The new Daredevil series arrived this month, and within days it became the most-watched show on television.
Millions of Americans settled onto their couches to watch a blind lawyer with a cracked spine and a bloodied face drag himself back into the fight.
That we celebrate a character like Matt Murdock is not, by itself, a problem.
Stories about wounded people who refuse to stay down are among the oldest and best things our culture produces.
We are glutted with heroes who are morally compromised, physically ruined, or one bad night from becoming the villain.
The streaming queue has become a gallery of beautiful damage.
What does this do to a country already convinced that everyone is lying and nothing works?
When our most beloved fictional figures are vigilantes who operate outside the law because the law is useless, we are not just being entertained.
The lesson, repeated season after season, is that institutions fail and only broken individuals can save us.
That is a story that flatters our cynicism and asks nothing of us in return.
Meanwhile, the real-world consequences pile up.
Volunteerism has dropped sharply among young adults.
Local newspapers — the unglamorous, ink-stained watchdogs that once held city hall accountable — are closing at a rate of two per week, leaving vast stretches of the country with no one watching the people in power.
We have replaced the slow work of community with the fast thrill of watching someone else punch evil in the face.
Each reboot must outdo the last in brutality, because numbness is the enemy of ratings.
A show that would have been shocking a decade ago now plays as standard Tuesday entertainment.
We are not merely watching violence; we are acclimating to it, and then wondering why we feel so frayed.
But we ought to be honest about what we are consuming and what it is consuming in us.
Final Thoughts
A society that endlessly dramatizes the collapse of order while doing less and less to maintain its own is not just entertained.