let's try to turn this around, or make it less upside-down. Instead of Christian minister villains and saintly prostitutes, reverse it. Let's say the innocent victims are nuns, and the vicious assailant is an atheist. How would this plot sound to Hollywood?
A string of nuns are being strangled to death, and left behind at the crime scene are tracts from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One young nun narrowly escapes death, and is called into the station to identify her assailant.
The killer is a stark-raving atheist. When the cops bring him in, he's shown grisly pictures of strangled nuns, and he creepily proclaimed, "Someone needs to fight the noxious idea of God and its grip on these women!" and "Sometimes dying is better than living."
When the nun who escaped came back to see a police lineup, the creepy atheist walked right up to the mirrored window and yelled "Praise Darwin! Evolve beyond belief!" And: "Stop telling pious lies to trusting children! It's abuse, plain and simple!" The young nun was so frightened that she ran out into a stairwell and fell down a flight of steps.
Later, when the atheist goes on trial, the nun identifies him as her assailant. He responds by verbally attacking the judge: "Uphold the separation of Church and State. These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death!"
This plot would create unholy havoc in Hollywood, which would reject this scenario as outrageous, defamatory and even immoral. But reverse the characters, and they're the actual outrageous, defamatory propaganda plots that NBC airs without a second thought.
Most Americans would vote for a plot where the nuns and the ministers were on the side of Good. That's the way it used to be, before the sexual revolution and the wholesale rejection of religion as a positive force in society. But in today's Hollywood, these characters are quite easily (and literally) demonized.
Many millions of Americans believe in a religious worldview and traditional moral values. They love their churches and hate their sins, and they don't see the Bible as a dangerous fiction book that inspires killers. The fact that NBC chose the tradition-bashing set of cultural talking points on "SVU" shows the vast moral disconnect between Hollywood and the rest of America.
I would argue that nothing the ministers and religious characters are not saying anything that reflects Christian beliefs.
The only one to do it well was CSI. Lady Heather rocks!
“Let’s say the innocent victims are nuns, and the vicious assailant is an atheist. How would this plot sound to Hollywood?”
Make the perp a muslim and you’ve got a true story that’s already happened.
Mariska may be hot, but the show is crap. I think of it as Law & Order SUV, investigating crimes committed by evil republican SUVs.
I agree with your points but nobody in Hollywood would have job writing "dog bites man" stories. It has to be "Man bites dog". The unusual, the sensational, ever pressing to be more outrageous than the one before. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a great influence on our children. That's why you see young Iowa farm girls, etc., going to school with pink hair and dressing like hookers. No offence to Iowa farm girls, but you get my point.
true, and they never tried to portray her as happy, well adjusted or “another kind of normal”.
Unfortunately there are those who profess to be Christians, who behave badly. I was in a therapy training group in which one pretty young trainee complained that 2 of the deacons of her conservative church would fondle her after she entered puberty. I was in a number of training workshops where someone would hold a person who was working on some very heavy grief or terror memories. The only instance I observed where someone misinterpreted that this holding was solely supportive and not sexual, was a Texas preacher who thought it was OK to try to fondle his partners breasts. I had one client who was very high strung and very “Christian”. He kept wanting to touch me sexually, which I did NOT permit. I came to the conclusion that he was using his religiosity as a defense against his very strong sexual impulses. Several decades ago I read a research report on juvenile delinquent behavior which indicated that about 25% of protestant christian youth (boys?) engaged in delinquent behavior, whereas 35% of Catholic youth did so.
Unfortunately I know of plenty of other sexual mistreatment that had nothing to do with religion. Whenever sex is treated as taboo, evil, dirty, etc., children growing up in such an environment are more at risk of having life problems around sexuality.
“Make the perp a muslim and you’ve got a true story that’s already happened.”
Yes, last night on Nightline there was a story about a young girl, 11 or 12, in Afghanistan who was married off by her parents to a Taliban. She was forced to live and sleep with the animals. Her husband decided that she wasn’t behaving satisfactorily, and while his friends held her down, he cut off her nose. Apparently she is going to get some US help with cosmetic surgery.
Geez. What an asshat. Guys like that need to get their asses kicked really hard, then shot.
While that's true, that is not what's going on in this case. These writers really believe that this is what Christians are like and take great pleasure in portraying Christians as dangerous kooks.
Same here, but only one CSI, and that is NY, almost solely because it stars Gary Senise (sp) The rest I agree. Criminal Minds has totally turned me off, Yet! I like the show so I hope they don’t.
Law & Order is really riling people up lately. It was a good show before the political correctness hit. All the Law & Orders are going down the same path it seems. The link below was about anchor babies.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2476846/nbc_law_order_race_baiting_prime_time.html?cat=9
Flawed like anybody else. They didn't put her on a pedestal or demean her. They actually built a real, well-developed, believable character. Not bad for a character that was in only five episodes. And the play off of Grissom was perfect.
I think your parody script is quite good.
However, I’ve already resolved to never watch that SVU again. If you watch if often enough (not too too many viewings required) you’ll see that one of the sub-plots is that the cops are almost as screwy as the criminals.
Every time I’ve watched it I’ve felt very depressed by the story, or the ending. That’s not what I watch TV for, so I’ve sworn off this show.
Also CSI, New York, even though it has Gary Sinise. I saw one episode of that that was so gruesome and horrifying (even though complete unbelievable) that it had me freaked out for about 3 days. So that was the end of that.
It doesn’t really capture NYC at all either, so that I think is also bad.
>>>I haven’t watched TV in six months, and haven’t missed a thing.
I grant you that you haven’t missed much, but it’s a shame you missed out on “Better Off Ted”. A show set in a large corporation, intelligently written, and very funny.
One bit of business they did on most episodes was a fake commercial for the corporation. They were pre-empted repeatedly for Obama speeches and replied with this “commercial”. Check it out.
Veridian Dynamics responds to President Obama’s request for free air time for his press conference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpUPW4FL6Mo
Hey, the language makes you think you are watching HBO or something.
Now I don’t mind expletives, but when it’s just over and over and over strictly for the shock value you don’t have a problem with the words, what you have is a problem with the writers.
Pretend-to-be writers, that is.
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