MediaScape 1.2 - Are We Tornados?

Prediction: By the time this appears on Eye Caramba, the Littleton massacre has probably faded from MSNBC and CNN, though more than likely Congressional hearings continue on all manner of our "culture of violence." Fairly innocuous gun legislation has passed, lukewarm enough to muster some small Republican support, while the television, film and videogame industries have volunteered to police themselves through a board or panel which, like the many boards and panels appointed after the Los Angeles riots, busied themselves until their work retreated from page 1 to page 43 of the newspaper and then disappeared, having accomplished the goal of appearing to do something.

I admit to having watched much of the Littleton coverage, primarily because I once lived near Littleton, but also because I often find myself sucked into the cable news vortex, a habit as difficult to break as cigarettes. For those of us who were drawn in by the sickly seductive allure of the coverage, it was interrupted by the natural but just as brute force of nature in the form of countless funnel clouds in Tornado Alley. Of course, no one accused the weather of playing ultraviolent videogames and watching too many Oliver Stone movies; no, the weather attacked because conditions were right, conditions which are not fully understood. Meanwhile, John Hockenberry had already been anointed MSNBC's DJ (Disaster Jockey), having been shuffled from Kosovo to Littleton to Oklahoma City all in a matter of days. Perhaps there is more of a connection between the stories than death.

I say so because the events in Littleton reminded me of an old favorite, "Lord of the Flies." The boys who shot that school to pieces in some ways brought to mind old Piggy, the chubby, bespeckled boy who is mercilessly used and ridiculed but who never once thought of pipe bombs and sawed off shotguns as a way to achieve revenge. Still, surely there was at least one vengeful bone in his body, one he could not exercise, knowing there were other, stronger boys wise not in the ways that Piggy was wise, but wise still in the use of their bodies, and the ability to dominate the landscape.

The social milieu of a high school is brutal. Most of us found ourselves in the middle of the high school ridicule war; sometimes we got and sometimes we gave. But another point often missed is that in the fairly representational social world of a large public school, sheer numbers guarantee there are one or more disturbed, possibly deranged kids. Some of these kids will somehow make it through and eventually adjust to the world; others not.

Perhaps the trouble starts when through luck or other forces one of these kids teams up with another of similar mindset. This might be the secret to what triggers troubled kids to explode in horrendous acts of violence: They are no longer alone in their feelings of rage and inferiority -- no, they are part of a miniature army with its own belief system, uniforms, and, in this case, guns and bombs.

Like tornados, no one understands the confluence of forces that leads an adolescent, or adult, to commit these kinds of crimes. Like the Kosovo situation, one longs to react somehow, and fast, because the circumstances are so horrible, so unfathomable.

But at some point, there is a limit to how much violence can be contained by rationalization. Violence, like sexuality, is not a rational beast. In a largely Judeo-Christian land, it is difficult to understand how misunderstood violence tends to be within the dominant moral construct. It is seen not as an aberration but as an event with a rational explanation, though the explanations depend upon which political party one belongs to. No one wants to admit that human beings are violent, at least emotionally, but "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is on the list of commandments for the same reason as adultery -- many, many people want to do it. It is a difficult and seductive human drive that ultimately only the individual can control. It will continue to exist if the children are schooled in solitary confinement, without movies or videogames or compact disks or even guns.

Is this to say that nothing should be done? No. It's only to say that nothing may work.