Punishing the Masses

Ready. Aim. Fire.

The Punisher is already pissing people off. To which, I have just one thing to say: “Where the fuck have you been?”

The Punisher, as a comicbook character, has been around since the early 70’s. In his original appearance (in a Spider-Man series), The Punisher is an assassin. In fact, the character as originally conceived was going to be called “The Assassin”.

So, check this out. The Punisher kills people. He kills a lot of people. Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, is not a well man. He is a violent sociopath. He’s a fucking assassin. And, well, he KILLS people. With bullets. Lots of bullets. Because, you know, bullets kill people.

He tries to only kill bad guys, but shit happens when you’re a crazed gunman. I’ll grant you, there are far too fucking many of those in this country, crazed gunmen I mean. But this is make-believe.

It is TV. Sometimes TV serves an important social purpose. Most of the time, it doesn’t. Really. It just doesn’t.

Sometimes, television is just entertaining. Should we be entertained by violence? Of course not! We are though. All the fucking time. And as long as it is pretend violence, either on the television screen or in a video game or in a movie, it’s okay. Hell, I even propose we just confine all future violence to one of those three mediums. Also books and comicbooks. Because, well, as I may have previously suggested: It’s all fucking pretend!!!

And at least it isn’t sex. Because we never want to see that on TV.

It’s stupid. It’s cathartic. It provides a release for many people who would never even think about picking up a gun or doing anyone actual harm. But if The Punisher wants to spend an hour or so of our time laying waste to some truly evil bastards on television? I say let him.

And shut-up about it.