When did drunk driving become funny. I’ve noticed in the last year or two that both T.V. and movies have used people driving while hammered as humour. Most notably are Family Guy, which has used this in numerous occasions, The 40 year old virgin, where the main character gets a ride with a very drunk girl, and just recently, Superbad, where it’s the cops that are drunk.
Why is this accepted? Especially in the 40 year old virgin, where the drunk girl has a court ordered breathealizer installed on her car, indicating that she has been previously convicted of driving under the influence. In that scene she drives all over the city, smashing into many cars, before finally turning into one and totalling her PT Cruiser. In Family Guy it happens so often there really isn’t much to say about it. In Superbad the police are driving around drunk. There is even a scene where they are stopped and blowing into the breathalizer to see how drunk they are. There was even a memorable instance in the simpsons where Homer and his buddies get drunk and drive through the elementary school, totally trashing it. The kids are blamed for wrecking the school and a curfew is put into place.
To top off these movie and T.V. show occurrences you have all thee celebrities driving while intoxicated and nothing ever seems to come of it. What ever happened to Mel Gibsons drunk driving charge. It seems like he spouted off some anti-semitic remarks, and called a female officer “sugar tits”, and that became the big story. All the young starlets are totally getting away with this crap and it really needs to stop. Nicole Richie got sentenced to 4 days in prison, of which she only spent 84 minutes! I’m sure she will never re-offend after doing that hard time. Lindsay Lohan apparently got sentenced to 1 day, so by my calculations, the state actually owes her time. I really don’t know what the laws are in California, but you would think that if someone is driving drunk, they should get punished. If you are caught driving drunk you should automatically have your car impounded, and have your license suspended for at least a month, and that’s only if i’s your first offence. The punishment should get more severe if you are a repeat offender.
These shows and movies need to own up to the fact that they are setting a bad example. Coming from me that really says alot because I don’t really believe all the hype of violence in movies leading to violence in real life. I mean recently Disney announced they are banning smoking from all of their movies. That’s right, no character in any Disney movie from now on is allowed to smoke on screen, because they don’t want to give young people the idea that smoking is cool. I’ll but money on the fact that in the future in some other movie that they finance there will be someone driving drunk with hilarious outcomes. The fact is they are using a very serious offence where anybody could very easily be killed and using it to get a cheap laugh. How funny would it have been in the 40 year old virgin when she turns straight into the other car ad crashes, she does her little thing and throws up on Steve Carrell, and then it pans to the other car, where the mother is crying because her baby who was sitting in the back seat took the brunt of the collision and was not unconcious and not breathing.
I really don’t know what’s more disturbing, the fact that this is happening in movies and no one seems to be batting an eye, or that fact that I find myself chuckling when I see it.
