Already popular in Latin American countries, a reviewer from the Washington Post said the extreme violence of the show took even HBO by surprise. The show, says the reviewer, is “bound to jolt and fascinate viewers who can stomach its extreme violence and very bleak video-noir ambiance.” The reviewer continues:
Epitafios is as gripping as its murders are ghastly, a spiraling reverberant circle of horrors that keeps widening as the bodies pile up (more than two dozen killings by the time the series ends) and the killer’s motives become clear, if perverse. The film breaks rules in somewhat the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: Hardly anyone in the cast seems safe from extinction and could become the killer’s next conquest at any moment. In [the] premiere, a character who seems he’ll be one of the principal good guys is chewed to death by pit bulls.
As of this writing, I haven’t heard how the first installment (which ran last week) was received, but I’m willing to guess it’s getting a cult following, if not a mass, Sopranos-like, one.
So, as the violence-on-TV envelope is pushed yet further, people will start asking the question: Does such entertainment encourage killing?
The people who flat-out dismiss violence on TV (“Hey, dude, it’s not like you watch a serial killer show and then go out and become a serial killer”) are being disingenuous (or just stupid). No one claims that. Sin works slowly — gradually. Moreover, sin works spiritually, a fact that makes the effects of violent TV extremely difficult to measure, since spiritual things defy material measurement.
Consistent with these moral facts, the question shouldn’t be, “Do shows like Epitafios turn people into murderers?” The question should be, “Does such entertainment lower the moral quality of its viewers?”
If the answer is “yes,” then it follows that its viewers are more likely to do unbecoming things, which might lead — in extreme and particularly twisted individuals who have many other problems — to serial killing. If the answer is “no,” then it won’t.
But here’s the real rub: Nothing is wholly neutral. Everything — every action, every thought, every sight — has a small moral effect, either for good or bad.
This, after all, is the source of St. Therese of Lisieux’s ingenious Little Way.
For those who aren’t acquainted with St. Therese, her Little Way is a method of living that undertakes every task — especially the smallest and least noticed — as virtuously as possible.
This is how Clare Booth Luce explained it:
Are not the lives of almost all of us made up of little things? But for most people a dozen annoyances, bothers, anxieties, frustrations, harassments a day add up to aspirins or martinis, to ulcers or neuroses or breakdowns — even to suicide. Therese made them add up to sainthood. Stooping a dozen times a day quietly — indeed furtively — she picked up and carried the splinters of the cross that strewed her path as they strew ours. And when she gathered them all up, she had the material of a cross of no inconsiderable weight.
One of the keys to the Little Way is doing everything with pure intention and proper thinking. When we do that, those thousands of little things that bombard us every day can lead to intense holiness.
Or to intense depravity.
Every single thing, St. Therese says, affects us. The only question is whether each of them affects us for better or worse.
If we surround ourselves with holy things — both the outside influences and our internal thoughts — we’re more likely to be holy. If we surround ourselves with depraved things, the result is more likely to be the opposite.
Everything counts. Every action, every thought, every conversation, every song, every email.
And every TV show.
Do I think Epitafios is going to bring us a culture of serial killers? No. Do I think it’ll further our culture’s depravity? Yup.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
