I've been thinking about the mood of the country. With the election next week and the financial meltdown, its hard not to. The consumer confidence index is at its lowest rate in my lifetime but Im not talking about economics.

These days I see two strong and disturbing meme's in our mass entertainment.

The first meme is apocalypse.

I first started to think about this issue while watching Battlestar Galactica (BSG) a few years ago.

In sci-fi there are basically two schools. The Gene Rodenberry/Isaac Asimov school is optimistic. Mankind will learn from the past and make a brighter future. The other school is Phillip K Dick and Robert Heinlein. People dont change but technology will so the future will be filled with the dark and terrible deeds of men.

BSG is the dark and terrible variety of sci-fi and that is pretty much the only sci-fi we are getting on TV these days.

BSG is basically a show about the Iraq war. Life is good and pleasant until we are unexpectedly attacked by cylons (ie terrorists). We dont know why. We dont know who they are or what they look like. Woe is us.

From that premise, the story starts to focus on survival of the human race. When I was a kid, we lived in fear of nuclear war and the end of humanity was expected to come (soon) from Soviet Union missiles. BSG captures the same fear only robots of our own making are the cause.

Then the show takes another twist and looks at the things men do to save themselves. At cowardice and betrayal and torture. Is the human race worth saving if we torture people? In fighting the enemy do we become as bad as the enemy? Again, these themes were all coming from real life and the Bush Administration.

The darkest and possibly most interesting current show is the new Terminator TV series on Fox, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. The world is destroyed by nuclear weapons and only one man, John Conner, can save us. John also happens to be a teenager and he has to live long enough to save us. This show is very dark and since there are so few characters, it really dives deep on how people react to living under that kind of strain and surrounded by that much violence.

At its heart this is an action show with fighting robots but the end of humanity is always lurking near the surface, ready to pull you down if you start feeling too positive. Every episode exudes a sense of loss and sadness.

I recently started watching Heroes which is now in its third season. Although the show is basically a rehash of the Xmen (I keep expecting to see Cable or the Sentinals or Senator Kelly), I was surprised to find that the plot of this show also hinges on the end of the world.

And it isn't just TV. The Road was a very popular book last year and it is the most bleak and disturbing book I have ever read. I couldn't even finish it and yet I cant forget it. Trying to protect your child in the face of the end of society, of cannibalism and insanity. Soon to be a major motion picture for all to enjoy.

So we see this theme in TV, movies, books and video games.

Last year we got STALKER, a post-apocolyptic vision of the future from Eastern Bloc developers. STALKER placed its game in the shadow of Chernobyl and mixed in guns and gruesome mutants. This month Fallout 3 was released. Fallout started as a parody of the 1950's fear of nuclear destruction. F3 promised to take that theme and add high def visuals. Mad Max survivalists and horrible mutants galore all in the twisted ruins of Washington D.C. I want to play the game but I am also concerned that it will depress me. It did not make me feel better to hear the game designers touting how you can really be evil in this game. Nice.

The second meme is helplessness and violence.

Movies like Saw and Hostel represent the other meme. An innocent person is captured by an unknown force and then gruesomely tortured for no reason. Of course we film the torture and dismemberment and sell tickets for entertainment. Over and over again.

I find these movies totally repellant but I am more disturbed by the number of people that enjoy watching them. shadenfreude is one thing but there is something wrong with the graphic violence and details of these movies. Terrible things happen to people in real life but creating entertainment based on watching terrible things happen to people for no reason is disturbed.

However these themes and the graphic details are now invading our PG-13 TV realm.

Take the two JJ Abrams shows: Lost and Fringe.

What happens in Lost? People are trapped on an island and beset by unseen forces, killed, captured and tortured for no apparent reason. But Lost is more main stream than Fringe in a lot of ways.

Fringe = X-Files + Threshold + Saw

Fringe is the most graphic and gruesome TV show I have ever watched. Every episode makes me squirm. The shows construct is a simple good guys (FBI) trying to stop bad guys but do you really need to show so much? Every episode involves someone exploding or being experimented on or being tortured. And the bad guy is not inscrutable aliens or robots; the bad guys are normal people working for technology companies.

The bad guys are business men willing to do anything for profit and the immoral scientists that give them super powers. Dick Cheney meets Josef Mengele. Technology and business, the two most significant forces shaping our culture today.

geez, think positive once in a while

We have come a long way from the Brady Bunch and Leave It to Beaver. Despite the incredible comfort, stability and wealth we enjoy, Americans today see the future as a nightmare. We live in fear of being abducted and tortured for no reason. And all of this is happening by forces that we are unable to comprehend let alone stop. Our world is under attack from the greed of immoral business people and the relentless advance of science.

I dont know about you but I am ready for more of the optimism from the original Star Trek and Doctor Who creators. I agree with Rodenberry. We need to reject the idea that evil is inevitable and work hard to make our children's world a better place. It will be hard but hopefully we wont have to saw our own arm off to get there.