Things you never see in the mainstream media

[paulsby]

I am talking sitcoms, movie and tv dramas.

You ALMOST (I am sure there is an exception somewhere) never see examples of people with CCW's who carry guns.

You see private eyes with guns, cops with guns, bad guys with guns, good guys placed in some sort of extraordinary circumstance (like being chased by the govt.) who get a gun...

but you never see a representation of your average man/woman who just carries.

there are MILLIONS of these people in the US, but in teevee/movie land they do not exist.

prior to the brady bunch, you never saw a husband and wife in the same bed together.

prior to all in the family, you rarely if ever saw or heard mention of going to the toilet.

etc. etc.

the reality is in this country that millions of normal, well adjusted, law abiding people carry guns on a daily basis and they simply are completely ignored in the world of tv and movies.

it's such a complete blackout that most people never even really think about it.

even a show like frasier, where the dad is a RETIRED cop, you never see him strap a gun on before leaving the house.

thus, the media tries to create the impression in the eyes of the viewer that these people don't exist, that anybody who carries a gun that is not a member of one of these special groups (cops, PI's etc.) is an outlier/weird/dangerous

[Ozymanithrax]

1. You are looking at traditional stories here.

One rule in ficiton, if you see a gun in scene 1, it must be used before the end. Everything in a story must relate to the ongoing plot.

Police, private eyes, FBI agents carry weapons and within the stories in which they play a part the almost always use them.

Frazier's dad never carried a weapon because it was a sitcom and he was not going to shoot somebody. At no point in the story was it necessary to the plot. That doesn't mean he didn't carry one, just that it was never important to a plot in frazier.

They are not ignored but that is because TV shows and movies are not real life. They tell stories, and everything in a story must have a purpose. Guns in stories appear only in a story where they are used.

[paulsby]

2. except shows like friends

and seinfeld don;'t fit into that mold

seinfeld was a show about nothing.

friends was time porn.

they are ignored because in the view of media, NORMAL people don't carry guns.

i can't believe you can't see that

normal people go to the bathroom,. that's portrayed (didn't use to be)

sleep in the same bed.

sneeze, fart, take naps, etc.

all sorts of mundane pieces of everyday life are portrayed

one of the few things that is NOT portrayed is the carrying of a gun

i don't buy your analysis. this is an act that millions of people routinely do every day, but it simply DOES NOT EXIST in the world of teevee and movies.

[Ozymanithrax]

4. I rarely watched friends or SEinfeld, but when did they need to shoot someone in those stories?

Unless something like a gun has a purspose in ongong plot, they are not used. It is not slighting people who carry guns.

[geckosfeet]

3. Televison is a fake world. I don't know why people insist that it conform to reality.

I think that people ought to get up off the couch and do something real instead of living out their lives in an entertainment fantasy world.

[old mark]

5. Most TV programs originate in NY or LA, both cities with very restrictive gun laws,

where "gun control" is still considered progressive rather than restrictive or facist. Watch Law and Order - any non-cop with a gun is either a criminal, an immediate suspect or an inept RWer. The ignorance and anti-gun owner prejudice of that series' writers is astounding, and they contribute heavily to the anti gun opinions we see on this site and elsewhere on the left.

mark

[paulsby]

7. exactly.

i grew up right near the campus of a liberal arts college in new england, and from watching media (tv, movies, etc.) i was naturally pro gun control. i didn't know anybody who had a CCW and carried. only cops and bad guys carried. that's what tv and movies said.

normal people don't carry guns. duh.

then, i stepped out of my little cloistered world, working as a firefighter/medic in an area where CCW's and carry was common, and i realized that the media perception and the prejudices they had were totally unrealistic. i saw normal, law abiding, well adjusted people who routinely carried. i didn't know these people existed.

these people are as rare in media today (tv, movies) as openly gay positive characters were in the 50's.

i agree with you about law and order btw. i love the show (the original, i don't watch the spinoffs) but their anti-gun bias is just ridiculous.

and of course jack mccoy was a classic STATIST liberal, in that he wanted to PUNISH and control gun companies etc. and blame them for what people did. he was also an enemy of free speech (when it suited his agenda, etc.)

i refer to his style of prosecution as "jack mccoy'ism".

[Kolesar]

6. Your last paragraph is absurd

BTW, there are "shift" keys on the keyboard, one by the Z and one by the /. Use them.