In recent years shows like ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Breaking Bad’ have caught our attention with gripping story lines which voyeuristically depict the darker side of human nature, all set in a modern urban landscape. We have been fascinated by the protagonists in these shows, wondering how they will continue to evade the law and avoid the gruesome death which seems inevitable given the environment they live in. Stories with criminal leads are not a new phenomenon, many films like ‘Scarface’, ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Trainspotting’, ‘City of God’ and ‘American Gangster’ have all represented socially corrupt individuals whose escapades capture our allegiance to the end. But it’s not just gangsters with guns we are seduced by. One of the most lauded movies in recent times was ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, a story about one man’s rollercoaster journey of hedonism at the cost of society and with little regard for the law. The film features a smart talking stock broker who teaches his employees how to take advantage of people’s desires and embezzle their savings for the broker’s gain. The movie’s lead, Leonardo Di Caprio later commented ‘to me, this attitude of what these characters represent in this film are ultimately everything that's wrong with the world we live in’.
Surely if we were to stand over our own ethical principles we should detest these villains, but the problem is that the characters lives are glamorised, their decadence is always the center of focus with total disregard for the impact their actions have on others, very similar to a blockbuster disaster movie like Transformers not considering how society is possibly going to repair an entire city after a late night robot scuffle. In effect cinema and copy cat tv programmes no longer offer themselves as a platform to educate and have been consumed by their prime purpose to entertain.
The end result is that society has been desensitised to criminal behaviour, we’re no longer outraged by white collar crime, murder, political corruption or drug trafficking. Newspapers have resorted to publishing stories about Justin Bieber, x-factor gossip, and celebrity tweets to maintain readership.
What’s more upsetting than society losing its moral compass is that these programmes closely associate drugs and drug use with power, wealth, sex, success, and a general easy path to the high life (pun intended). Although we may laugh at the use of quaaludes and accept Tony Montana quantities of cocaine abuse as standard movie practice, I think it’s time we start asking ourselves questions when heroin abuse suddenly becomes common place entertainment, especially in shows like ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. If we are going to hold these programmes on a pedestal as the greatest shows on television perhaps we need to understand what they actually represent and re-evaluate our own ethical mindset. The following videos all depict heroin use in some of the movies & programmes mentioned and the final video is a very clever explanation of exactly what heroin addiction is. This isn't a post that intends to advocate censorship but hopes to raise awareness that if the only education we get on drugs is from the entertainment industry then we are going to learn the wrong message.
Surely if we were to stand over our own ethical principles we should detest these villains, but the problem is that the characters lives are glamorised, their decadence is always the center of focus with total disregard for the impact their actions have on others, very similar to a blockbuster disaster movie like Transformers not considering how society is possibly going to repair an entire city after a late night robot scuffle. In effect cinema and copy cat tv programmes no longer offer themselves as a platform to educate and have been consumed by their prime purpose to entertain.
The end result is that society has been desensitised to criminal behaviour, we’re no longer outraged by white collar crime, murder, political corruption or drug trafficking. Newspapers have resorted to publishing stories about Justin Bieber, x-factor gossip, and celebrity tweets to maintain readership.
What’s more upsetting than society losing its moral compass is that these programmes closely associate drugs and drug use with power, wealth, sex, success, and a general easy path to the high life (pun intended). Although we may laugh at the use of quaaludes and accept Tony Montana quantities of cocaine abuse as standard movie practice, I think it’s time we start asking ourselves questions when heroin abuse suddenly becomes common place entertainment, especially in shows like ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. If we are going to hold these programmes on a pedestal as the greatest shows on television perhaps we need to understand what they actually represent and re-evaluate our own ethical mindset. The following videos all depict heroin use in some of the movies & programmes mentioned and the final video is a very clever explanation of exactly what heroin addiction is. This isn't a post that intends to advocate censorship but hopes to raise awareness that if the only education we get on drugs is from the entertainment industry then we are going to learn the wrong message.
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