crime scene fanaticism

Does anyone else find it mildly alarming the number of television shows there are about grotesque states of the human body?

We’ve got CSI and its 20 spin-offs, NCIS, Law & Order, Bones, House, Mercy, Grey’s Anatomy. All going into some level of detail of the countless ways people can die and the way they look 48 hours later.

I just recently heard of an episode where a person was found burned to a crisp in a restaurant grease trap. How’s that for appetizing?

Once again, I contemplate, what does the success of these “entertainment” juggernauts say about us? Why do we need 30 different shows displaying flying human organs and mutilated body parts?

Is it because we are just simply fascinated with gore? No wonder we have desensitized killers walking around with shotguns. Of course they’re unaffected by death–we all are. On a daily basis we are exposed to more televised acts of violence and bloody pools of decaying human beings than our grandparents saw in their lifetime–and that’s just on the evening news.

And let’s not forget the seemingly “mild” shows where a person is simply shot to death and when the investigators finally nail the killer, they find he killed for–gasp!–money. Didn’t see that coming.

My guess is that as the television landscape becomes more and more traveled, plots and storylines will become as commonplace as an unbroken, happy family. That is to say, extinct. Violence and bloodshed will utterly replace depth and thinking ability. Just keep our eyes moving and we’ll be too busy or have become too stupid to notice the unintelligent jargon or the predictable villain.