Influence of TV

Almost everyone I know has started to tune into a NETFLIX TV series called House or Cards. I was very skeptic of these recommendations, but I began the show anyways. For those of you who do not know, it is a show primarily focusing on one congressman, played by Kevin Spacey, who is involved in some corrupt politics. A plot like this one where the main character being corrupt or "bad" (as i explored in a previous blog here) has really started to catch on in the entertainment world. With these shows being aired today, I wonder if in the US there was always freedom for what your show could be about.

I did some research on what had been the guidelines around what the allowed content in motion pictures and television, and from 1934-1968 there was something called the Hays Code. If you want to see the details of what was not allowed here is a list of things. One thing that stood out to me in this list was "sympathy for criminals", i find this interesting because today, majority of television revolves around some sort of criminal or protagonists who commits illegal crimes. For instance in the show House of Cards, it alone would probably cross almost every rule established in Hays Code. So i wonder how the public or the United States has changed so much since then, to make all of this legal to be produced in entertainment for the public.

For obvious reasons, freedom for all in the US was not reason back when Hays code was in place, but i would argue that some Americans still can not handle the content in some of these shows. I wonder what kind of influence these corrupt characters have on the effect of peoples lives?

Power does not corrupt.

Fear corrupts...perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

John Steinback