I have a confession to make (pun partially intended)--I've watched an episode or four of that stupid show. I watched it sort of condescendingly, mocking their stupidity but sometimes getting too involved. I remember at one point actually feeling sorry for a character who got stood up on a date. "I grieved with them," as St. Augustine would say.
People often think that trashy entertainment is a new phenomenon, when in reality it has likely existed since the beginning of man. If art is a form of expression, vile art came into existence when the first vile person figured out how to expose his interior filth. In Augustine's time, this sort of "art" and "entertainment" was substantially worse than it is nowadays, where it was enjoyable to watch two men fight to the death. But the public of the 4th century also took great interest in filthy fiction, as they do today:
Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. . . . But let us beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the protection of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted--let us beware of uncleanness. I have not yet ceased to have compassion. But in those days in the theaters I sympathized with lovers when they sinfully enjoyed one another, although this was done fictitiously in the play. And when they lost one another, I grieved with them, as if pitying them, and yet had delight in both grief and pity. Nowadays I feel much more pity for one who delights in his wickedness than for one who counts himself unfortunate because he fails to obtain some harmful pleasure or suffers the loss of some miserable felicity.
--St. Augustine's Confessions (Book III, Chapter 4)
Let us beware of uncleanness.
