Halfway home

[undergroundpanther]

I just saw the new comedy central show halfway home.
I don't know how I feel about it yet.

It was the "parents day" episode.

I say this because I was once at a forensic halfway house. There were a few people there besides me with no criminal background.I was there because I needed to stay out of my parents care and they had an opening and I took it.Some of the neurotic people there were similar to the characters in the show,it was kinda uncanny.. but in real life they were not funny or "well off"financially.The private hospital halfway house was where well off people went or people who had good insurance.It's very strange to me they picked a "well off" halfway house full of rich parented felons in a big mansion. I never saw a halfway house be a huge mansion in a "nice neighborhood" either..The halfway house I was in was in downtown Baltimore.In some ways it was kinda like it is, being on the inside all the "residents" having group meetings in the living room kinda thing.The one staff acted sorta staffy acting in the stiff incompetent way a barely trained staff does and that was amusing.


It got me thinking ..have so many people in the general population in this country been in jail,psych hospitals, residential homes, halfway houses etc. that the comics can make fun of it and most people would "get it"? That's kinda scary but reassuring at the same time.

The parents episode was funny but it wasn't funny at the same time because it basically made dysfunctional families and child abuse look like it was "funny" and not painful to live through and in that way it was sickening.Reminded me of how in the south years ago people would make"funny" comics and drawings of black people doing "funny things" that were really degrading or abusive to one another and the ignorant desensitized racists who thought of racism as normal think was hilarious.It felt like a minstrel show a multi racial gay friendly ,religiously diverse but it's all ok make fun of the nuts in these populations.
I have seen clients do the kinds of things these actors did sorta but it was driven by their illness their fears and traumas and it wasn't funny. It pissed me off because it just seemed to say look at these fucked up people, fuck up.In the forensic halfway house I was at there were felons,arsonists,armed robbers ,assaults killers who went violent when they went off their medicine and the majority of them felt such shame at what they had done when their illness got out of control they were terrified to not follow their therapy regimens.They were portraits of pain,that sometimes were funny in their humanness. One guy used to make fun of Reagan and twist his words whenever he was on TV and I'd just about have an aneurysm laughing so hard.Alot of the clients there were memorable personalities.


Somehow I'd not be so offended if it was psych patients and ex psych patients doing the show,writing the scripts and they were drawing on experiences to heal from it but I know that probably isn't the case.. Because it's comedy central and comedy central has sometimes cracked on serious shit that isn't funny at all like child abuse and rape and trauma .I can't help but feel like it's a big pathological a caricature of the tragedy of mental illness and it is just really sad that there would be an audience for a show like this. It's feels like I felt when I saw a sign at a gas station recently,. It was advertising their extra caffeinated coffee as "shock therapy". I wondered to myself does the yahoos running that ad campaign realize how traumatic shock therapy can be to a brain and how it is used like a weapon of coercion to basically lobotomize people especially in other countries? I felt like going there and demanding they change the sign. But I couldn't walk that far to do it.

I fear that this minstrel show attitude about the crazy lives and families of mentally ill people by people that do not deal with the pain of mental illness or abuse personally,most likely might have some sad repercussions for the mentally ill in real life. In the future just like all the torture movies make torture seem like a game or nothing . Over time I feel the media has been systematically desensitizing people by shock graphic violence and making fun of trauma and suffering. This bothers me.Would a show like this if it takes off and shows like it become a TV trend make it seem OK to make our suffering a butt of a joke? Desensitizing the already ignorant already fearful in denial public to the real issues of mental illness,child abuse etc. is not a good thing..If mental illness and trauma and families in crisis are portrayed as a funny game will it be seen as not really serious when it IS serious ,dangerous and not funny at all?

Sure this show looks like a funny version of one flew over the cuckoos nest..but somehow I couldn't really laugh at it.
There was some hideous abuse in that show,a father had a son walk into a ring of candles wearing a loincloth in some ritual and pick up pebbles in his butt and drop them in his fathers hand as a "final humiliation".His father accepted his son again after the pebbles and his son said he'd do four next time his father was beaming it was just gross..The black yo guy who's parents did not come was in his room looking at his photo-album of his family crying after "parents day" was over, and his grandma came,he came running out of the house happy, only to have grandma turn on him after a hug,and chase him all over the yard threatening to beat him with a paddle.They took a picture of it and put it on the"parents day" memorial picture display. I think this is just twisted.

However the preppie white guy arsonist had a racist snotty country clubbing father,who embarrassed him,So he put his father in the position to have to talk to the black resident and that was funny watching his racist father cringe.Later he was telling the staff the house needs segregation and the staff said in reply to this ass there are federal laws that might get in the way with your requests sir..That was great.

Any thoughts?

But I dunno whether to be offended or saddened or laugh because in some ways the stupid shit that goes on in the show,arguments over bullshit,it IS like it is being in a halfway house.