The See-Saw: Are TV and Torture Porn Making Us Lose Our Balance?

This is a very hypothetical, very non-commital, somewhat inflammatory (but also, not at all new) thought process I've been going through over the past few days and I wanted to get it out there, just to give my conscience a break.

I'm a fan of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I'm not a die hard, even though I seem to structure my blogs in the same manner as the show, starting on a seemingly unrelated topic to the actual story. I'm not even 100% on being a fangirl (that's a lie, I'm just trying to hide my lust for Christopher Meloni's arms - yeah, I watched Oz, I admit it).
But I've been watching SVU for a good 6 years. I know which one's Alex and which one's Casey (sidebar, your Honour: I'm down with both my legal homegirls, no haters here), I know Dick Wolf has been messing with us on Olivia's sexuality for 90% of the show's 12 seasons thus far (is it the butch hair? is it the puffy jacket? is it Alex or Elliot? Put us out of our misery, Ironbone!*) and I can list each character's deviance for kicks. Okay, you twisted my arm -

Captain Cragen - alcoholic, 20 years sober
Elliot Stabler - anger management issues
Olivia Benson - child of rape, daughter of traumatised, alcoholic mother
John Munch - conspiracy theorist, kook and ex-husband four times over
Odafin Tutuola - absentee father making amends to his adult son
Alex Cabot - ADA who had a hit put out on her, was shot by a former member of the IRA, thrown into witness protection, dragged in and out for appearances back at SVU and in her own shortlived spin-off (Conviction) and who now seems to live in unexplained suspended animation, brought back periodically with no explanation as to what she's been doing or if she's secretly boffing Olivia (maybe I used to run a community... maybe it was on Livejournal... and maybe it was packed with rabid femslashers that just loved their A/O pairing)
Casey Novak - replacement ADA to Alex Cabot, has a distinct lurching gait and notoriously bad fashion sense, was severely beaten whilst on the job and, let me just say, not a bad egg at all

*Ironbone is the nickname fangirls (okay, I admit it - I know too much) use for creator Dick Wolf, because it appears in multiple episodes as a company name or on posters - Dick just likes inserting his Ironbone wherever he can. Kapow, badoomtish! That's what she said.

So I may be a bit of a fan. Whatever. I can stop whenever I like.

But in seriousness, I started watching because some kids in my science class were talking about it before the teacher showed up one lesson. And I put in my two cents (I know, shock horror) that it was kind of wrong to watch a show totally centred around rape and violence. A bit messed up, you know. They didn't like that, let me tell you. And fair enough, no one wants it implied that they're a weirdo. But hey, I'm one of the weirdos - I succumbed and slowly slid into something of a long term, low intensity addiction.

(Okay, I say low intensity - but when Alex was shot, I cried. Multiple times. Bordering on hysteria. But who can blame me? Stephanie March is too pretty to even fake-die.)

I felt a bit guilty at first, going against my convictions, but it's so easy to be ensnared by the drama, the banter between cops or the infamous 'ripped from the headlines' plots that resemble real-life cases that have some international recognition. After a few years, the blood and the torn underwear and the dead bodies stop meaning much and it takes more and more gruesome, depraved acts just to get us paying attention.

Now, jump to the present. I was just made aware of a news story (via Facebook status updates, which is mostly where I get my news now... feel free to roll your eyes) that broke today about a teenage girl living in an affluent suburb not far from where I went to school who had a collar bomb strapped around her neck. It was fake and removed about 10 hours after the police arrived (and the bomb squad and Scotland Yard and a bunch of military personnel, say the rather vague reports that have come in thus far) and the girl is fine.

But the first thing that jumped into my head when I saw the words 'collar bomb' was the Saw franchise. Specifically, the third installment of torture porn. Where a doctor has her head blown off after being threatened throughout the movie to do what she's told, keep the mastermind alive or she dies. And yes, this was achieved through means of a collar bomb.

The few reports on this incident I've seen so far mention Colombian ransoms and a bank heist gone wrong in America where the victims in each case were killed when their collar bombs exploded. Now, I'm all for referencing real life occurrences in the media (otherwise, what on earth is the point?) but, apart from the girl being from a rich family, to which five children in private school and 'a house in the hills' attests, there are few similarities. The bank robber in the US was sold out by his buddies and the woman in Colombia hadn't paid the ransom and was killed as a technician attempted to diffuse her collar.  But it seems that, despite the girl's family now revealed as being supposedly "the richest in the city", no ransom demands were made.

The police have called it a "very, very elaborate hoax" and were fooled into believing it was, potentially, a real bomb around the girl's neck. No attempts at extortion were made, only clear instructions pinned to her chest saying not to call the police and not to disarm the bomb, or it would be detonated. But it has also been reported that the man who broke in told the girl she could call the police but not to give many details about him or he would detonate the bomb. Understandably, at such early stages, reports are mixed.

But without an initial extortive demand (or contact with the police during the 10 hours before the girl was freed) or any plausible reason the girl herself would merit that kind of operation, the whole situation seems gratuitous. Why bother? The father has been linked to Nokia, Microsoft and Google via his high-paying job and the concept of intimidation seems probable. It could have been extortion gone wrong or abandoned mid-way, for whatever reason.

But the fact remains that the vast majority of people in developed countries, and I'd say the majority of people who live in the area where the event took place, know collar bombs from Saw III. How they work, their applications, what motivates people to hit the red button. It's like ideas are being served up on a cellulose platter. It has even been admitted by John Moncrieff, former police officer and current security expert, that the situation shows "disturbing similarities" to a recent Hawaii Five-O episode.

“These shows all have ex-military and police officers giving them advice and telling war stories which get picked up by script writers to make them more realistic, and one of the unforeseen consequences is that they might inspire copycats...” - Mr Moncrieff

My immediate reaction to this story was that one or more persons under 30 got the idea to terrorise this girl by faking a collar bomb and watching as the scene played out in the media. I'd say they were most likely young men but with possible female accomplices and I'd say it's even more likely that they're high school age or just graduated. If so, I'd say the probability of a young woman or women being involved is much higher because, as we know, there's nothing like a teenage girl for psychological cruelty. And knowing the area, the private school system and the mentality of the young people in that environment, I'd say the possibility of this scenario being at least partly accurate is high. Bullying has been taken to extremes in Japan, America and even a suburb away from the girl's house at a prestigious private school.

Which brings me right back around to my issue with SVU (cos I've obviously seen too much crime drama when I start talking like this). I've been watching the latest season over the past week and finding myself more than usually horrified by the child actors they use on the show. How are they affected by what they hear, see and say on those sets? Pretending to be dead on a slab or crying, saying how a man put things inside you cannot be healthy, right? Tell me it's not just me who has these thoughts. And I worry about how incredibly desensitised we become by watching all of this. And what that means for fragile minds that might, consciously or subconsciously, act out according to what they've seen.

Like in this case, where the possibility is presented (even if by chance) of someone wanting to re-enact the horror that's expressed in torture porn like the Saw franchise, Hostel I + II, Wolfcreek and the Final Destination films.

I'm not suggesting censoring television and film more than is current, I'm not saying we shouldn't watch crime shows or confronting movies, I'm not even calling those that do (myself included) any nasty names. I don't really know what I'm doing.

I just wonder why we're so fascinated with this particular brand of horror and what it means. Because if we want to see atrocities, we could always look to the real world and use that repulsion to change the lives of real people. Apparently, SVU has helped many sexual assault victims come to terms with and even report the crimes against them, an admirable achievement. But what about women who survive rape as a weapon of war in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Rwanda, people who've suffered torture and degradation and abuse, anyone who's not able to find help or justice?

Never mind the good looking celebrities that play out pretend drama with fake blood while we eat our dinners on the couch, eyes glazed, unable to turn away.

Update: As of 7/8, the police have confirmed there was an extended note pinned to the girl and that it contained the name of a character from a book on the required reading list for her brothers' school. Further information seems to conclude (because the cops are being understandably tight-lipped about the whole thing) that there were no ransom demands mentioned, apart from the threat of activating the device if the police were involved or it was removed. There have been come mentions of a USB containing a digital copy of the note pinned to the girl, found inside the device.

Bungled extortion has an outside chance but I'd say they're quickly discovering how ridiculous spoiled rich kids can be and just as quickly covering it up for their parents.

Update: 16/8 - And it finally seems to be somewhat resolved. A man was arrested outside Louisville, KY and the police seem to have amassed quite compelling circumstantial evidence that it was him. The only problem is that no one can quite work out why he did it. And why his note not only referenced by seemed to centre around a book on her brother's school reading list. And how, exactly, he knew the family. And... once more... why the hell did he do it? We'll see what happens when he's finally extradited.
I'm glad it wasn't another sign of the impending apocalypse of the moral youth, when all is said and done. But I'm still pretty certain that we're moving in that direction, videogame by movie franchise by tv spin-off.  Quick, switch over to Lady GaGa... I want to watch something normal.