Rooting for the bad guy

A few days ago my sister asked me why I don't often write about serious topics. I tend to tell a funny story and make me people laugh or at least smile. I find that "serious" topics are much more difficult to pull off well. With that being said, something has been chewing on my mind lately...

I have recently become concerned with the entertainment world's tendency to force society to root for the bad guy. Examples of this trend are found everywhere you turn. In Ocean's Eleven, you find yourself hoping that Clooney and his gang successfully steal millions of dollars from a casino. Within the first five minutes of The Italian Job you are cheering for the thieves to get away with bricks of gold.

And it isn't just the thieves we root for... one of today's most successful television shows is The Sopranos, where you pray Tony doesn't get nabbed by the feds. And we have The Shield, where bad-guy policemen serve as your hero.

The music-world is even worse because we're told to support real-life bad guys. A rapper has no "street-cred" until he's been shot a few times, e.g. my personal fav, 50 cent. The "bad guy"
is the guy we root for, the guy whose records we buy... we're forced into the bad guy's corner.

When we are manipulated into cheering for the criminals, the violence, and the cheaters, are we not being fooled into bending our ethics? We willingly fall into the trap of wanting the bad guy to get away, but are we also letting our sense of right and wrong get away with that bad guy? Are we teaching our children that sometimes the bad guy deserves to get away without punishment, or, worse yet, there is fame and fortune and fans when you are the bad guy. Surely we are not knowingly instilling this morality, or actually lack there of, in the next generation.

We complain about today's adolescents not respecting authority and losing past generations' ideas about ethics and what it means to be a good citizen, but can we blame them? We've placed the next generation in front of the television and, even if unintentionally, induced them to cheer for mob bosses, crooked cops, thieves, and murders.

I am one of the world's biggest First Amendment advocates and believe that the entertainment world has every right to provide us with films, television, and music that presents the "bad guy" as the hero. I am simply hoping that we, as an informed society, will at the very least take the time to realize that we're being duped into cheering for characters that do not share our ethics, our morals, or even our innate sense of justice. Just be conscious of the fact that you are rooting for the bad guy.

Skinny French Women

I'm reading a best seller right now called French Women Don't Get Fat. I picked up the book thinking (1) I want to know how to get un-fat and (2) I want to know how to get un-fat and still eat cream sauces. It really does sound too good to be true... eat like the French and don't turn into a walrus. My boyfriend says they don't get fat because of all the cigarettes. There might be some truth to that, but the author has not yet mentioned that as part of the French philosophy. I'll let you know how it turns out...