By Margi Washburn
They say that the reading of scary books soars during troubled times. The same goes for the phenomenal success of horror and suspense movies. I am paraphrasing here, but Stephen King has said that we look to this kind of entertainment to take our minds off of what's happening all around us. We see what awful things are happening to fictional characters, believing that something that frightening could never happen to us.
I always thought my love of the macabre came from my mom. She brought sis and I up on scary stories of all kinds, but I think my sister tends to shy away from that kind of thing. Plenty of people think I'm a bit odd because I love cloudy days, storms of all kinds, horror flicks and books; it's been that way for me for as long as I can remember.
As hubby and I were settling down to watch television the other night, it was about time for the local news. The headlines for upcoming stories were given. Hubby had the remote control, something that's allowed in our home now and then, when we heard that the upcoming news would be about the retrial of Sarah Kolb. Click.
The next channel started in on an inside investigation at a Quad City pet store. We heard puppies yelping and I threw my hands up. “I can't watch that. Sorry.” I began to get out of my chair.
“Well, if you can't watch it, neither can I,” said hubby and he changed the channel one more time.
The lead story this time was on the Baptist church arsonists. At the time of this writing, there have been ten such unsolved fires. My heart broke – again.
Along with the above, stories were coming about rampant fraud with Hurricane Katrina money, a mom who mutilated her baby, another mom who left her child in a car that caught fire, and a husband and father who killed his wife and child. It was more than enough.
“Let's watch Seinfeld,” I said, with a catch in my throat.
I'm not ashamed that we ran away from the truth to watch a Seinfeld rerun for the umpteenth time. We've seen these shows so often we can say the lines before the actors do. But Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer seem like old friends. We even like Newman because he makes us laugh.
We do watch dramas, or comedy-dramas like Boston Legal. Who wouldn't want a lawyer on their side like Alan Shore? James Spader, in our humble opinion, is superb as an attorney for the underdog. We loved watching him get Betty White's character off for murder and for robbing convenience stores – with a gun, no less.
I love to watch Still Standing because the parents are so awful that I know we've done a much better job raising our own kids. Ghost Whisperer and Medium are fun, spooky escapism; besides being creepy, the shows depict loving relationships with family and friends.
As I get ready to leave for work after the nasty storm we had this morning, I notice that my book of choice is a suspenseful story, likely full of murder and mayhem. I'll read it knowing that there's nothing in my life nearly as bad as all of that.
I guess what it comes down to is this: I want to choose my drama. I don't like it to be so personal, so tragic to real families and friends and little puppies and kittens. I want people to make it their personal goal to be kind to one another, care for each other and look for the good in everyone. Let writers use their imaginations to come up with the bad guys and gals. We don't need any more reality television in our lives, do we?
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