Life Is Wasted On The Living - Death and Dying in Film, Television and even Shakespeare

Spoiler Warning - major spoilers for Inglourious Basterds, Supernatural, Heroes, Star Trek Into Darkness & Star II: Wrath of Khan and I, Claudius
Very minor spoilers  for - Pushing Daisies, Casino Royale
I hesitate to call these spoilers but for American Beauty & Sunset Boulevard some information is divulged that you may not know; Hamlet -I know it's hundreds of years old but it will be spoiled, and Valkyrie - it's a true story so EVERYONE will know how it ends but this will also be spoiled.

The Trolley Problem is a set of famous thought experiments designed to bring up moral dilemmas and have people examine their ethical decisions. The classic example is to imagine yourself the driver of a runaway trolley (tram) and further down are five people working on the track. The only thing you can do is divert the trolley onto another track but this track has one person on it. Whatever you choose to do at least one person will die. The second part of the thought experiment is to imagine yourself as a doctor with five patients who all need different organs to survive and there is a sixth person who is a donor match for all five people but is perfectly healthy and unwilling to donate their organs. Is it morally right for you as the surgeon to kill the sixth person and give the other patients the organs they need? Most people think it is okay to move the trolley onto another track but wrong for the surgeon to murder one person for their organs but they both have the same outcome - five people alive in exchange for one dead person. These philosophical problems were dealt with adroitly by a programme called Pushing Daisies; it was an odd programme in which the central character, Ned, had the power to bring people back to life, all he needed to do was touch a dead body and they would be resurrected and touching them again would kill them. Ned used this power to help solve murder cases with a private detective he knew and they would split the reward. There are a few strings attached to Ned's power. First, if Ned resurrected someone and touched them again they die and will stay dead. Second, if Ned doesn't touch the person again and allowed them to live somebody else will die in their place. If we compare this to The Trolley Problem most people, I would think, would be of the opinion Ned shouldn't bring someone back from the dead permanently as that would mean another person would die and Ned is taking action that will cause someone's death even if the number of dead and alive people stayed the same. A scenario they never covered with the Trolley Problem was what if one of the people is Anna Friel?  Such an oversight is typical of philosophers and when Ned learned of the death of his childhood crush - Chuck played by Anna Friel - he had to decide what to do. Not surprisingly he chose to bring Anna Friel back to life.

There are a lot of deaths in pop culture. Arguably, there should be a lot more, according to the IMDB only five people died on screen in The A-Team despite frequent gunfights, explosions and obligatory car crashes. The A-Team had a similar attitude to Tom & Jerry in regards to death in that no matter what happened the viewer knew that everyone would  be okay. Flattened by an anvil? Wait till your body pops back to normal and walk it off. Your car flipped over and crashed upside down? You'll be fine.

Supernatural has so overused the plot of one of the two central characters dying it has taken any tension away from the show and it is even referenced that they have in fact died off-screen many more times. As Supernatural has added angels to their roster of supernatural creatures this issue has only gotten worse. In regards to what happens when you die Supernatural has shown, briefly, both Heaven and Hell and they are distinctly cliched. However, as the show has featured any number of gods outside of Christianity it is possible if you believe in Valhalla that's where you go when you die and so providing endless possible afterlives.


Heroes suffered from this problem as well in regards to Nathan Petrelli dying at the end of every season although admittedly in the first season he is only presumed to be dead but is saved by the popular fiction trope of "magic blood" this not being actually magic but blood somehow imbued with superhuman healing powers and a simple transfusion is enough to undo virtually all damage.

Some characters are entirely immune from whatever happened in the plot - they will return. The two most obvious examples being the Doctor in Doctor Who and James Bond. The Doctor can regenerate and the new run of Doctor Who also seems to have done away with the idea that he has a certain number of lives. Bond is in some ways more interesting in this regard as the character is a human with no special powers. Bond was written as the ultimate Cold War spy but when this ended in the early 90s Bond carried on. In Pierce Brosnan's time as Bond he is referred to as a "cold warrior" and a"dinosaur" meaning that times had moved on and Bond hadn't. To make matters even more complicated Casino Royale is an origins story for Bond as it started with Bond getting his "00" status which he already had in the other films...but Casino Royale is set in the present day and they were in the past...but in those he has his "00" status...so when is this all taking place? This has lead to the curious theory that the name "James Bond" is actually a codename and passed on to new spies. This would explain how Bond has been fighting spies since the 1950s and is still relatively young and radically changed his appearance every few years.

One of the best screen deaths is in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. In order to save the ship and everyone on board Spock sacrificed his own life. Using his Vulcan logic he decided  that to lose one life to save many made sense. This was genuinely a shocking death when I first saw it. Of course, the next Star Trek film, Search for Spock, had Spock brought back to life. This is a particularly interesting example as in the latest Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness a similar scene played out but in this version it was Kirk who sacrificed his life instead of Spock (again they used "magic blood" to heal him). Now, I hate the JJ Abrams Star Trek films. I hate them with a passion that goes beyond all reasoning. I am very happy to agree with the joke from The Onion Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable' , in the sense that those films don't feel like Star Trek; they feel more like Star Wars. Star Wars is the over the top space adventure with funny robots and magic powers whereas Star Trek has more of an ideology of exploration and cooperation where you learn about alien civilisations. I love Star Wars and Star Trek but they should occupy very different universes. When Kirk died in Star Trek Into Darkness I was happy (even though I knew they would bring him back) and when I watched the film I wanted Khan to win. The "death" of Kirk  was nothing compared to the "death" of Spock.

American Beauty and Sunset Boulevard both played with the device of in voiceover at the beginning of the film a character informed the viewer that they are going to die. Usually voiceover in a film would suggest the character is going to survive as they are "telling" you their story. Certainly in American Beauty I was shocked by Lester's death even though I knew it was coming. In Sunset Boulevard there is such a sense of dread I was never able to forget this information.  I'm a big fan of the film Valkyrie which is about the plot hatched by German army officers to kill Hitler - the fact that the audience knew Hitler survived did not lessen the tension in the film. The viewer's knowledge of the ultimate failure of their plot only gave more poignancy to their sacrifice. Kenneth Brannagh's character always believed their plot would fail but that it was important to try, if nothing else to show that not everyone in Germany agreed with what Hitler was doing. Inglourious Basterds is a really good film with a couple of terrible bits to it - the first being the message that to deal with Nazis you have to be worse than they are - and secondly, in their Hitler assassination film they do manage to kill Hitler. In fact, they manage to kill him three times as the explosives left by Aldo Raine go off, two of the Basterds shoot Hitler and Shosanna's cinema fire all happen. It is something of a cheat for them to successfully kill Hitler as everyone watching assumed that all the plots failed and so you are hugely surprised when he is killed.


Some things just like to kill everyone and be done with it. In Hamlet only one major character is left alive. If we start with Hamlet's father's then it goes
King Hamlet = ear poison
Polonius = stabbed
Ophelia = suicide (drowned)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = killed by King of England
Gertrude = poisoned
Claudius = stabbed and poisoned sword
Laertes = stabbed with poisoned sword
Hamlet = stabbed by poisoned sword.

This death toll may seem excessive until compared to I, Claudius. The classic BBC series based on the books by Robert Graves told the story of Claudius, a minor member of Rome's imperial family who somehow became emperor.
Marcellus = poisoned
Augustus = poisoned
Germanicus = poisoned
Agrippa Postumus = stabbed
Gaius Caesar = poisoned
Lucius Caesar = drowned (murdered)
Sejanus = stabbed
Tiberius = suffocated with a pillow
Caligula = stabbed
Drusilla - murdered by Caligula
Livilla = starved to death (murdered)
Messalina = decapitated
Castor = poisoned
Claudius =  poisoned

And I am sure I have missed off some deaths as there are just so many and the amount of poison being splashed about will make even the least paranoid person worry about what is in their food.

I Want To Believe...But I Will Need To See Peer Reviewed Research: Skepticism in The X Files, Scooby Doo and more

Very minor spoilers for Magic In The Moonlight, X Files, South Park and The Simpsons

Woody Allen has surely become the very shark he talked about in Annie Hall - he has to keep going or he'll die. He continues to make a film a year which regardless of the quality is amazing. At the age of 79 he has 52 directing credits and 76 writing credits (this is according to IMDB) and surely he is going to try and up his rate of writing so he can have written a film a year of his life. The quality of Allen's films does vary a great deal and undeniably the best stage of his career is behind him but he is still more than capable of making great films (Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine are both from this decade). Essentially I think any Woody Allen film is worth watching and so it was that I watched one of his very recent films - Magic in the Moonlight. Set in the 1920s Colin Firth played a hugely successful stage magician whose hobby was to expose psychics, mediums, etc as charlatans. Firth's character knew all their tricks and was probably better at them.

A friend and fellow magician approached Firth's character about exposing a psychic who he had been unable to debunk, Firth's character not only doesn't believe in psychics etc but is absolutely sure there is no god, no afterlife etc. One of the reasons I was reluctant to watch this film was because I consider myself a rationalist and a skeptic and whenever issues like skepticism are discussed on film and television nearly always not only is the skeptic incorrect but they are mean for spoiling other people's delusions, have a closed mind, their lives are lacking "magic" etc. I won't get into all my arguments against this but I disagree. Nobel Prize wining physicist Richard Feynman described an argument with an artist friend of his who said that while he saw a beautiful flower as a scientist Feynman would take it apart and make it a "dull thing". Feynman's argument against this and the idea that science and rationality takes away from life is a billion times better than anything I could write -_

So my worry was that in this film Firth's rationalist view would be challenged and he would change his mind and see why he had always been such a fool. I won't get into what happened in the film but I was annoyed and pleased in equal measure. Of course, it is worth pointing out that in any piece of fiction, if Character A believes Premise 1 and the whole film is steadfast in his refusal to change his mind and the film ended with him still thinking the same thing - that's not a film. Character A has to go through some change or crisis so a skeptic must at some point at least have some doubt. What annoys me is that rarely does it go the other way, a believer abandoning their beliefs in light of evidence and this being a good thing.


The X Files

First of all, I will say that I love The X Files. It was a great programme, very original,  both lead actors were very good (especially Anderson) and when it got everything just right it was brilliant. Due to the episodic nature of it, each week they have a new case to solve, some episodes are much better than others but overall I would rate it very highly.

I have recently been rewatching the show from the start. I have seen all the episodes before when I was a lot younger but often out of order and in fits and starts. In terms of dealing with skepticism The X Files is probably the worst offender in all of pop culture as they intentionally set up confrontation between skeptical and non-skeptical worldviews. Virtually every week Mulder's borderline insane theories are proven right and Scully's narrow minded skepticism shown up as thoroughly wrong. Watching the show now with more of an interest in skepticism, science and rationality I watch every episode and think Mulder is an idiot. The man believed any old nonsense that is presented to him. To paraphrase the comedian Nick Doody he will even believe in contradictory forms of bullshit. He was perfectly happy believing nonsense astrology about the alignments of planets giving people superpowers while also that a child can have genuine stigmata wounds - astrology and Christianity can't both be right as they each claim to have the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

Even ardent believers in something like alien abductions think that many of the reported cases will be people who have imagined it or are lying but Mulder is open to anything. Of course, in the show Mulder is right, usually there is no room left for another interpretation of what happened. I do think that him being right is a fluke as the initial evidence did not merit his certainty. I am convinced that for the nine seasons and two movies worth of cases where Mulder was right there are thousands of "unseen episodes" where Mulder has dragged them to the other side of the country to investigate Big Foot and there was a perfectly rational explanation and come his annual appraisal he had to explain all the expense claims.


Boss: "So, a ticket to Michigan..."
Mulder: "Yeah, we thought there was a Big Foot like creature there."
Boss: "Well, lets leave aside why that is FBI business for the moment, but was there a Big Foot?"
Mulder: "Er...no... it was some guy in a suit."
Boss: "Plane tickets, car rental, motel, animal tranquiliser...this is $10,000. How am I supposed to justify this expenditure? Why did you think this creature was there?"
Mulder: "Er...this guy had taken a blurry picture...and..."


A number of years ago I read a non-fiction book called How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen and it contained some fascinating information about The X Files. Chris Carter, creator of The X Files, had met a skeptics group to discuss The X Files. They wanted to talk to him about the atmosphere of paranoia and irrationality that, in their opinion, his show had helped create. They cited examples of university students who would use The X Files as a source - and these weren't media students but people studying history or science. When challenged that The X Files was fiction the students often responded, "Yes but it's based on true stuff". Carter was quite clear that as far as he was concerned it was all fiction and he wasn't trying to suggest this stuff was real - they were just interesting stories. Richard Dawkins in his 1996 Dimbleby Lecture suggested if a cop show every week had two suspects of different races, and every week the guilty person was always of the same race people would, rightly, complain of the slanted perception and racist view it was giving. But in The X Files often two different explanations would be given, Mulder's "believer" view and Scully's "skeptic" view and nearly every week the "believer" was right. I don't entirely agree with Dawkins' views as I don't think it's talking about the same issue (I often find myself distancing myself from Richard Dawkins' views these days) and I don't think you can hold Chris Carter responsible for people thinking his fiction is fact.

Then there are the conspiracy theories in The X Files. Just about everything in The X Files is a conspiracy and just about everyone is in on it; the US government, the UN, the army, the police, the medical establishment even the FBI (who for some reason allow Mulder to continue investigating conspiracies). The number of people who would have to be involved in these conspiracies does make it perfectly valid to ask the question - if more people are involved in the conspiracy than aren't, is that still a conspiracy? The X Files does mock it's own madness at times, in 'Jose Chung's Outer Space'
 a writer interviewed Scully about a particular case and he mentioned he'd met with many people involved and everyone had a different take on the events. Some people even think of Mulder and Scully as sinister government agents, that they are part of a conspiracy, with Mulder being a robot and Scully clearly a man in drag. In that episode the real conspiracy is actually that UFO abductions are just people being kidnapped by the government with UFOs being a handy subterfuge. In an interview Chris Carter did said that his original intention was to have the skeptical view proved right as often as the believer but those were very dull stories.

Skepticism is not well served in fiction in any medium and perhaps Chris Carter is right in that rational explanations make bad stories. There are  non-fiction television programmes taking the skeptic side. Most of Derren Brown's career has involved him repeating the tricks of psychics and mind-readers and he goes out of his way to explain how he has no magic or su
pernatural powers - they're just tricks. The American magicians Penn & Teller have a similar line in debunking people who claim special powers. There is a noble tradition of stage magicians showing up charlatans that includes the legendary Harry Houdini. The most famous magician who ever lived despised psychics and their ilk so much so that he fell out with celebrity spiritualist believer Arthur Conan-Doyle - as retold here by Drunk History.

In recent years there has been a crossover between science and stand up comedy. The comedian Robin Ince does shows with Dr. Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain, who has a degree in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, does science shows on television. Tim Minchin, equal parts comedian and musician, has a lot of material on science and skepticism. Minchin's nine minute beat poem Storm took on all manner of irrationality, in one show he told a story concerning a fan of his who was also religious and told him of a "miracle" involving his mother's health and the song that Minchin wrote about this encounter seemingly started with an admission that there is a god, and turned into a song about all the rational explanations of what had happened. An honourable mention to skepticism in fiction must go to Scooby Doo, as Minchin pointed out in Storm, which is indeed the rational explanation television show that Chris Carter couldn't write. Every week in Scooby Doo there was a monster or ghost or some other supernatural mystery which was always revealed to be a person playing an elaborate hoax for nefarious purposes. Sherlock Holmes is a great champion of reason, logic and rationality but as already mentioned Conan-Doyle has form in the irrationality camp (he also believed in fairies).

The Simpsons and Futurama do well in portraying skepticism, science and rationality. In Futurama the Professor is, not surprisingly, a man of science and showed a lot of contempt for religion, alternative medicine etc. even if he does have some odd beliefs and practices. The Simpsons seems to err far more on the side of being god-friendly while not simply buying everything religion is selling. As well as seeing religion as fair game for comedy throughout the show it also has a number of hugely cutting attacks on religion - in an emergency Homer frantically flipping through the Bible and shouting "it doesn't contain any answers", in one episode Homer and Bart convert to Catholicism and Marge has a vision of Protestant Heaven and Catholic Heaven which surely is mocking the very idea of organised religion and in an episode with a Scientology-like cult Reverend Lovejoy denounced the cult as made up rules, silly rituals, only after your money and then after the briefest of pauses passed the collection plate while people recited the Lord's Prayer. There is, of course, The Simpons episode which featured Mulder and Scully when Homer thought he had seen an alien which turned out to be Mr. Burns. That episode is also really introduced Lisa as the go-to skeptic on that show and she reads the brilliant sounding Junior Skeptic Magazine and in the episode Lisa The Skeptic the townspeople find what they think is an angel skeleton and Lisa is...well...skeptical. (I just looked up Junior Skeptic Magazine and found that there is a magazine in America called Skeptic and after this episode made a section that was called Junior Skeptic - such is the power of The Simpsons).


As is often the case it falls to those defenders of rational thought Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski from South Park. Let's be clear, they don't advocate a rationalist worldview on South Park and they have episodes which rail against atheists (in particular the already mentioned Richard Dawkins). But consistently they set themselves up against the irrational:

• The Biggest Douche In The Universe - TV psychic John Edwards convinced Kyle his grandmother is watching him from Heaven so he changed his life to please her. Stan goes through complicated arguments which are basically - these are cheap parlour tricks anyone can learn, our attempts to answer the big questions in the universe like why are we here are hindered by these charlatans, and a guy claiming to talk to dead people is a douche.

• Mystery of the Urinal Deuce - basically an episode about 9/11 "truthers". The episode pointed out the problem with most of these grand conspiracies in that they are flawlessly carried out by organisations who struggle to carry out their normal duties.
• Trapped In The Closet - in an episode that was famously never shown in the UK because of our ridiculous slander laws they took aim at Scientology and all they needed to do was repeat what Scientologists believe.
• All About Mormons - A Mormon family moves to South Park who are undeniably lovely people and explain to Stan about their religion. Again all they really do is repeat what the Mormons believe and show the story of Joseph Smith founding their religion with a helpful soundtrack of someone humming "dum de dum dum"during the bits that are hard to believe and "smart sma-smart smart" when people question Joseph Smith's claims.

There are lots more and they go through religions - both major and cult, faith healing, alternative medicine, television evangelists asking for money, the list go on and on. What is very interesting is that as I said they will take shots at liberals, atheists etc and that their message is usually think for yourself and if you find yourself at the extreme on an issue that's probably not a good place to be.

There is perhaps an obvious champion for skepticism I have overlooked; Dana Scully. Aside from a couple of dodgy moments Scully maintained her skeptical worldview throughout the show and would often explain how if evidence was presented to her then she would change her view. As skepticism is often aimed at alternative medicine and other non scientific practices it is forgotten that skepticism is a key component to science. Every scientific theory is challenged by other scientists and they demand evidence. If new evidence comes to light they will abandon theories that do not match the evidence. For example both Isaac Newton and Einstein's theories have been abandoned for ones that better match the evidence. This process isn't a weakness of science but it's strength - unlike faith it will change when confronted with evidence. Scully demanded explanations not just of what happened but how, she remained critical of evidence through hypnosis, and applies Occam's Razor all the time(this being the idea that all things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best) but when confronted with evidence she could not dismiss she would change her mind.   

People have often said to me that a skeptical view isn't fun or lacks magic and mystery. Now, I think that is a tacit admission that they know they're wrong but one reason that annoyed me is that there are genuine miracles in the universe, not religious or supernatural, that are far more impressive. When you tune an analogue radio and hear static, part of that static is the radiation from the Big Bang. All the atoms that make up my body were once in a star. We have been to the moon and discovered DNA yet are meant to be impressed by blurry photographs of UFOs and third-rate conjurer tricks.

Heroes & Villains, Debauched Wolves and Serial-Killer Killers: SPOILER WARNING for Legend and Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enermy Number 1

Contains major spoilers for Legend, Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and minor spoilers for The Sopranos, The Wolf of Wall Street and Dexter

I recently watched the new Kray twins film Legend as well as the two French films made about Jacques Mesrine - Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and both of these films portray real life criminals who enjoyed some measure of fame, or infamy, with the general public as well as maybe some admiration and envy. How film and television portray real and fictional criminals is scrutinised a great deal and it is easy to make such people appear more like lovable rogues and outlaws than criminals. The makers of Legend did themselves no favours in calling the film Legend instead of perhaps Criminals or A Film About Violent Men Who Murdered People which I admit isn't as catchy. That is not to say I disapprove of Legend, I enjoyed the film but I thought the filmmakers had perhaps bought too much into the legend of the Krays.

The portrayal of crime and criminals has been a problem for a long time - Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Scarface and Casino all showed gangsters in a way which could see their lives as aspirational (and yes I know that not all of those are based on real people). They were rich and powerful people who did what they wanted, when they wanted. Of course, the characters often met unfortunate ends which you might think would put people off but apparently losing everything - money, freedom, family, life - is not enough of a downside.

In the film Legend both of the Kray twins are played by Tom Hardy and his performance is the best part of the film. The brothers were different from each other in many ways - Ronnie was an openly gay gangster with severe mental health problems and was prone to violent outbursts. Reggie was charming and polite (or at least could play at being those things) and he was the one in charge and seemingly in control but also a talented amateur boxer who could be just as violent as his brother. If these characters were anything like the real-life Krays, then these were interesting people and a dramatic story could be told about how these brothers became the most powerful criminals in London.

Films can be made about thoroughly terrible people without endorsing the things they did. The film Downfall shows Hitler's last days in his bunker as his empire collapsed and that film certainly does not glorify Hitler. Legend does show both of the brothers doing terrible things for which there is no excuse - Reggie beating his wife (although the actual violence isn't shown) and Ronnie's out of control attacks on any number of people. The film at least tries to show that they weren't just businessmen and that the people who suffered weren't just other criminals which is a defence often used by gangsters. At the beginning of the film as Ronnie walked the streets of London and everyone he passed had a friendly chat with him, near the end a barmaid spotted him across the street, stopped dead and then ran in the opposite direction which shows how much his image has changed to the people around him.


Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 Trailer

Jacques Mesrine was a notorious criminal in the 60s and 70s,  presumably well known in France. So prolific were his criminal activities that just one film wouldn't do and two films were made starring Vincent Cassel as Mesrine. After I had finished watching the films I instantly went online to see if Mesrine had done the things the film showed, and broadly speaking it seems he had. He did sneak a gun into his own trial and escaped, taking the judge as a hostage, he did rob two banks at a time, he did wear elaborate costumes to escape detection - he was known as the Man of a Hundred Faces by the French press. From the beginning it seemed Mesrine wasn't interested in being just another criminal; he wanted to be something more. Throughout the film he showed almost suicidal daring and never did what was simple, easy or clever but made his life far more complicated and harder so as to live up to his own image. To some people he was a French Robin Hood as he supposedly had a code where he targeted only the rich - however like the Shadow in Blackadder he never got round to giving it the poor. He escaped from prison three or four times, including a maximum security prison, and when on the run from the police as "public enemy number one" would arrange interviews and photoshoots with the press.

In Legend the film ends with both Krays heading to prison and in the Mesrine films with the title character being shot by the police - I would say without doubt that in the film Jacques Mesrine was murdered, ambushed by the police at a traffic light in his car he was shot many times by heavily armed police without warning and no attempt made to arrest him or even talk to him (whether this was what really happened is far less clear). Mesrine had stated how he would not be taken alive and would fight if cornered and had already proven himself very willing to kill police officers. Both the Krays and Mesrine sealed their fates as they were too famous and made the authorities look foolish. The Krays flaunted their wealth and success and the inability of the police to do anything about them - they were celebrities. Mesrine reveled in his fame and constantly embarrassed the authorities and towards the end of his career became more politically minded - at least in the excuses he gave for his actions.

Comparing the Krays and Mesrine, Mesrine is certainly a more dashing figure, an outlaw rebel, he robbed banks and frittered away the money; to him there was no end point in having made enough money to be rich for the rest of his life he would always be compelled to commit more crimes. But even if he was more dashing, he wasn't Robin Hood, he murdered people, he kidnapped people, and if it was fame rather than money that motivated him, does it make him  a better or worse person? Comparing Legend and the two Mesrine films I'd definitely say the latter were more successful in simply showing the subject's life and letting the viewer judge.

I do struggle with this idea of films and television glorifying gangsters and I like to think that if people see a gangster in a film as cool that they realise they're just watching a film. When I watch Goodfellas I do not think about how good their lives are as I can never escape the fact that they hurt people and that is no way to make a living. The Sopranos showed a lot more of the lives of gangsters than films can manage; films last a couple of hours whereas someone who watched The Sopranos watched eighty-six episodes with each being around fifty minutes long. Inevitably a dedicated viewer would identify with the characters. The first episode of the third season starts with an episode taken entirely from the point of view of the FBI and their efforts to install a listening device in Tony Soprano's house. In the episode the FBI perform their duties entirely legally, they obtain the necessary warrant from  a judge and go about their work professionally yet when I watched it I couldn't help thinking "Bloody FBI, trying to bug Tony". The viewer knows Tony is a dangerous criminal and is without a doubt guilty but I took his side against the FBI. The Sopranos focuses as much on Tony's family life as his criminal life and he is a very well-drawn character; he seems real. People often struggle to deal with complicated figures and when people are genuinely evil we can struggle to deal with information that would contradict that - so if it is revealed Stalin gave a lot of support to animal sanctuaries people are confused - how can a brutal dictator and murderer also care about animals? So in The Sopranos we see Tony often being generous, at times being a good father and husband and yes, even being kind to animals, as well as being a violent criminal. It is this dissonance that allows the viewer to see Tony as a good family man who is in difficult circumstances which drive him to do awful things or a bad and violent person who likes to act the part of a caring individual either to manipulate people or salve his own conscience. There is also the third option of a complex person who can be different things at different times; a person who is not all bad or all good. He is a person you could spend a perfectly pleasant evening with and then he would go out and murder someone; which I imagine is what such people are like in real life. I consider The Sopranos to be one of, if not the, best television programme ever made and a huge part of this is the "shades of grey" existence of the characters. The show doesn't glorify them but shows them as real people.

The Wolf of Wall Street was criticised a great deal in that it glorified the people it depicted. In TWoWS Leonardio Di Caprio played Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stock broker who made a huge amount of money by taking advantage of people and breaking many, many laws (the film is based on a book written by the real Jordan Belfort, and learning that he is a real person and not a fictional creation is like learning that Cruella Deville is real and 101 Dalmations was based on her autobiography). As well as showing the staggering wealth Belfort and his cronies accumulated the film also depicted the lives of excess that they lead -partaking in drugs, prostitutes and wild parties. These "wolves" also showed a contempt for anyone who wasn't like them, anyone who wasn't rich and taking advantage of other people, they also showed a level of decadence that was truly appalling, literally throwing money around, paying women to have their heads shaved, and all manner of juvenile and disgusting pranks and games. Like most recent Martin Scorsese films it is very long, 180 minutes and there was another hour that Scorsese wanted to put in but couldn't justify a four hour film. I felt the length was justified as you spent a long time with these awful people and their awful lives and the never ending party just ground you down and you saw just how far off the rails they had gone. The atmosphere at Stratton-Oakmont, the company they ran, seemed very much like a cult, or maybe just those posh secret societies at Oxbridge we keep hearing about. The company had bizarre initiations and a cult of personality had developed around Belfort.

It is interesting to see Scorsese, well known for making traditional gangster films, making a film about white-collar crime. If we compare it to Goodfellas, in my opinion the best gangster film ever, Jordan Belfort is Henry Hill, the youngster drawn into the criminal life, the over the top broker played by Matthew McConaghy (being in a Scorsese film is part of his Terrible Romantic Comedy Actor Rehabilitation Scheme he's been involved in the last few years) is Robert De Niro's James Conway, explaining the madness of the system to him and Jonah Hill is Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito, the member of the group who is so crazy he worries the other crazy people.

In the past few years we have seen the damage the financial institutions of the world can do - the Mafia can break your legs and burn your business down but Wall Street can ruin whole countries. In Britain Ed Miliband's supposed anti-business stance effected the stock market and dire warnings followed from the rich and powerful that Miliband as Prime Minister would cause financial chaos;  which doesn't sound too dissimilar to scare tactics deployed by gangsters. Belfort ruined people's lives, he intentionally preyed on people and lied to them to get their money, and as is pointed out in the film this isn't usually just against rich people playing the stock market but working people trying to invest money wisely for their future. I am sure there are people who watched TWoWS who wanted to have Belfort's life of excess and wealth but they aren't people who I would want to spend time with. TWoWS reminded me of a sketch from Mr. Show - Mr. Show - More Money Equals Better Than as the characters in it had no measure of success other than money. As much as I hate most of the characters portrayed in the film I do think it is a really good movie with Scorsese showing the emptiness of their lives but I do wish that the real Jordan Belfort wasn't given a cameo in the film.


There is an example of glorifying criminals that troubles me far more than any of the films or programmes about organised crime - Dexter. I was a big fan of Six Feet Under and Michael C. Hall was brilliant as David Fisher and as he played the eponymous Dexter I decided to give it a try. Hall's character in Six Feet Under couldn't be further removed from the character he played in Dexter, in the former he was a pleasant, nice and cautious man, and if he was a little tense or wound up the idea of him hurting anyone was ridiculous. Dexter seemed worth watching just to see how Hall would handle this new and very different character.

For those who don't know Dexter is a show about a serial killer who kills serial killers - or at least that was how it was described to me. Dexter actually targeted people he deemed to be deserving of death, sometimes they are serial killers, sometimes they are not not. In one episode in the first season Dexter goes after a person who has been on trial a number of times for killing people in his car while drunk. It comes out that the driver doesn't care and he will continue to drink and drive. Now, the driver is a bad guy who should be in prison, but is he is deserving of the torture and murder (and yes Dexter tortured his victims) that Dexter inflicted? This person never meant to hurt anyone; he doesn't care and is still a risk to people, but he wasn't trying to kill anyone. This is a distinction most legal systems acknowledge but one that Dexter, the character and the show, aren't interested in.

The first season ended with a little voice over from Dexter where he said that if he was found out and all of his crimes came to light, yes, he would be arrested and put in prison but at the same time many people would think he had done a good thing. He had killed people who deserved it. I think the message of the show is in line with this idea, that, yes in reality, you shouldn't go round killing people, but if they're really bad people it's sort of okay. I disagree with this idea wholeheartedly and I might be a bleeding-heart liberal but everyone deserves a trial, everyone deserves justice. I have had many conversations with people who do think this sort of thing, that society needs such a person who will act in extreme ways when the "system" fails. I only watched the first season of Dexter and in all fairness the show might go on to explore these ideas but I don't think I could take any more of it. Much more interesting "serial-killer killers" are found in Seven Psychopaths which in a five minute murder spree montage does more to address the morality of what the serial-killer killers are doing than Dexter managed in the twelve episodes of the first season. And don't even get me started on what Dexter is saying about free will and nature versus nurture in how it sets it up that Dexter was always going to be a serial killer, it was inevitable, and the best way to handle the situation was his adoptive father to train him to kill the "right" people...if nothing else it's bad parenting.


Podcast Recommendation:
I love podcasts - they make commuting, housework and waiting a thousand times better. As this blog has been about crime my recommendation is the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Two people contact the podcast with a problem that they want "Judge" Hodgman to solve, it could be something very practical, a matter of etiquette, anything really. They call in to the show and Judge Hodgman and "bailiff" Jesse Thorn listen and Hodgman will give a verdict. It's always funny and often surreally brilliant - an argument between two brothers about how to deal with the bat infestation in their house is amazing, one brother suggests hiring exterminators, the other...well he doesn't really see what the problem is. Aside from the case being discussed it's worth just being able to listen to John Hodgman talk about stuff as he is one of the funniest and most informed people I have ever heard, he's sort of an American Stephen Fry but nerdier and weirder.