Commentary

Amazon Drama About Angry Loners Who Kill Is Ill-Timed

In a new drama series coming to Amazon this week, a diverse group of female characters feel like victims reduced to second-class citizenship in a world dominated by men.

And so, they nurse grievances and fantasize about murder. The phenomenon of loners with grievances -- whether male or female or otherwise -- happens to be one that we are dealing with far too often in the real world today, up to and including the latest unspeakable attack this week by a troubled loner at a school in Nashville.

In light of this week’s events, the arrival of this new Amazon series at the present moment seems poorly timed. 

In the series, titled “The Power,” women around the world are poised to punish men by electrocuting them with their fingertips, a newfound superpower.

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Let the record show that some of the female characters in the show are true victims of men. One of them, a parentless teenage girl, is raped by a predatory foster father.

Another one, the bastard daughter of a London gangster, is attacked by two men in the home she shares with her mother.

She fights back and is rendered unconscious. When she comes to, she finds her mother dead lying on the floor nearby.

Another one of them is a teenage high schooler named Jos (Ail’l Cravalho, pictured above).

Unlike the previous two, her grievances, if any, go unidentified in the premiere episode of “The Power” that the TV Blog previewed this week.

Jos is a teen in that part of her life where she can’t stand her parents. She is also frustrated by social media and the apparent willingness of girls and young women to make asses of themselves on video-sharing sites dancing, applying makeup and trying on clothes.

Before the episode is over, she learns that she is one of a growing number of women and girls of all ages and backgrounds around the world who are discovering that they possess the power to generate electricity.

Perhaps we will learn in a later episode what her beef with men might be, but suffice it to say, she does not weaponize her new electrocution skill in the premiere.

But at least two men in Episode One are attacked this way, one of whom dies. The other one may or may not be dead.

We are supposed to excuse the attacks because in both cases, self-defense is the rationale for the women suddenly administering these fatal fingertip electroshocks.

But the underlying principle of the show amounts to much more than just these two instances. 

The show’s point of view is that women everywhere are suffering at the hands of men, and that this new power to electrocute them represents justice for the world’s oppressed women and girls.

“For women around the world, it is the dawn of a new day,” says a narrator -- a male one -- at the conclusion of Episode One. 

But when seen in the context of this week’s school massacre and so many before it, aspects of “The Power” are even more disturbing.

One of the characters, the teen foster child, hears voices in her head, a familiar trait in the profile of some of our real-world mass shooters.

This voice urges her to feel at ease with her newfound power and to be comfortable using it whenever she sees fit.

Meanwhile, it is not unreasonable to believe, based on her behavior thus far, that the alienated teenage high schooler whose grievances are still obscure just might harbor violent feelings against the inhabitants of her high school, both students and teachers.

In the corridors of her school, she seems isolated, anti social and angry. She lives inside her head and has difficulty relating to others. 

It is certainly true that the vast majority of people who feel the same way -- teenagers and grown-ups -- never resort to violence. 

But let’s be real. Here in the real world, some of them do, as we have seen time and time and time again. 

And yet, here is a TV show, “The Power,” in which such violence is actually encouraged.

While no one can really prove that this kind of video content has a clear, direct causal relationship with the real-world killings that plague us, it is also true that if we did not have TV shows like “The Power,” who would miss them? 

“The Power” starts streaming on Friday (March 31) on Amazon Prime Video.

1 comment about "Amazon Drama About Angry Loners Who Kill Is Ill-Timed".
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  1. Misha Growski from MG Consulting, April 1, 2023 at 8:09 a.m.

    Adam - Wow - you are clearly not a woman and have never lived life as a woman. 

    No matter where we go, we have to be aware of any potential male threats.  We carry our keys in our hands, we carry umbrellas, we carry mace and pepper spray.  We are always aware of men nearby on the streets, in the hallways, in the offices.  Some of us don't wear what we would like, or go where we would like, especially alone, because of the male predators.  We learn this at a very early age, pre-puberty because of the perverts allowed to walk our streets and harass us.  Cat calls, "grabbing by the pu$$y", that is the mentality of some of the men in our country.

    As far as timing and mass shootings?  Yes, horrid, horrible - and how many women are the shooters????  Women?  NO !  MEN !

    I only wish I had this power.  I believe this show will be a hit with women.  Maybe a woman will invent gloves, in women's only sizes, that will be able to deliver a shock.  They will work like those collars for dogs that go outside the invisible fence.  A man harasses or attacks a woman - they get a shock.  Maybe eventually they will learn.  If not, the woman can increase the power of the shock.  I'd buy a pair for myself, my daughters, my sister, my best friend, her daughter, etc.

    Looking forward to this show - thanks for telling us about it.

    Misha !

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