I have just about lost interest in both TV shows, Game of Thrones and Gotham, as it gets harder to tolerate the gratuitous violence – especially against women – and all the torture porn that is so en vogue right now. I am beginning to feel my quality of life suffer from prolonged exposure to the ceaseless assault on the senses pumped out by what passes for popular entertainment on TV. Lately, I am particularly triggered by sounds of brutality. My husband plays a lot of MMORPG games and watches a lot of HBO dramas and, as I walk back and fourth through the living room, hearing the sounds of gunfire or sword stabbings or women screaming out in pain or ecstasy (sounds exactly the same), I actually feel my blood pressure shoot up.

Anyone who knows me at all will confirm that I am not a person who fears violence. Throughout my life, I have dealt with serious conflicts, threats and quite a few actual assaults. Violence was frequently the language spoken around me and it is a language I understand well.

So it is not that I am too delicate of a flower to handle TV violence.

It is just that most of current TV violence is too shallow, senseless and excessive to be entertaining. It has become anxiety- and rage-inducing instead.

It is just that I do not at all enjoy the feeling of disgusted despisement I get at the sight of humans senselessly pounding each other into meatloaf over ego or breaking each other’s knees and teeth over money. Observing testosterone-blinded males bludgeon other testosterone-blinded males over some imagined testosterone-fueled “beef” is not a spectacle that brightens my day or lifts my spirit.

It is just that I do not enjoy feeling murderous rage at the sight of a yet another stereotypically powerful, clever male victimizing a yet another stereotypically pathetic, easily terrorizable female. And murderous rage is the only way to describe the reaction these viewing experiences summon in me. I want to grab a gun, a machete, a tazer – anything destructive – and go find myself a sexual predator to shoot, slash and electrocute. Are those the feelings of a happy, relaxed person? Do I really need to cultivate thoughts and emotions of sadistic hatefulness in myself? Do you?

I don’t know about you, but there are enough real stressors in my life to make me go out of my way to avoid artificial ones, especially when they pose as “entertainment” and take up my valuable downtime. I feel angry and helpless enough in the face of real, everyday cruelty and humanitarian disasters around the world. Why are we, as a society, so greedy for graphic displays of physical, psychological and sexual abuse – to the point that we are willing to spend our hard-earned money and precious leisure time watching realistic enactments of torture and degradation?

To be clear, I am criticizing gratuitous violence – not the violence necessary to show in order to tell the story – but the dragged out, over-the-top torture scenes, the gore for the sake of gore, the endlessly blurred boundaries between sex and violence — the dumb junk that dominates our entertainment media. There is nothing original about these trite misogynistic tropes and nothing exciting or engaging about the formulaic, one-dimensional, barely-there narratives, with just enough “story” to justify all the “action”. The glorification of slaughter, torture and sexual assault (on women in particular) keeps forcefully broadcasting the cultural message that constantly watching human beings get brutalized – complete with a dramatic  soundtrack of screaming in pain, sobbing in fear, pleading for life, etc. – is a perfectly normal, healthy and enjoyable pastime.