Notinclass’s Weblog

alright, as the date an time above will clearly indicate, I am writing this after class. I will mention my personal computer crash and an emergency involving my mother’s business, both of which kept me from this duty – though I do realize I could have started earlier.

Anyway, I agree with other comments discussed in class that the social preoccupation with deviant behaviour and grusome details of such is interesting – and rather disturbing. This also seems an unsolvable mystery in western societies. There is no good reason for wanting to know every bad thing another person has done, unless it is to make one’s self feel better for having made lesser mistakes. But those who would take such consolation have likely also been taught that knowledge and interest in such things tends to take one’s thoughts and then actions closer to said ‘evils’, so the desire to know of such things is again illogical.

This line of discourse reminds me of a media course in which the class was asked why funny things are funny. Why, for instance is it funny to tell stories of annoying people at the grocery store? stories of people being hurt? why is it funny to make insinuations about our friends being sexually transgressive in ways we know they are not? Of course this constantly led toward unpleasant conclusion about human nature, as does the interest in many forms of crime literature.

And of course there is the matter of telling children stories regarding issues that it is hoped most adults will never become part of. This seems rather contradictory, though the idea of ‘keeping them innocent’ is obviously naive. Perhaps in part, the fear of our youth (used to keep children out of trouble as in the stranger danger example) drives us toward these interests. That is, because we learn of these things as enigmatic dangers that often are not explained in full (for good reason), we feel the need later in life to overcome this childhood fear through investigation and understanding – and to releive it through humour.