Where has it gone? We only talk death talk now.
Did you excel at something? You killed it. Was that funny? You’re dead. Win at chess? You slayed your opponent. Exciting game? It was carnage! As a teacher, I hear kids threaten to kill, stab, beat, etc constantly, and tho it is disturbing, it is also leading to the most boring, embarrassing, insipid way of communicating we have ever put on a nation.
How the heck did we get here? Welp, monkey see monkey do, for the most part. When our town had only one tv network, and cable hadn’t hit its stride, daytime tv was housewives’ soaps and game shows. A couple of kid shows after school, then the news at dinner, Gunsmoke, Andy Griffith, and then family-oriented comedies and light fare after. Weekends saw sports, maybe some sci-fi, this new thing rock and roll, a compelling movie, and Disney on Sunday. The bad guy never won. Only a handful of role models. James Dean was dubbed the only ‘rebel”, but he was sulky and irritating. The Grinch was the paragon of evil.
A few years later, cable tv rolls into towns, and more big networks. Crime tv and hospital shows become popular. Cowboys give way to super heroes who give way to detective shows who blossom into CSI 32 flavors and serial killer serials. All day if you want. Big screen movies sport X and R films where anything goes. Porn rallies and expands. Daytime tv is not for housewives only anymore. The 24-7 tv consumer is born.
My own songs are splattered (see how I am?) in death-speak. And many of my favorites of other writers contain death puns. I don’t love crime tv, but I know folks who do. Seeing 13 dead girls killed in different ways every week in your living room has got to numb us down. Kids in my classes don’t know the 4 directions (NSEW) but they can tell you many ways to get rid of a dead body. Not only do they fear gunmen attacking their classrooms, they have to watch endless shows about it on the channelrama daily. The hard/soft division is pushed. They get solitary confinement rooms for misbehaving. Kevlar backpacks for the rich.
I often give out old guitar mags to students, where I am quick to point out the respectful, informative comment sections of yesteryear. I also note that the newspaper comments were not the hateful, privileged poo of today. Who would’ve thought that running 20 gruesome crime shows every day, pushing city-leveling violent games to all kids, and giving airtime with no consequence to the uneducated, unprepared people with their own behavior problems could affect the entire language of a people so much?
But we had to add division at every level, and commence to roll out a gazillion bits of negative bias, cloaked as memes, ads, gifs and promotion. To generate sales and interaction. Stuck in traffic the other day, I counted only one ad in an hour and ten minutes that didn’t use negative bias to sell. But that, my friends, is part 2 of this Love Language musing.
This week, I am making an effort to use sweet terms when I talk about good things instead of words related to death, maiming, and suffering. I will start in my own head, ‘cause it needs it!
Listen around, and think about how we lean on this murder talk, and let’s vibe on switching it back to Love Language. Look to Grandmother Moon.