Is the periodic orgy of bloodshed in schools and college campuses a uniquely American phenomenon? Do you ever hear of people in other parts of the developed world going postal in the way the Virginia Polytechnic Institute gunman did?
Lumiere wondered whether the Entertaining Violence show feels wrong for tonight, but we think the timing is perfect in a way. David wrote to us this early morning in response to Lumiere:
My immediate reaction is: no. Would we have said this about the 289 Iraqis that were killed this past Saturday? Or after the bombs in Algeria last week? Did millions of people not watch 24 last night? We live in a terribly violent world, a truly violent world, and that has to be part of the reason that watching staged violence in different forms is a perennial form of our entertainment.
David Miller in an email to Open Source, April 17, 2007.
We all agree that nother nailed the show we should do on the Imus fiasco. Question now is who should we have on to talk about it? Chris is calling Steve Pinker, Glenn Loury and Randy Kennedy. Robin is calling her hip hop sources Jeff Chang and Bakari Kitwana and Rinku Sen and Daisy Hernandez at Colorlines Magazine. Chelsea is calling Barratunde and Leon Wynter. Any other ideas for guests?
I’ve been thinking in the aftermath of this story that it might have been more productive not to fire Imus. I bet he would have put his annoying rant to work in the service of erasing hateful speech from the airwaves the same way he shills for his other pet causes.
///…. We live in a terribly violent world, a truly violent world, and that has to be part of the reason that watching staged violence in different forms is a perennial form of our entertainment.\\\\
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
- Anais Nin
David,
An excellent show. Chris is a pro, he can always pull a rabbit out of his hat.
During a robbery, I pointed a gun at one of the robbers heads and pulled the trigger with the intent of killing him. I view the subject of violence, fake, real, or justified, differently having had that experience.
Years from now, if someone asks you what you were doing around the time of the Virginia Tech massacre, will you recall Entertaining Violence?
I don’t think you will want to do that. Life’s experiences have a way of adding up. I thought the timing was inappropriate – I still do.
My experience is similar: I have faced loaded weapons three separate times and that changes you. Stories like Virginia Tech take on a whole other dimension; they are not just stories. What you experienced comes back every time. On screen violence falls far short of the reality of actually being IN a violent situation. The sound is never right in the movies. You don’t have the powerful sense of focus you have at gunpoint…every sense is heightened. It is all animalistic. Sensory. The Virginia Tech survivors will face years of guilt, PTSD, nightmares, emotional numbing, confusion…and fear. My heart goes out to them. That tired phrase “everything is different now” is really true for those who lived thru this. Nothing will ever be the same. You cannot imagine the private darkness that follows you afterward.