The main reason for my tiredness is The Bridge, the Swedish/Danish crime drama television series. (In Swedish Bron, in Danish Broen, in Finnish Silta.)
As I've stated before: I love Saga Norén. Saga Norén is the only reason why I've been watching the series. She's the Swedish homicide detective with Asperger Syndrome; there is something beautiful and fascinating about the character. She's strong and vulnerable at the same time, and always sincere, a bit like Lisbeth Salander, another Swedish girl I love.
So, I like Saga. She's the reason why The Bridge works. She's the kind of character I like to write about, the kind of character I usually write about. I watched the latter half of the first season, and now I've watched the first half of the second season which is currently aired on Finnish TV every Sunday.
Now I'm in pain. I don't want to let go of Saga, but watching the second season of The Bridge has become increasingly painful.
Here's the reason: the Bad Guys in this season are a strange group of environmental and animal activists. They are referred to as 'eco terrorists'. The plot is that these very dangerous and mentally unstable people suddenly attack Normal Society: they start murdering, torturing and poisoning innocent people and then they post videos on the Internet in which they say dramatic things about things like the environmental crisis and animal testing. Their 'message' is that if people don't do what they want them to do, they will kill and destroy everything and so on and so on. They are shown wearing spooky animal masks and attacking Normal People. When they're not busy doing this, they're kicking truck drivers to death or standing in dark cellars whispering to each other like Satanic vampires.
So, in the universe of The Bridge this is what animal/environmental activism is like. These activists are the number 1 threat to normal, sane, meat-eating people who just want to love their children and be Normal without anybody suddenly coming from the bushes and poisoning them.
Cool. Except that this is fiction. Activists like this do not exist in the real world. The term 'eco-terrorism' is a word coined by George W. Bush and his half-criminal buddies in the meat/oil/whatever business. For more information.
Some decades ago homosexual characters in fiction and entertainment always had to die (or just simply get their punishment) before the end of the story. In many ways, today's case resembles the homophobic propaganda of yesterday. Suddenly we have these people that we're slightly intimidated by, but don't really know why, so we have to come up with something. We come up with this.
The phenomenon is known as the Green Scare. It is a very handy tool with which the actual bad guys can keep making money while destroying the planet, torturing animals and endangering humans. So, we have these annoying people telling other people that how we make money is highly questionable. What should we do? Hey, what about we start referring to them as 'terrorists' and create this image of creepy psychotic lunatics that you should stay away from?
In the Anglo-American entertainment, the mysterious Eco-terrorists have become a recurring enemy. I don't know whether this has something to do with the sponsors the money comes from, or whether the writers are just excrutiating morons who have no idea what they're actually doing, but I've already accidentally seen psychotic eco-monsters in several episodes of several random TV series: First, Monk (a demonic, balding eco-terrorist killing normal people for obscure reasons), then Law & Order (an unstable girl gets dragged into crazy, violent eco-terrorism, and then the group's members rape and abuse her because well, they are such crazy, violent monsters), then some series with Stephen Fry living in some town (once again, an unstable girl gets dragged into crazy, violent eco-terrorism, this time by a young psychopath named 'Ollie', but fortunately at the end she understands the importance of animal testing - phew).
This time it's personal. This time, for the first time, it's Scandinavia, a culturally 'modern' region that should know better. This time it's Saga. After seeing last night's episode, I actually cried. And I never cry. I used to cry when I was younger, but nowadays I'm physically nearly unable to do it. This time I felt so tired and frustrated that I cried, which was surprising.
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| The good heart. |
I'd understand the use of eco-terrorist demons if they reflected reality. If there actually were individuals behaving in this way in the name of animal or environmental activism, I'd be strongly against them. But they are fictional. People like this, groups like this do not exist. The mere idea of psychopaths deciding to become animal activists is absurd. The point of the whole thing is empathy. In the real world, animal and environmental activists are pretty normal people, people who love their families, friends and dogs just like everybody else. The only thing that makes them different is probably the fateful fact that they are more intelligent and compassionate and have a stronger moral backbone than the average person. Usually they are serious about all the things that matter: human rights, animal rights and the planet all of us live on.
Unlike the people sitting on their comfy sofas eating bacon and whining about treehuggers disturbing their comfortable indifference.
Activists are people who are ready to not only spend their time, but to also risk their freedom, even their lives, to save and help the rest of us. People who are ready to lose everything for the sake of others; humans, pigs and cows that they've never even met but are still almost ridiculously loyal to. These people are ready to go to jail for filming the living conditions of pigs on factory farms, or for non-violent protests against destroying the Arctic.
These people are serious about what they do, and what they do is very heavy and tiring, but at the same time they usually manage to hold on to everything that matters in humanity. Most animal/environmental activists I've ever known (of) in my young life have been exceptionally loving, patient and intellectually honest, and usually also genuinely funny. I'm proud to call myself an activist. Because that is probably the most honourable thing a person can be.
I don't know if the writers of The Bridge realize the impact of what they're doing, but here's the problem: people are not very smart. Most of the people watching The Bridge have probably never personally known a real activist. And then the TV box gives them this image of dangerous terrorists and psychopaths, and how wonderful!
Now we don't have to concentrate on the real problems and the real bad guys! Now we don't have to talk about difficult moral problems, confront the richest bullies in the world and face ourselves as western societies. We can just keep chatting about these scary dark monsters with scary animal masks who are coming to destroy everything and everyone we love.
I mean, this is how animal and environmental activists are like? Right? Right? Why would we listen to people like that?
Let's decide that the hero is our enemy. Then we don't have to stop and listen.
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