Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Alfred Hitchcock made this wry remark in the context of mid‑20th‑century mass television, when violent crime stories and suspense programming were becoming routine living‑room fare and commercial advertising was rapidly expanding. Hitchcock, whose films and TV work (notably his hosting persona) often played with the audience’s appetite for fear and shock, frequently commented on the psychology of spectatorship. The line reflects his characteristic blend of macabre humor and cultural critique: television offers vicarious “release” through staged violence, while the advertising breaks—designed to provoke desire, dissatisfaction, and urgency—can manufacture irritation and resentment of their own.

The quote satirizes two engines of modern media. First, it nods to the idea of catharsis: watching fictional violence can provide a safe outlet for aggression or anxiety, letting viewers “work off” antagonism without acting on it. Then Hitchcock pivots to a sharper jab at consumer culture: even if a viewer begins calm, commercials are engineered to create lack—envy, impatience, status anxiety—thereby generating fresh antagonisms. The humor depends on reversal: the supposed moral danger (screen murder) is framed as therapeutic, while the socially accepted interlude (advertising) is cast as the true irritant. It’s a compact critique of how entertainment and marketing shape emotion.