“Enough is enough.” It’s a resounding refrain heard related to consumption of food and drink, the attitudes and behaviors of certain individuals who cause frustration constantly, and the dissatisfaction expressed toward politicians and leaders.
But when is “enough is enough” the appropriate response to media?
Different reviewers at HollywoodJesus.com have tackled television material considered to be “too graphic for all audiences,” and not all of us agree on where to draw the line. You can check out our reviews of Spartacus, True Blood, Camelot, Justified, Game of Thrones, Desperate Housewives, The Walking Dead, and The Killing. Or maybe you draw the line farther back, at the sexual banter of The Big Bang Theory or the mere title of GCB. Consider the trailer for the upcoming season of Game of Thrones:
Recently, a fellow reviewer commented that a cutting edge show proved to be too something: “It was an underdog story, but there was so much violence, greed, and lust that the last episode, where the hero slaughtered all the villains, was hardly worth it. It was fitting for the series, just more killing out of vengeance. But I came away with the same feeling last night about another show similar in graphic content. So there must be something different about those kinds of series. In movies, that kind of graphic violence rarely bothers me. It’s just not an issue for me. But something about these shows really disturbs my spirit. It’s strange.
“I am curious as to what exactly it is that I can’t tolerate about them. Maybe it’s that a movie has a confined storyline that only requires one or two traumatic events to establish a character as a credible villain (and likewise, the hero or his loved ones as victims of the evil). But these TV series seem to compound the evil, stacking one traumatic event on top of another so that in the end, all we seem to be watching week to week is the latest act of hatred, greed, violence, abuse, and retribution. Which leads to the possibility of the problem being delayed justice. It took many, many episodes of the bad guys abusing and murdering innocents before they were called to account for their crimes. Is that a cultural issue? How long can we Americans really endure such grave injustice? We are a culture founded on rights, and we are not acclimated to enduring persecution or being a victim who has no recourse.”
- Do you have a line that you won’t cross in media? Is it related to language, content, theme, or something else?
- Why do you think you have that response in that area? Or are you comfortable taking it all in?
