Getting rid of the Ugly

I hate horror movies. Gratuitous violence for entertainment? No thank you. It's the stuff nightmares are made of. Monsters much scarier than Little's blue and green fuzzy one who one minute is scary and the next is her best friend. The thing is, though, that the dehumanizing imagery portrayed in horror movies has extended beyond the theater and onto ordinary television shows. I know it's not a recent thing, but it's something I've become more aware of recently. And I've decided to do something about it.
I realized that I turn my nose up at the blatantly scary, ugly movies that are out there and avoid them like the plague. What I didn't stay away from were those crime shows, like the many incarnations of Law and Order. Certainly there is a difference between depicting the process by which a crime is solved and enacting the destruction of a human life for entertainment's sake, but ultimately, the gruesome images are still there. It doesn't make for good television if the audience doesn't get to see some blood. And that's what has started to bother me. And frighten me. I don't want those images in my head. I don't want to think about them or know about them or recall them when I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, thus rendering me incapable of going back to sleep. In short, I want nothing to do with the degradation of human life as a form of entertainment.
Last night, I decided that I am going to make the conscious effort to avoid such shows, even if it means (dare I say it), keeping the television off during naptime. Easier said than done. Just today, after making my resolution to myself last night, I turned the television on in a huff (due to a particularly frustrating toddler whom I was all to happy to put to bed for a nap), and watched part of the movie Se7en, which was being shown (in edited form) on a non-subscription cable channel (whoa). To be completely honest, I don't think that it's a bad movie. I do enjoy the occasional psychological thriller. About half an hour into it, I got up to take a break and a shower and realized how quickly I had turned on my resolution. The movie is interesting, for sure, but it is also very ugly. And scary. So I decided that I didn't need to watch it anymore. Off went the TV. Life is not made better in any way by seeing these images. In fact, they corrupt more than entertain. Who needs that?
Not me.