Suicide as a Reality Show

[Nick_A]

Optimum Online - News - AP News - Suicide on TV condemned in Britain

If one allows their death to be televised, should the family get paid and have the rights to the broadcast sold to the highest bidder? Would you pay to watch someone commit suicide? I believe in the right to die but would feel awkward about watching someone commit suicide from suffering this affliction.

Then of course there is the question of motivation. This kid in contrast, was gonna have his fifteen minutes of fame no matter what.

The televised suicide in Britain follows a well-publicized case in Florida, where a teenager killed himself on camera last month and broadcast the chilling images live on an Internet site.

I guess the next PPV event would be a fight to the death bertween two oppponents from some foreign country and the money going into the pockets of politicians. Why not? What could be more exciting than a sword through the heart?

Who should sponser such an event? Perhaps viagra with the slogan "Give your loved one a firm goodbye."

I feel for the man but am not sure how I feel about this. What is my motive for watching it? If I watched the show, would I take my death more seriously or even have a greater respect for life? I don't know.

 

[juantoo3]

One of the inconvenient and unspoken truths is that humans have a bloodlust fascination. Televised "for pay" suicide appears to be outside our current ethics...but it was not always so. American football happily brags about being a modern translation of the Gladiatorial games of Rome, minus the loss of life but still eliciting that primal urge to vicariously experience combat. Less than a hundred years ago in America anyway, public executions were still a part of the social life of the community. Those same incipient drives still exist within the human animal...we simply do what we can to paint it over with more agreeable colors, splash a little perfume to make it smell more agreeable, and look the other way and pretend it is no longer a part of what we are.

Until we pick out the next movie to entertain us...odds are it will be gory and glorify bloodshed and make a hero out of a murderer. But that's OK, it's only make believe. Yeah, right.

 

[Dharmaatmaa]

It's craziness! If they decided to make true such spectacles on TV, our civilization is far from perfection.
We all understand that television is very much responsible for its auditory.