Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about how American Horror Story: Hotel is like the worst thing ever aired. All sorts of flippity-floo about how Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have gone too far in their push-the-envelope style of depictions of sex and gore, use of taboo concepts like homosexuality and transgendered people, how Lady Gaga is more or less portraying what people think Lady Gaga is, which is a weirdo who likes to do things for shock value, and how the franchise is undeniably dead with the fact that Jessica Lange (supposedly) has left.
Perhaps I don’t analyze things so much when I’m watching them, or more likely the fact that I’m just not really thinking too hard, but I haven’t had any problems with AHS:Hotel so far, and I’ve found them to be entertaining. For baseline sake, I found Freak Show to be entertaining, in spite of the popular belief that it was the weakest of the four prior seasons.
In some regard, I think I’m a little desensitized when it comes to shock, gore and sex depicted on television, and I’m more apt to ponder on whether or not someone, be it show creators, or someone at FX is going to get in trouble for pushing the envelope as hard as they’ve been pushing it, but when I’m watching people getting their throats slit and/or sexually assaulted, I might cringe and go “Ohhhh” but it’s nothing that’s going to mentally scar me for eternity, as the rhetoric spouted by Parent Television Council sheep would have you believe it should. If anything at all, just seeing “Murphy/Falchuk” combined with the fact that it’s on FX, by now, anyone should know that they’re going to see some pretty intense stuff.
Continue reading “I guess I don’t think when watching television”