TRUE THAT

Mandy Patinkin Calls Criminal Minds ‘Destructive’ To Souls

By Elizabeth C.

WHEN MANDY PATINKIN QUIT CRIMINAL MINDS AFTER ONLY TWO YEARS, The Homeland actor thought he’d never be invited back to work in TV. That fear was needless at the time, but more worrying for his future are the recent comments he made about violence on primetime cop procedural shows.

“The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place,” Patinkin tells New York Magazine in a profile. “…I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.”

Patinkin admits there’s violence on his new show, Showtime’s Homeland, he considers it “antithetical” to the degradation depicted on Criminal Minds.

“I’m not making a judgment on the taste [of people who watch crime procedurals],” he says. “But I’m concerned about the effect it has. Audiences all over the world use this programming as their bedtime story. This isn’t what you need to be dreaming about. A show like Homeland is the antidote. It asks why there’s a need for violence in the first place.”

Patinkin gives voice to my own recent thoughts about network TV following James Holmes’ assault on a Aurora, Colo. movie theater during a Brave Knight Rises screening, killing 12 and injuring 58 others, as well as the bloody assault on a Sikh Temple in Milwaukee, Wisc. by Wade Michael Page.

It was Aug. 7 when I turned on the TV and was accosted by scene after scene of swarming cops or demented criminals on every channel: There was Swat Team and the The Unit as we well as news stations delivering their daily dollop of blood. And this was near midnight, hours after the regular primetime menu that includes Awake, Body of Proof, Bones, Common Law, Covert Affairs, the various iterations of CSIs, Dexter, Hawaii Five-O, Justified, Law & Order, NYC 22, Memphis Beat, The Mentalist, Murder One, and that’s just up through the M’s.

The realization wasn’t new or shocking, just amplified by recent headlines. A decade-old study by the Parents Television Council reported TV violence increased in every time slot on the between 1988 and 2002. There’s no reason to think that the trend has abated in the last 10 years.

The American Psychiatric Association has reported that by age 18, a U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence. -eds thatreports that, “The debate is over… For the last three decades, the one predominant finding in research on the mass media is that exposure to media portrayals of violence increases aggressive behavior in children.”

After a while, the findings become redundant, but they’ve still had no impact on the violent pollution of TV.

There’s no mystery that TV violence begets violence. What’s befuddling is why so many of us go along with networks’ soul-sucking plan for us all.