All my mom watches is all of those Murder shows on cable like Forensic Files and the like. She's been watching this since I can remember and long before I ever heard the term "true crime". I legit think shows like this are why so many gen-x and boomers are terrified of the world. They all open talking about how the small town that the case happened in was using almost identical language each time, " here in x we don't lock our doors, everybody knows everybody, things don't happen like this in x, we stop and help people on theroad ". And as a person who grew up in a small town I'm like what? Everyone there is the most paranoid castle doctrine ass motherfucker I've ever met. They don't know their neighbors and they treat anyone who they don't know as threats. Then the show goes at lengths to show you how kind, pretty, full of life, etc the victim is so they can then go into detail about how they were brutalized.
I don't know where I'm going with this rant it's just something that's been on my mind for a while.
That's interesting. I never really thought about it, but it makes sense, it's a damn effective way of further individualizing people based on pure fear.
There's a similar problem here in Brasil, but it's with the glorification of the police, of police brutality and glorification of violence in general. There's a bunch of famous "journalistic" programs in here, like Cidade Alerta (Alert City, or something like that in english), where these things are heavily glorified, like, daily.
There's this incredible video by Chavoso da USP (CW: SA of a minor being mentioned in the video), where he talks about this in detail, if you can, watch it, it's incredibly well done, the auto translation of the subtitles to english is fairly good.
And well, this isn't just a problem in television anymore. For years now, police action and brutality have been recorded, livestreamed and posted online, specially on youtube. Hell, I opened youtube on incognito mode just now, and this was one of the thumbnails in the front page:
spoiler
Yeah, it's a whole video of police going after people on motorcycles. Not only that, but my brother and his friends watch this stuff regurlarly.
Chavoso also talks about it in this other video, which is sort of a continuation of the other one I linked above.
I was gonna mention something else to show how media molds what is accepted or not on society, in turn also molding what is accepted to be shown in media, but it was so fucked up I got sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I think everything I said above provides a good picture of this same effect happening in a different way here in Brasil, shaping the collective imaginary of the masses through the media we consume and are exposed to.
Yeah this same stuff exist in America as well, especially the YouTube stuff which I feel is the Copaganda for the newer generations. I'll get it in my recommendations and I know some people who watch it where it's just hours and hours of bodycam footage of "takedowns".
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2: