“Death is everywhere. Most of us try to avoid it, others can’t get out of its way. Every day, we fight a new WAR against FOREIGNERS, HOMOSEXUALS, CRIMINALS, WOMEN & DEGENERATES . . . There’s a lot of ways to wind up dead, the fact that we survive at all is a god-given miracle.If you don’t know what I’m on about, allow me to tell to you about a television show called 1000 Ways to Die. As someone who occasionally enjoys dark humour and unusual trivia, when I saw this television show on Netflix, I was intrigued.
Because, every day they live… Sinners face 1000 WAYS TO DIE.”
Now, the basis of the show is that they “report on” deaths that have actually occured, by changing the names of the victims, then recreating the events of their death in the slasher movie style, with fake blood, special effects, prosthetics and computer graphics. There are usually six deaths per episode, and they start by explaining the circumstances which lead up to the death, then show the graphic results with a narrator joking along the whole time. It’s dumb, cheesy fun, but after watching a few episodes, I noticed an unusual trend in these stories.
First of all, like I said, I find this kind of trivia interesting - so, I recognized some of the deaths that they were “recreating”, and I quickly realized just how unfaithful these “reports” were. I knew about the deaths by explosive decompression aboard the Byford Dolphin Diving Bell - which was recreated in Death #710 “Tanked Girl” - so, I knew that the actual victims weren’t a bikini-clad young woman in a decompression tank. Although I wasn’t aware of his name at the time, I knew about Lee Seung Seop’s unfortunate death due to a gaming addiction - recreated in Death #126 “Game Stopped” - so I knew that he died in an internet cafe while playing Star Craft, not alone and smelly in his bedroom whilst losing an FPS game to a girl. And, I knew about the senseless death of Garry Hoy - recreated in Death #64 “Habeas Corpse” - so, I know that he died whilst attempting to demonstrate the “safety” of highrise windows when one broke, not whilst pulling a prank to try to impress a female co-worker.
Now, this in and of itself would be perfectly okay, since many of these deaths are senseless, embarassing, tragic or gruesome, and so immortalizing the names of the people involved has the potential to be disrespectful to the people involved and their families. The show even starts by saying “The stories portrayed in this show are based on real deaths, and are extremely graphic. Names have been changed to protect the identities of the deceased”. This alone is fine.
However, what is less fine is that this is a lie. The writers use creative license to change not just the names, but also the gender, age, ethnicity, location, personality & circumstances surrounding the death, often leaving little more than the “cause of death”, and some minor details intact. So, the “protecting the deceased” thing doesn’t work when you can easily see how the show represented them, especially when they turn an innocent 6-year old boy into a drug-addicted rapist or turn an innocent Ukranian chemistry student into a drug dealer and meth cook.
Now, I understand that part of this is based on trying to appeal to the audience. See, a 6-year old child in hospital being killed in a tragic accident isn’t exactly “fun”, and knowing that a young college student made a mistake that ended his life isn’t exactly “exciting”; it’s just horrifying and tragic to see that the cosmos is random and unfair and sometimes kills innocent people for no reason when they not only don’t deserve it, but have no real way to avoid it . . . this show is designed to have a dark sense of humour, and flaunt gore the same way that a slasher movie does. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy the gore and special effects if it was being used to kill innocent children or defenseless victims. Rather than just portraying these deaths in an honest “tragic accidents” way that the majority of them occured in real life, it changes the story of these deaths, often to make the victims older, more capable and more guilty - demonizing the victim and moralizing to the audience about how certain attributes and life choices will often kill. So, like a slasher movie, it also tends to fall into the trope of the “Acceptable Target”, and that’s okay too.
However . . . what is definitely not okay is the kind of person that this show portrays as “acceptable targets”. The way that this show chooses to characterize the victims of these fictionalized deaths reveals the writers to be conservative, homophobic, sexist, racist, elitist & bigoted.
This show has four kinds of victims - bullies, criminals, perverts or minorities. Now, bullies and criminals are one thing, sure. I can understand wanting to moralize that “crime doesn’t pay”, it’s a bit sunday-school hopeful, but okay. And bullies, whilst I don’t think they deserve to be murdered, I get why this show enjoys “punching back”. But what about the perverts and minorities?
This show was produced by Spike TV, a channel that was supposedly all about “man things”, which means sex, cars, ladies, robots, boobs & sex - because apparently by “men”, we mean what a 13-year old boy thinks that men do. Yet, this show often victimizes horny men, horny women & people who experiment, sexually. Now, necrophilia, bestiality and paedophilia are sometimes portrayed, and those are paraphilias which we have good reason to be wary of. But, alongside these perversions, the show also kills people who engage in sexual experimentation which includes prostitution, cross-dressing, BDSM, self-pleasure, large women, fetish roleplay, bi-curiosity & stripping. I also want to point out that this show tends to kill lesbians - I consider homosexuality more of a “minority”, not a perversion, but lesbians in this show are always portrayed as sexually experimental or nymphomaniacal, without fail, so female homosexuals are basically “perverts” in the eyes of this show’s writers.
Then, there are the minorities. There are ethnic minorities, such as Hispanics, African-Americans, French & Asians who are killed in this show, and it is kind of disturbing that whenever the killed character isn’t a criminal or a pervert, they are either non-white or a girl. But, amongst these ethnic minorities, they also include social minorities like the mentally ill, nerds, rednecks, gamers, fat people, heavy metal fans, &, as I mentioned before, homosexuals.
I thought that Spike TV was supposed to be for men, not conservative, old grandmothers. Yet, the kinds of people that are killed are the exact kind that make regressive traditionalists pop a monocle. Maybe that's why Spike TV rebranded itself to "The Paramount Network" . . .
But, all of this is nothing new - the people who are dying come right out of the Slasher Movie playbook, the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality. People have been killing gay, black, overweight, horny and poor people in fiction for a very long time; I don’t know why, but the kinds of people that write fiction with a lot of death, tended to be weirdly conservative.
But that doesn’t justify this kind of thing, and whilst I equally condemn slasher and horror movies that demonize people like this, the reason why this show bothers me so much is because it has a much higher body count, and also the way that it is judging these people is that much more obvious. Often the narrator, poor Ron Perlman, has to read out this garbage which is often calling people freaks, sluts, jerks, morons, perverts and degenerates, for the crime of not being a boring, white man.
I decided to look at Seasons 1 & 2 of this show, to really divulge how serious this is . . .
[Due to boring, television production reasons, Season 1 of this show was 2 episodes long, and had a different narrator, style & tone. However, most seasons were twelve-episodes long, so I combined these two to get the following details.]
There are usually 6 deaths per episode, but episode 2 only had five, and there were 12 episodes total, meaning we have 71 deaths to consider. I took note of the cause of death, the ethnicity, gender and body type of the victims and what I listed as their “sins”: crime, bullying, stupidity, sexuality, deviancy, etc.
At the top of the pile, Lust was the leading sin, as thirteen characters were killed due to being lustful (18.3% of deaths). Close behind, was Stupidity with twelve characters killed by their foolish actions (16.9% of deaths); then Drug Abuse, with 11 characters who were under the influence when they died (15.4% of deaths). However, drug abuse numbers were boosted by the inclusion of alcohol, as eight of the characters involved were killed due to Alcoholism or their actions whilst drunk (9.8% of deaths) meaning only four were using other substances (Psilocybin, Steroids, Marijuana & Nicotine each caused one death). Following this were criminals - there were three murderers, five thieves & two drug dealers; and lastly there were also six people who died due to Bullying, or being disrespectful to other people.
Keep in mind that some of these numbers overlap as some characters were both “alcoholic & stupid” or “lustful & criminal”. But, when you consider the characters who are completely innocent of these sins, you start to notice a pattern. Several innocent men are killed, through no fault of their own and having committed no crime or disrespect, and all of them are minorities:
In #422: Constriction Accident - A Czech man suffocates when a dump truck driver buries him.
In #640: Tumble Die - A Hispanic man boils to death while cleaning an industrial tumble-dryer
In #091: De-Coffinated - A Haitian man suffocates after being buried alive by a cruel witchdoctor.
In #001: Ichiboned - A Japanese couple dies from a heart attack due to overexertion during sex.
In #518: Jake N’ Baked - A narcoleptic Black man burns to death after falling asleep in a curing oven.
In #066: Guitar Zeros - A Chinese man accidentally dances out a window whilst listening to music.
In #072: Bowed Out - A Japanese man dies from a ruptured aneurysm whilst bowing respectfully.
Now, some white people died, despite having no “sin”, but when an innocent white person died, they were almost always a woman:
In #832: Lesbocution - A woman is electrocuted by accidentally standing near a broken lightpole
In #674: Killdo - A woman dies by an “internal cut” caused by masturbating with a carrot.
In #818: Frightmare - A woman randomly dies of Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome
In #892: Gorgeous Gorge - A woman dies from sepsis due to complications from bulimia.
In #770: Face Offed - a woman dies due to cutting her legs while shaving, causing necrosis.
In #963: Fin-ished - a woman dies while fishing when a jumping fish gets lodged in her throat.
In #196: Radium Girls - Four women die of cancer due to accidentally ingesting radium.
In #710: Tanked Girl - A woman explodes when someone opens her decompression chamber.
Now, I’m not just ignoring the innocent, white men. There just aren’t that many. Once you look at the numbers, there are exactly four.
In #208: Semi-cide - A man bleeds to death after being cut in half by a semi-trailer truck.
In #713: Dive-Bombed - Two men and their pilot die in a crash when they all collapse from the Bends.
In #171: Nite-capped - A man is killed by a stray bullet, from a gun fired during New Year’s Eve.
But, keep in mind, three of those deaths are from Season 1, which had a very different tone. For starters, the first victim, Frank Soriani, is not fictionalized - apparently that is the real name of the victim, and this is really how he died - this was the first episode and first death depicted in the show. The next two men appeared in Episode 2, the last episode of Season 1, and they died as the result of the pilot not following protocol in regards to avoiding the Bends.
This means that in Season 2, of the sixty people killed, only one was an innocent, white man.
So, what does this tell you? Well, it means that in the eyes of the writers, being a minority or a woman is the same as being a criminal, a drug addict, a bully or an alcoholic. In the eyes of these writers, you are more deserving of being killed. Actually, not just killed, but to die slowly, often from choking to death or suffocating; burning alive or bleeding to death. You deserve a torturous, slow, painful death, because you are a sinner in their eyes.
I still enjoy this show, because it is very silly, and you occasionally learn some things about biology. I eveb enjoy trying to psychoanalyze which particular bigotry influenced the writer’s murderous desires. But, it is a terrible show, and incredibly bigoted. I’m not even going to beat around the bush here - there are few different writers involved, but the head writer is called Tom McMahon, he is credited as a writer on seventy-five episodes in this series, and so I consider him at fault for the hatred within this show. So, fuck you Tom, you bigoted asshole. I don’t know why you like killing women, minorities, gays, sexual minorities & people with mental illnesses, but you’re such a piece of shit for considering them more worthy of killing.
I’m the Absurd Word Nerd. And please, keep in mind, the deaths portrayed within this show are extremely bigoted. Do not attempt to recreate the hatred within . . . because if karma is anything like the way it’s depicted within the show - You Will Die.
Or, if you’re in the real world, you’ll probably just piss people off with your stupidity. Until Next Time . . . I’m going to watch more of this stupid, cheesy, fun, stupid show.
