Seth - You raise a fascinating point when you say "why not use an actor for people to hate?" (and publicly punish the actor, so the people who hate him can feel satisfied...).That is what the entire world of professional "wrestling" (the WWF and their competitors) is based upon!
And it is probably the single most vulgar, tasteless form of public entertainment in the world at this time...another example of the very dark side of the American dream turned into a nightmare.
The movie "Man In The Moon" about the late Andy Kaufman (did I spell that right?) presented a lot of insights into that strange and twisted world of wrestling and what goes on there, and why.
As you suggest, the audience is provided with actors who play the most despicable of villains, thus whipping up the wrestling fans into a frenzy of rage, hatred, and blood lust...and catharsis.
It speaks volumes for the state of frustration and denial that a population has to be in for this stuff to be so popular. It is directly comparable to the gladiatorial obscenities that were daily faire in ancient Rome, only we have laws against publicly committing murder in a sports arena. If we didn't, we would be witnessing such murder on a regular basis, I am sure. We've learned a little, it seems, in the last 2,000 years...but not nearly enough.
Well, when you bring up a population on the notion that watching more inane TV shows and buying more plastic stuff they absolutely don't need at the mall are all they really need to find fulfillment...no wonder some of them lose touch with reality and go off the deep end. They've been lied to all their lives.
A society that executes people in an electric chair or by a chemical injection is itself as emotionally ill as the criminals it is executing...in my opinion.
There are no easy answers to such situations, and executing people won't stop the violence, it will increase it...by at least a factor of ONE in each case.
Murder is murder. I don't care who does it. Or why. It's still murder. We are all capable of it. That doesn't mean it is a good or a necessary thing. It's an act of weakness. Those who commit it are afraid. They may not know they're afraid, but they are.
- LH