"Don't Look and It Won't Scare You"

When I was a child, and one of... well, of very many children, and TV was one of our mostest favoritest things in the whole wide world, no one always got to watch what he or she wanted to watch.
Sometimes ones preference prevailed, sometimes that of my brother whohasnotasteorsensewhatsoever, sometimes a younger child since he or she would be put to bed first leaving his or her elders a half hour more of prime time...
And sometimes, naturally, a parent would make a unilateral decision.
(Frankly, this is one of the great lessons one absorbs growing up in a large family, without even being conscious of it, "I don't always get my way. NOR SHOULD I." I digress.)

My oldest brother was a big fan of Creature Features. (Not sure if that was it's real name.)

I watched it quite a bit, and if was tame enough, or we were quiet enough, my parents allowed it.

I liked "monster movies." I really, really liked them,a long as they weren't, to use the technical term, "ookie." I like chills and thrills and horror, particulrly in a "period" setting,  but not slime and never gore.

My oldest sister really didn't like such things, and some of us littler ones liked some kinds but not others, but regardless - although if it was noticed and judged too intense it might be shut off, or certain people might be removed from the vicinity, but since since each of us had already essentially made the choice to watch and since movies in the olden days parcelled out the shocks and the effects, and filmmakers and television directors did not go out of their way to make even the sound effects realistically sick-making as they now do, the parental solution was not infrequently to state the obvious - "Don't look and it won't scare you."

Don't look and it won't scare you.

That still works today, and it's not bad advice in some matters.
There are many scenes in movies as they are now made from which I turn away, during which I create noise in my own head so as not to hear screams and cries.
(Even in some not-so-new movies, I just thought - Peeping Tom, anyone?)

And I thought for quite a while before I decided to post the picture of tiny, tortured baby parts with my #CallHimEmmett post.

But I thought it was important, self-censoring of images of that horror is a weapon the enemy uses to allow us and those we would persuade of it evil to ignore the abomination of the deliberate abortion of our fellow men.
Often on television or internet a news anchor will use a "warning" that's in reality a teaser - that "before we roll this footage, we must warn our viewers, some of the images you are about to see may be..." tempts many, ooh, can't wait, wonder what....?

So yesterday, when Himself asked, as he does almost everyday with black humor, what's the atrocity du jour? and the answer in the news made his question hideously apt, I have to say that the forbearance shown by most outlets in not playing, (in an unending loop as they do for most of the barbarities they are lucky enough to have caught on camera,) the video bid-for-fame-and-immortality made by the racist who murdered the reporter and cameraman was both surprising and appreciated.

Don't look and it won't scare you...

Maybe some of us are doomed to just go through the rest of our lives perpetually scared.