Binging Monsters

I finally got it, why I binge-watch crime shows.

People love stories, not just for amusement, but to show us the way through the dark forest, the way through the terrible haunted swamp, the way to deal with monsters. Crime shows are stories about how the monsters are caught and stopped, how the monsters are made to pay for their evil, how they finally lose in the end, every time, and the world is made safe again.

A child’s world is full of monsters: Some of them are real.

If, in childhood, the monsters were never stopped, never made to face their own evil, never lost, then some part of an adult is still wandering, in doubt and shame believing in some way responsible for the wickedness of the monster– Lost in a haunted wood /Children afraid of the night/Who have never been happy or good… (WH Auden).

Crime shows give us over and over again the most terrible monsters, losing the game. At least for a while, there’s reassurance in that, a diminishment of those dark and haunting beliefs that are the remains of a dangerous childhood.