life and death

9 Chickweed Lane

Lately I've been thinking about how murder came to be considered entertainment. We have a ruddy fascination with death, but not just death of any kind -- death by natural causes is your classic chick flick recipe (Beaches, etc).

Does that make the violence as entertainment culture exclusively male? I confess to a certain guilty pleasure that involves watching things getting blown up on the big screen, especially if it's a woman pressing the button (like Michelle Rodriguez in S.W.A.T.)

But human-induced death seems to be where our culture spends most of its entertainment dollars. It is thought that killing makes us godlike, I suppose. To me, a supremely fallible human being, goddessness is the last thing I'd want to aspire to. It's hard enough trying to live a fully human life. Apparently it is for politicians and the religious too -- our so-called "culture of life" seems to thrive amidst a yang that is our entertainment culture of death.

We've lost much of what past cultures learned about what makes us human, in contrast with that mysterious force in the universe we often personify as God or the gods. Greek mythology is rife with the dangers of trying to out-god the the gods. I guess it just goes to show how long this has been going on -- the endless decline of the human race. Like old JT said, "it's just a lovely ride." Unfortunately, although I admire that sentiment, I can't seem to live by it. I need to look at how things are and see how they could be. The idealist in me, I guess. Luckily I can use that same outlook on myself, otherwise things would be bleak indeed!