Rule #1 – TV shows are not documentaries.
Rule #2 – TV shows are not public service announcements.
Rule #3 – The role of TV series is not to encourage good behavior.
Rule #4 – The role of TV series writers is not to show people “how it should be” but “how it is”.
I think it’s important to point this out because “interveners” from organization X or regrouping Y regularly complain in the media that one series or another is “not realistic”, “doesn’t send the right message” or “doesn’t provide a good model”. .
I’ll add Rule #5: Nobody listens to a TV series to be transformed.
TV 101
In recent years, I’ve lost count of the number of complaints about Quebec series that have been accused of not sending a good message. Remember when Luc had to write a long Facebook status to Dionne when he was accused of showing honor killing in District 31 committed by members of the Muslim community? Shows are regularly criticized for showing characters who smoke, eat poorly, don’t recycle, don’t compost, fuck without a condom, etc.
This week, in Le Journal, the representative of the “Group of Homes for Women Victims of Spousal Violence” attacked Radio-Canada’s À cœur beating program.
“Tuesday night’s program ended with the suicide of an abusive spouse at a shelter for women victims of domestic violence. What message does this program send to the victims, to their families? That taking refuge in a care and housing center leads to the suicide of the spouse? That abusive spouses can easily find the place where their spouse took refuge? That the security of the houses is fragile and consequently also that of the women and children living there? »
With all due respect to the extraordinary work of the employees of these houses, I don’t think that the viewer of a series draws so many conclusions from a single episode. We must not underestimate the intelligence of viewers who know full well that they are watching a made-up story, played by actors and born of the fertile imagination of an author who can INDETECT stories.
The author of the letter also claimed that only once in 50 years has a man committed suicide near a shelter for victims of violence.
So should television writers write their screenplays with a stats book in hand?
IT’S ONLY TELEVISION
In the first season of Le Bonheur, we saw Michel Charette play a “Boutte” professor who went off the rails and violently overturned his desk.
Should the two authors of the series, François Avard and Daniel Gagnon, have consulted the Ministry of Education data to know exactly what percentage of teachers have “lifted state furniture”?
This entertaining scene may have sent a subversive message to the public, the criminal teacher is certainly a very bad example for the citizens, but damn it was good to see!
