Alyssa contemplates pop culture's relationship with violence:
If there’s one thing that marks our current era of popular culture, it’s an obsession with cool of the kind exemplified by Quentin Tarantino’s movies, or with transgressive badassery, of the sort that’s characterized so many anti-hero dramas. And the way most people achieve that cool or badassness? The deployment of violence. This has become a clear problem for shows like Breaking Bad, where some fans, schooled in the lesson that transgression and violence are admirable, are failing to read the clear signs from Vince Gilligan that it’s time Walter White faced his comeuppance, whether in the form of cancer, violent death, or imprisonment and shame. It’s time to retrain viewers in how to interpret violence, so we can tell the difference between its deployment for gleefully sadistic ends, and when it’s a sign that a character has become depraved—and maybe that we need more products that are sure of which argument they’re making.
The Dish 