Am I the only one who thinks "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is a really creepy show?
Is it just me? Seriously?
I mean, who was the person who said, “Let’s do a ‘Law & Order’ spinoff where all the cases are bizarre sex offenses!”? It’s kind of perverse. Of course, perverse things aren’t all that unusual. What is unusual is that the normal conservative, not-that-edgy audiences that watch “Law & Order” want to watch a show about violent and often disturbing made-up sex offenses every single week.
What’s this about? Does sex sell? Maybe someone realized that a good percentage of the population are victims of sex offenses, and want some way of working through that. And maybe lots of people watch SVU just so they can try and work out things that happened to them in the past. (Does that make NBC good, for providing this to those people, or evil, for exploiting those people to get ratings?)
Even more strangely, how many “Law & Order” fans (who weren’t raped or anything) watch SVU without it ever occurring to them how perverse the show’s premise is, kind of like kids who grow up eating Spam without ever realizing how weird and gross it is?
Tags: law and order, sex, television
No, it’s creepy. Weird and creepy.
In its inception, the show wasn’t too bad. But after a couple of seasons it really degraded. I haven’t seen much of the last 2 seasons myself.
Now Law & Order: Trail by Jury…That show was a total crapfest.
ThirdManFromTheLeft
I highly doubt the show’s fan base consists of victims of sex offenses. I would think they’d find that material upsetting. More likely, they’re just crime groupies.
You’d think they’d find it upsetting, and some of them undoubtedly do, but I think lots of people who have gone through traumatic experiences try thinking about them and the issues surrounding them in order to work through it.
It’s no more odd than any of the other Law & Orders or Criminal Intents. The shows are weird, their plots are twisted, and a lot of it is creepy.
That is why they are interesting.
Well said, Phil.
I find a lot of current shows are creepy. Far too many of them are all about death. Death and rotting bodies. Death and maggots. Death and bullet holes, stab wounds, bruises.
I find SVU creepy and voyeuristic. Most of the Law and Order shows (I have watched a few) are far too predictable.
“I think lots of people who have gone through traumatic experiences try thinking about them and the issues surrounding them in order to work through it.”
So true! And *this* is why I have seen every WW2 film ever made!!
My father lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland, and this experience shaped who he is. He was facinated with WW2 in books, newsreels, documentaries. I always thought that he was seeking to understand the enormity of what he had absorbed as a child his entire adult life.
While I believe that we can learn something of the nature of sexual predation from such a show…when is becomes *entertainment,* it seems to me that it crosses a line I’m not comfortable with.