Joe Rogan - Why Do We Like Violence in TV Shows?

Well, first of all, how dirty is that money? Exactly. That money must be dirty. It's in a safe, was it just the safe only in the storage unit? Oh, that's gotta be something bad. You're gonna get that handsome dude that was in the beginning of Ozark, that handsome Mexican dude, he's just a straight up murderer, he's gonna come visit you. Yeah, hello man. That guy was my favorite. I was so sad when they, spoiler alert, so sad when they killed him. Like the dude from Breaking Bad that comes around? Yeah, well he wins. But did you see Ozark? You ever see Ozark? I watched the first couple episodes and I got- Well, I fucked it up for you. Yeah. Because it was a pivotal moment that I just gave away. There's too many, there's so many shows though. There are so many shows, but that's a damn good one. Is it good? That is a damn good show. What's the guy who stars in that? Jason Bateman. Bateman. He's excellent. And the woman, Laura- Lenny? Lenny? Lenny? She's amazing. Yeah. The family's amazing, the kid's amazing. It's a fucking show, man. It's a show. It's a show. You get sucked in and that Netflix lets you watch them all. Are you ready? Listen, let me ask you a question. I asked a lot of people this and I said this at a Christmas party and I got with a bunch of hunters and I got, you know, like the stink eye. Like what's this guy talking about? Conservatives. I don't know about that. Maybe I'm just weird. Have you ever seen the movie The Greatest Showman? Oh, is that the musical? It is. I've been forced to watch segments of that with my wife and children. It is fantastic. It's a very good movie. Hugh Jackins an angel. He's an angel. An Australian angel. He is. He sent down here to save us. Save us. You ever seen him dance and sing? He's magical. I'm a hunter. I got a hunting podcast, but I'm telling you. You're a manly man. Look at that beard. Yeah. Look at this thing. But I love that movie. It's a great movie. I listen to it on the Pandora, The Greatest Showman channel and I sing the tunes. Listen, dude, my favorite comedy on TV is The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Okay. So I can't be talking about manly things or non-manly things. Hugh Jackman announces world tours set to perform The Greatest Showman songs. He's going to just sing the one man show. Look at him. Look at him. Wow. A one man show. Gorgeous man. He's just, I mean, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. But yeah, I get made fun of for this. Of course, my son likes it. My wife likes it, but I enjoy. I get into like... Wait a minute. Your son, how old is he? He's two. He doesn't know any better. He's just like the music. He's just happy that something's going on. Yeah. He's just like, there's something on the TV. He's not like a critic. He's not writing a critique after. But if you put on Dora the Explorer and then you switch it over to that bullshit, he believes this fucking guy dance it. No. Dora. Yeah. Listen, I think that I watch like if you watch things like Game of Thrones where they are burning children. Yeah. And like it's entertaining, but sometimes I need a break. I like to watch a man dance around sing. Yeah. Or a woman, whatever. Doesn't matter. Those shows can get dark where you're like, what am I doing to myself? You know, like Narcos. Oh yeah. And they would just go into a fucking nightclub and gun people down. Yeah. Just sitting there watching like women and children get smoked. What's the other, the show with Anthony Hopkins on HBO? What's that? The robots? Oh, Westworld. Westworld. That's the same way. They're shooting kids on there. Well, the kid's a robot. We can just pop. Yeah. They shot one right in the face. It's dark. So every once in a while you need to sprinkle a little bit of musical in your life, I believe. Yeah. What is that, do you think? And here's coming from a person that's been on a bunch of life changing experiences and I know you have. Sure. And I want to talk to you about some of them. Yes. Especially the one in Nepal where you almost died and you saw children and wolves. Babies. We talked about that on the... The last podcast, but it's probably... Yeah. It would be worth revisiting. What do you think this is? Why are we so obsessed with life or death drama that's artificial? Well, you see it in the show Westworld, they talk about it being a game. Yeah. It being this game of excess. What can't I do in my real life? Right. So when you watch TV and you watch murdering and you watch this evil thing come to life, it really is something that you can be transported. You can't do that in your regular life. Well, for sure with Westworld, what you're getting is basically a real live version of that Red Dead Redemption. Yes, right. So when you play that, we were talking about the other day how this guy got in trouble because they have all these things in the game that you can do to people. And this guy tied this hooker up and threw her off a cliff and shit. It's dark. You can do whatever you want, but they were filming this stuff and putting it on YouTube. And then YouTube would get mad and YouTube pulled them off. But then people were like, well, wait a minute though. How come you can just do it? Why did you have that in the game? When my dad was my age, 30, 40 years ago, they would never have ever done anything like Game of Thrones or Westworld. Ever. Ever. In fact, there was a Westworld and it wasn't anywhere near like it is in the modern day. Good moving. But I think we've just stretched out the limits to which we're willing to explore really terrible and evil things for entertainment. We've definitely changed what we're willing to accept and where the bar is. In terms of quality, the bar is through the roof. Oh, through the roof. It's immersive to the point where you can't even explain what you're experiencing when you're watching these shows. Yeah. So if you go and you see some great comedy from the 1990s, like you see watch Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock special from the 90s, that holds up 100%. Seinfeld holds up. But what I'm saying is like if that was out today, it would be a 100% stand up special. It would probably be like, oh, you see the new Chris Rock bigger and blacker? It's fucking amazing. But if you tried to put some bullshit ass 1990s TV show on Netflix, if you try to like finagle some CSI Miami type shit, you know what I mean? Some nonsense. I don't know if CSI Miami, is that even a show? Is that a real show? Yeah, it's a show. There's a CSI Miami? There is. There's several. There's many CSIs. I guessed. Law and order. Law and order. There's so many of those, but we've expanded our willingness to like explore things that are, I mean, Game of Thrones, for example, is one of the best shows ever created in my opinion. For sure. It explores some unthinkable things. Awful things. Awful things. Well, it's the whole show, spoiler alert, is around a brother and sister who fucked and had a whole family. Yeah. Yeah. So it explores these things that we would never even touch upon in our media in the 50s, 60s, even the 70s. We would be touching upon those things in a way that we do now. No, not only that, but here's the thing. Law and order is not a bad show. If you watch it, you'll be entertained. No, it's not a bad show. So what happened? Why did we go not good enough? Like what was it? May I have to... Was that what we did? That's a question. Did they go not good enough or was it like porn? Like if you watch porn, okay, and you watch some porn from the 1980s and then you flip through like you porn, not that I would ever do that, but if you did do that and looked at all the different categories, you'd be like, what the fuck happened? Yeah. Why is gagging something people are looking for? It's not an accident. It's like a category. We've expanded our ability to conceive of things in a media space where we can create. You can create dragons that breathe ice. There's things you can be transported, like, listen, this isn't real, so I can do this. I can have this scene of rape or infidelity or incest that seems... It's appropriate to me only in this fantasy world. Man, sometimes I get down on that stuff. Like you watch enough of it, you're just like, I need a musical. I need to be inspired that life is grand. That's how I feel about it, man. And sometimes it comes across and like, this dude watches musicals, but I do for a little bit of a break sometimes. Nothing wrong with it. What I'm weirded out about is this natural human inclination towards progression in everything, weird or bad. Is it things just keep ramping up? Well, we're progressing with our storylines for humanity in a weird way in media, but we're also suppressing a lot of our... We're trying to suppress through social justice a lot of the same things, right? Well, some people are, but I think it's a small, very vocal minority. I think in reality, the vast majority of people who find out about said suppression are upset by it. And they're like, what in the fuck are you talking about with this safe spaces and all this nonsense? People that hear that stuff are going, oh, this is just nonsense by a few really loud activist types. Yeah. Even on my podcast, it's something as serious as hunting is because you're killing stuff. That's... Yeah. You're going out into the world and plucking something that you didn't put there. Yeah. You're taking it away. But I think the core of what I think you do well and what I think others should try to do is ask why. Why are we willing to... Why is Game of Thrones the most watched show that's on? Right. Why? Why? Why? I can't answer that question, but it's a conversation. I think they get away with it because it's so fictitious, right? It's so obviously fiction. You're living in this fictional world. You have fictional white walkers. You have dragons. You have people that can survive in fire. Yeah, but it's so crazy. There's parallels to real life and then these ridiculous fantasies, but then these parallels to real life that travel along the same path. You don't get to choose between the dragons and the incest. They're both there at the same time. I think it fulfills a lot of base needs, but it does so in this way that's obviously false. Yeah. It's like, why are superheroes so huge to us? If you stop and think about the number of blockbusters that are superhero movies, that are comic book movies... They're coming out once every couple of months now. It's crazy. That was a rare beast when I was a kid. When I was a kid, if there was a Hulk movie, I would have jumped for joy. There was no goddamn Spider-Man movie when I was a kid. There was a TV show and it sucked. It was a goddamn cartoon TV show. Spider-Man, Spider-Man does whatever a spider can. Spins a web and he sighs, catches thieves just like flies. Look out. Here comes a Spider-Man. It was terrible. I used to get up early to watch it because that was a huge comic book narrative. You've watched the Lou Ferrigno Hulk, right? Fuck yeah, I watched it. That was a little bit... I mean, you've watched the Batman with Adam West. You watch him now and you're like, what is happening here? They came out with Superman. He was the first movies. What is this, a Spider-Man TV show? Wow, that's another TV show. What's that guy in the background doing? Who's that guy? He don't look like he's doing anything good. He's got a wooden stick. He needs to know those shits are just for practice. He needs to know that Spider-Man can shoot webs out of his hands and that wooden stick's probably not going to do much. Then Spider-Man sort of changed his ability, right? Because what he used to be able to do, like now, he could just basically fly. I mean, he just hurls himself through the air and sticks to buildings. You know, it used to be a little harder to swing around back. He's like, let me drop my backpack full of textbooks and get to it. There was no Spider-Man movies when I was a kid. There was a Superman movie and the Superman movie beget the Batman movie. Batman movie came out. Michael Keaton was a big, big success. People were shocked that Michael Keaton was Batman, but it worked. Was that like Danny DeVito? It was the Penguin. Yeah. Everybody got a shot at Batman.