There was, to me, a connection between the two popular, but seemingly disparate, perceptions of NBC's (and subsequently, everyone else's) airing (and endless re-airing) of the video/photographic footage of Seung-hui Cho. The first perception was that airing it would give us some insight into why he did it and it would put a face on the crime for the family's grieving. The second perception was that it was reprehensible to run the footage because it gives no insight into the killer's motivations and only serves to further aggrieve the families still mourning the loss of their loved ones.
To me, the second opinion is the validation for the first. We don't learn anything about Cho from seeing the video. We gain no insight into his disturbed state. If his professors and fellow students couldn't glean any insight into his potential to be a killer from being around him regularly and the public-at-large can gain nothing from seeing this manufactured version of himself, I think we can finally put to rest the notion that we can prevent this type of event by spotting the warning signs and that "he fit the profile". If we can only identify or even call out "the profile" of a killer post hoc, what good is the profile?
Also, I believe the families (and, by proxy, all of us) have to deal with the whole incident, and that includes dealing with Cho. If he is simply an idea in our imaginations, a concept, it is very easy to cast him as fitting the profile. It is much more difficult to deal with him as a real, (then)-living human being. The ability for "one of us" to carry out such an act is unconscionable for a reasoning, rational person, and even for some non-rational people. This is why the idea of airing the footage creating copycat events makes little sense to me. If we believe certain individuals act in irrational, inexplicable ways, why then, do we take such a linear approach in regards to the airing of this "manifesto"? If it is indeed as simple as seeing this video flipping a switch in the mind of an already "on the edge" individual, pushing him/her into madness, we should be able to explain their actions better. But the fact is, we don't really know what, if anything external, pushes people over the edge. And we can't explain the further, shouldn't we? And can we draw 1+1=2 conclusions for people who have decided 1+1=orange?
The desire to "make sense of it" overrides the ability to accept that some things will never make sense to anyone but the perpetrator, and maybe not even to him.
Feel free to disagree, I haven't written in a while and could use a little comments-section dialogue for practice.
2 comments:
My professor suggested, I think rightly, that Cho's action was a 'problem of conscience.' Which, indeed, is why I cannot condemn it simply as irrational or senseless. Even if the sense Cho understood it within is foreclosed to us on the outside, something within him suggested it 'made sense' to kill multiple fellow students. And calling it madness or evil or irrational are all defenses from the world in which killing might come to make sense, and the more terrifying correlary, that we ourselves might kill because of our conscience... Indeed, do we ask something different from soldiers? What needs to be asked is, under what conditions does killing appear as an option?
And isn't this, also, how we recall Columbine? The lost honor and dignity of two boys who demanded respect at gunpoint on the one hand, and mad killers driven by video games and poor parenting on the other. While everyone was furious about the killing, a side-dialogue appeared about how to prevent the cliches and hierarchies at school that alienated and enraged two people to the point of murder. Calling them mad may help us sleep at night, secure in our safe world, but the question of 'how have we contributed?' should not be brushed away from the discomfort it causes. And it is an important question, especially when honor is on the line. Because there is no movie I can think of where sleighted honor is bought back cheaply...
You're exactly right when you talk about how we have an intense need to categorize and divide events, people and things to make them fit into whatever schema in which we choose to put them.
As to showing Cho, I don't know. One the one hand, as the fourth estate, the press assumes responsibility to enlighten the public. On the other hand, that same enlightening empowers people to copy-cat and put others in harm.
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