I remember being in Brazil ten years ago, and seeing the amazing newstands there, with hundreds and hundreds of magazines and newspapers. It seemed like a lot of them were "true crime" type publications, with cover photos of bloody accident and murder scenes.
I've been watching the news on TV here all day every day, trying to get my ear for the weird accent here. And I've decided that the news is a little icky. Of course the news is icky everywhere -- "if it bleeds, it leads" goes the old news maxim. Bad stuff gets people's attention way more than good stuff.
In the states, one reason I can't watch the local news is that for every tragedy, the newscasters hound the family members or friends or whoever of the victim. This seems to me such an affront, forcing these people to 'go public' when they are at their worst, when they're suffering their very private afflictions.
Well, here they seem to be worse. A grocer shot a 16 year old boy last night, I think he was an innocent bystander during a robbery (but I'm not sure -- that accent thing). So they just had this kid's mother on for a full minute at least, maybe ninety seconds, two minutes, sobbing and blabbering through her tears while her more stoic husband held her. It was awful. And I see this several times a day, tearful family members or friends or whoever.
And they're not shy about showing blood here, either. If it bleeds, it leads, right? Yesterday I saw a guy who was totally bloody being loaded into an ambulance. I think it was live, too, it certainly didn't seem edited. Usually it's just the aftermath of the accident that you see, since it takes a while for the news crew to get there. Even then, they look for the blood on the ground or the car and definitely show it. And they've very into showing the crumpled metal from these accidents. The camera lingers, definitely.
In a way, for the accidents, maybe this is a good thing -- I think drivers here are awful, very, very non-defensive, very risk-taking. Maybe all this death-on-the-highway publicity will get to them some day?
Oh, one last thing about the news. What else sells besides violence, after all? Sex, of course. Right now, the news crew is at Mar de Plata, a beach resort here, and they're interviewing a group of women in bikinis. What's really funny is the way the camer is moving slowly up and down each girl (they're girls -- 18-22, I'd say) as she's being interviewed. Oh, now I see it's "La Reina del Mar" -- queen of the sea, maybe some beauty contest. But really, the funny thing is that the camera totally eats these girls up, stops at their boobs and crotch, has them spin around so that you can see their ass in their thongs. It's pretty hilarious, and it seems to be a pretty regular part of summertime "news" on the TV here. Since it's summer vacation time, there are lots of stories about the beach scene. And about three quarters of these stories are "oh, look at this beautiful woman/women here!"
I guess what's good about this is that they don't have the same kind of prudishness that we have in the states. I'm all for the tits and ass, and even the blood isn't so bad. But I really don't want to see mamas crying over their children who were killed. This I don't want to see, it does nothing positive for anyone, I don't think.
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