Testing...testing

I'm too conflicted to deal with Carmichaelgate, so in the time-honoured fashion, I'm just going to dodge the issue altogether in favour of something else. 

I read a couple of weeks ago that women working in Hollywood have been protesting about the number of films and TV shows that appear to glorify the rape, torture and murder of women. I watch a few American shows in the style the French call 'policiers': Gotham, CSI, Criminal Minds, NCIS. I've started watching them with new eyes since I read this. And I have to report there are a few nasty things going around but not that many.

The least awful is NCIS, which is really a comedy vehicle for Michael Weatherly, Mark Harmon and the producer's son-in-law Sean Murray (who proves there's an acting job for everybody but only if they're well-connected). But no violence against women: this has a navy setting so most of the victims are men.

CSI is now just daft, so daft I've starting switching off: the CSIs seem to be doing the work of the cops in this series and even I know that's just never going to happen. Ted Danson can't be so short of cash he needs to lend his name to this, surely? There are a lot of serial killers but the focus is on the investigation stage. There are snaps of bodies on tables in the morgue but always with their bits delicately covered by a towel. 

Criminal Minds does the before/after bit, showing people being stalked by crazies and then the investigation stage. With its resident speed-reading genius and the mouthy computer brainiac, it has pretensions to being clever but it's not. It's also not scary, although there's far too much emphasis on 'home invasion' and 'family annihilation' so the body count can be pretty high. Maybe this appeals to the target audience? 

The daddy of them all is Gotham. A woman popping her own eye out. Another strung up by ropes from the ceiling and having her mouth stuffed with a ball gag. Shootings, stabbings, drownings, kidnappings - all routine and quite often featuring women. The Gotham cops are utterly corrupt and as likely to be murderers as the gangsters. As far as I can see, there are no good guys. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I'm watching this at all. Pretty nasty.

In movies, women have come up with what's called the 'Bechdel Test.' If you want to know if a movie is misogynistic, apply this test: 

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.

On that basis, all of the series above fail the test. I suspect most TV does...

Coming back to Carmichaelgate, I am thrilled to read at least one report that mentions a possible conspiracy theory because Lorne Campbell of the BBC and Alistair Carmichael went to the same school, Islay High School. We all know about the Lewis Mafia, but maybe it's time for the good folk of Leodhas  to move over and make way for the Islay Mafia...