Violent Stories and Soft Minds

This post is the fourth part of Batshit Crazy and Weirdly Touching: Notes on Culture, Violence, and Identity, a six-part series where I explore how the things we grew up watching, hearing, and laughing at quietly shape who we become.

How family entertainment shapes our sense of right and wrong

In the early 2010s, in my small air-conditioning deprived bedroom in Singapore, I remember watching a man commit murder.

He was wearing a rhinestone suit and singing in harmony. Something about the performance lodged itself in my body — the deadpan delivery, the haunting melody, the way the audience seemed to find it all ... normal.

It was The Cold Hard Facts of Life, the Porter Wagoner song we've been unpacking in this series. I don't remember which year it was that I first saw it, but I do remember what it felt like: certainly not like something labelled "family viewing."

But it wasn't too far from what I had grown up with either. Seeing people shot in the head, impaled with detached steam pipes and being beaten to death was a staple part of my media diet as a child because I grew up watching 1980s American action films.

This post is about how those early moments shape us — not just in what we remember, but in how we remember, and what that memory tells us about the culture we grew up in.

Innocence and Absorption

Children absorb stories in ways adults often forget.

When you're young, you don't always understand plot or metaphor. But you do understand tone. You understand rhythm. You pick up emotional cues — what's serious, what's funny, what's heroic.

You feel the fear in a soundtrack before you know what the villain has done.

You laugh when the audience laughs, even if you're not sure why.

When a violent story is packaged as entertainment — complete with a smile and a catchy tune — it doesn't necessarily make you violent. But it does form your emotional muscle memory. It teaches you what's "normal." What to fear. What to overlook. What pain to find funny.

When Family Entertainment Isn't That "Family"

Think of the strange blend of ingredients that make up 20th-century family entertainment. Murder in musicals. Domestic violence in sitcoms. Racial stereotypes in cartoons. Slapstick beatings passed off as humour.

And then think of how often we were meant to watch these things as a family.

That doesn't mean our parents didn't care. It just means that culture — even the mainstream, respectable parts of it — didn't question these stories too much. If anything, they were values education. You were meant to learn about right and wrong. About what happens when you break the rules.

But very often, what you really learn is:

• Whose pain is funny

• Whose anger is powerful

• Whose suffering is invisible

• And who gets to walk away

Storytelling Is Moral Education

When I look back, I don't think The Cold Hard Facts of Life taught me to be violent.

But it did teach me that a man's rage was an understandable plot device. That violence — when committed in pain — could be narratively satisfying. That even the darkest stories could be sung on prime-time TV as long as the "right" kind of person was telling them.

And when I look at the broader landscape of what I absorbed as a child — American war films, Aussie cops-and-robbers dramas, sitcoms with laugh tracks and thinly veiled misogyny — I can't help but wonder: How much of our inner moral compass is shaped not by what we're taught explicitly, but by what stories we keep returning to?

Reflection Questions

1. What stories from your childhood felt "normal" at the time, but seem strange or questionable in hindsight?

2. What kinds of violence did you see treated as humorous, noble, or forgivable in media?

3. How did your early exposure to these stories shape the way you felt about anger, power, justice or gender roles?

Activity: Story Audit

Think of three pieces of media you consumed often as a child or teen — movies, TV shows, books, songs. For each one, ask:

• Who was the hero?

• Who was the villain?

• Was violence present? If so, how was it framed?

• What was the story's emotional tone — light-hearted, serious, tragic, ironic?

• What do you think this story taught you about morality or human behaviour?

This isn't about blaming your childhood. It's about getting curious about the emotional blueprint that shaped you — and deciding what still fits, and what no longer serves.

Next week

In The Strange Gift of Outsiderhood, I explore how being on the margins of culture can help us see more clearly, choose more freely, and honour the stories we want to carry forward. Can this help you become more conscious, courageous, and rooted in your own values?

Batshit Crazy and Weirdly Touching is a blog series about the strange, sometimes unsettling ways that popular culture, violence, and inherited stories shape our sense of self. Inspired by a single YouTube video of Porter Wagoner singing about murder on family television, the series unpacks how our childhood entertainment reflects deeper cultural values — and how becoming aware of those values can help us choose who we want to be. Read all six parts here.