Has a lot of TV and Film got awfully dark and cynical in the last decade? Take comedy for example - I watched 'Revolver' for the first time tonight, and while much of it was funny, it seemed dark and cruel in places. The part where they were laughing at someone who had Alzheimer's was uncomfortable. This appears to be the general direction for a lot of modern Comedy - it makes you laugh and feel uncomfortable at the same time. While I thought 'The League Of Gentlemen' was excellent black comedy on the whole, as the series progressed the focus shifted to how far they could go, how dark they could make it, and it became less funny and more unpleasant. 'South Park' suffered a similar fate, and even at its best was still bitterly cynical. Much of the humour in 'The Office' is based on making the viewer squirm with a shared embarrassment. The 'Ali G show' started as understated satire but later series descended into making both the audiences and the interviewees squirm. Clips of a show I caught from America called 'The Man Show' featured a fat boy of about eleven going round and basically insulting people in public in an adult fashion. It's not the only program that uses young children who speak and act as if they are much older, acting hardened and cynical beyond their years. There was another show that featured someone pretending to leave a baby on a car roof while driving off. I didn't really see what was funny about genuinely terrifying well meaning members of the public who were only reacting in the way any human would. 'Jackass' tends to be unpleasant, but redeems itself in some way for the simple reason that the pranks these guys seem to play on each other and themselves strike me as latent homosexual sadomasochistic desires they want to play out with each other, but try to do in a macho 'non-gay' way.

Reality TV suffers from much the same problems as the comedy, a general tendency towards sadism. Making the contestants suffer, and seeing to what extent they are willing to suffer for the pursuit of material goals seems to be the focus of much of it. It's slightly disturbing that we now have TV shows like the ones bleak 80's futuristic fiction predicted. Was it 'Robocop' or 'The Running Man' that featured a TV show called 'Climbing for Dollars' where a man climbed a rope trying to grab dollars with a pack of hungry Alsatians snapping at him under the rope? Some of our current reality TV is just as base as this.

Modern Film often includes these elements. In the film 'Blade', they torture and kill a hugely fat vampire with a UV lamp. We're not supposed to care because he is after all a vampire, which gives you free license to do all sorts of nasty things. I couldn't help feeling though that his killing (even though the character had given up the required information through torture) was purely because the character was massively obese. I can only think it says something about America.

Finally then my questions for those still reading. Is this trend here to stay, or is this just another phase in the evolution of people, one that history books will look back on and discuss much in the way we discuss the particular nuances of the Victorians for example. Lastly, as many seem happy to consume this material what if anything does this trend indicate about our nature?

Sounds like homework doesn't it