The Darkest Year of Television Debuts: Cult, The Following, Hannibal, Red Widow, and More

When The Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999, it changed television forever in terms of the acceptability of violent programming.  Other cable programs made similar impacts (e.g. Sex in the City pushed the limits in terms of sexual situations on the small screen), and slowly throughout the past two decades this type programming that delves into the taboo has had a ripple effect now being felt on network television. 

Violence is not necessarily a stranger to network TV – the massive popularity of the endless versions of CSI attest to that.  However, never before has there been such an array of explicitly violent programming offered up for the primetime viewer.  In January, as noted in a previous post, Fox launched its new drama, The Following, starring Kevin Bacon.  A month later, the CW debuted its new program, Cult.  As the titles indicate, both programs track the happenings of cult participants following a charismatic leader (of sorts).  While this leader in The Following is an actual serial killer who has recruited individuals from all walks of life to kill in his name, Cult’s storyline (and “leader”) is a bit more complicated.  The show tracks the amateur detective work of two main characters, Jeff Sefton (Matthew Davis) and Skye Yarrow (Jessica Lucas), who are searching for answers concerning a cult connected to a television program produced by a man named Steven Ray.  (Skye believes her journalist father’s death is related to investigating this man a decade prior and Jeff believes his brother’s recent disappearance is related to his joining this cult of television fans).  Cult depends on the postmodern text-within-a-text stylistic:  it is a television show about a television show (of the same name).  When real audience members watch the onscreen audience viewing the scenes from the fictional show Cult, they too are drawn to the charismatic Billy Grimm (Robert Knepper), the star of the show-within-the-show.  In these moments, viewers at home are watching this fictional program along with the characters on the show.  It’s a narrative time out where one program stops and another begins, only they are dependent on one another.  Read viewers are hence forced to watch the television program that is leading to mental breakdowns and mass murder and, therefore, read viewers are implicated by this way of watching alongside of the crazies.  (Are you still following me?)  Besides for these jarring moments, the meta-commentary about the state of television today, with scenes that analyze online forums where fans connect globally, is noteworthy too.

As I’ve watched these shows this winter I’ve often thought their release is a bit tardy, though still relevant.  As cult involvement tends to heighten during anticipated “end of days” moments, these programs would have been all the more disturbing to watch in the lead up to the anticipated end of the world date – December 21^st, 2012.  (Although these programs were, of course, pitched and produced during this time period).  And while the cultural moment may explain the narrative content of these shows, viewers’ seeming desire for violent content (or their tolerance for consuming what is being offered up to them) is not as easily explained.

Along with these shows, NBC is premiering its new show Hannibal next month (a television series that will be based on the novels of Thomas Harris).  Like The Following and Cult, I would anticipate that this new program will show graphic murders in almost every episode.  (Both The Following and Cult have featured a murder in each episode and various torture scenes as well).

While not as gruesome, another wave of violent programming is also in progress.  Producers are taking advantage of America’s long obsession with gangster narratives with a new set of mob-focused programs.  ABC’s Red Widow aired for the first time this month and follows the happenings of the Russian mafia and their coastal drug imports.  Direct TV is preparing to debut its new series, Rogue, which is similarly follows mob activities on the docks of California (Rouge is set in Oakland while Red Widow is set in San Francisco). 

So as I watch these new programs, and the trailers for the ones yet to come, I’m struck with how violent the televisual landscape is at present.  And it’s not just that these programs simply exist, they’re pulling in a ton of viewers.  (Case in point, AMC’s zombie show, Walking Dead, discussed in a previous post, has secured itself a spot in the top ten most watched television programs for the past few weeks.  Its midseason premiere drew in over 15 million viewers becoming the first cable series to ever beat out every other show of the fall broadcast season in the coveted 18-49 demographic).

Is this surge of violence on the small screen a product of television as a medium becoming more like film (as it continues to nudge its older sibling out of the way in terms of popularity and cultural impact)?  Is it a product of the times – the consumption of violence as a coping mechanism for dealing with the post-9/11 climate where media pundits feed us endless scenarios of doom and gloom while real military and terrorist violence fills our television screens in the form of nonfiction (or quasi-nonfiction)? 

Although I rarely tend to jump on the alarmist bandwagon about the effects of media violence on viewers, siding instead with the research that shows that the effects of violent programming and video games have few predictable and/or measurable effects on consumers, I do wonder what the long term effects of this trend could be if this is just a preview of coming attractions.  In much of my scholarly work I’ve argued that television consumption works like a negative affect theory (to use Silvan Tomkins’s terminology):  it works to decrease negative affect amongst viewers.  What this has meant in my reading of news coverage is that the constant array of visual imagery we see of car crashes and school shootings and bombings abroad eventually desensitizes us to these incidents.  I would argue that we no longer really feel “sadness” and “horror” when driving by a horrible wreck on the side of the freeway because we’ve been trained to voyeuristically study such imagery as they flit across our flat screen televisions at home (hence the “gawker delays” we face when traffic slows down in front of these scenes).  So, if this is the case, could the same be true of fictional television? 

While we likely won’t encounter opportunities to be desensitized to real zombie attacks or find ourselves in close proximity with cult leaders, serial killers, or mob enforcers, could this array of violent imagery desensitize us to violence more generally?   And, perhaps more importantly, what does it say about us as a society that right now this type of violence is so appealing to us?  What does it say about me that my DVR is full of these shows and that I don’t find myself bothered by the fact that I’m watching all of this, while also catching up on seasons of Dexter on DVD?  I don’t have an answer but as I tune into the next installment of cults and killers and mobsters (oh my!), I’ll be sure to continue contemplating the consequences these programs may have on the public (and  on myself).