Monsieur Verdoux

Steyn On-line ^ | August 15, 2020 | Kathy Shaidle

[Twotone]

Back in the previous century, when I was the youngest employee at a small newspaper, the topic of horror movies came up in the lunchroom.

The twice-my-age-and-then-some ladies seated around me were tutting about one particularly nasty one — or so they'd heard — which had just been released. Movies like that, they all agreed, surely inspired some viewers to commit actual crimes, or at the very least, desensitized others to such real life violence.

I can take or leave most horror movies, but I couldn't help myself. Pointing to the paperback murder mystery one of my colleagues had in her lap, I asked:

"So how many people get killed in that book you're reading?"

The question of whether or not murder is an acceptable subject for entertainment is hardly new. Thomas DeQuincy wrote his satirical "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" in 1827, although Orwell's "Decline of the English Murder", penned in 1946, has proven more enduring. To their credit, many women who are addicted to "true crime" shows and podcasts — and fans are mostly women; HLN isn't nicknamed "the Hysterical Ladies' Network" for nothing — are also willing to ask themselves why.

[freefdny]

Very good article. Thanks for posting.

[epluribus_2]

HLN, Lifetime, etc. all can usually be described as the “I want my kids back!” Channel.

[twister881]

Chaplin was a small, awful creature who made some great silent films. His personal and political lives were disasters.

[Mr Radical]

Thnx for the post, I enjoyed reading the article.
And yes, BTW, I do believe that people of a certain intellect copy what they see on screen, and that it does de-sensitise the rest of us, in a way that the written word can never do.