It's long been a pet peeve of mine (to put it mildly) how our entertainment industry aestheticizes violence, tragedy, dystopia, and criminals, but then claims t

It's long been a pet peeve of mine (to put it mildly) how our entertainment industry aestheticizes violence, tragedy, dystopia, and criminals, but then claims to intend the opposite. Walter White in Breaking Bad is supposedly the protagonist in a tragic story about the corrupting effects of criminality, greed, and the drug trade, yet the most memorable and culturally cited impressions are of how badass and powerful Heisenberg is. Games are notoriously bad at this (the favoured term here is "ludonarrative dissonance") where some games pretend to denounce violence in their stories or cutscenes, but the gameplay makes mass violence the most gratifying and fun part of the entire experience. And if anyone were to criticise the educational/cultural impact of such aesthetic distortions, the inevitable killer argument in return is "free speech" and "artistic freedom" and instant panic about the threat of censorship. (As an aside, as a European I find it especially striking how depictions of even artistic and consensual adult sexuality or even just plain nudity are considered far more corrupting and "taboo" in US culture than depictions of violence. I think that's fundamentally fucked up. Some brief nudity? Rated R. People getting shot? PG-13.)