Word of the terrible Virginia Tech shooting sifted down to me through various sources throughout the day yesterday. I watched a little bit of the national news last night...enough to know what happened and feel enough sorrow to know that I couldn't watch any more. We have recently switched to basic cable, and I returned home from work wanting to "check-in" on CNN. I can honestly say that it was about the only time I have ever missed a 24-hour news network.
I turned on the Today show this morning in the middle of a monologue by Meredith Veira. She talked about how she had felt a little strange and guilty (at first) about broadcasting from the campus of Virginia Tech this morning. She had gotten over it, she revealed, when they had arrived to discover hordes of students, family, and local residents there to greet them expressing gratitude for their arrival...saying that it felt better knowing that the nation cared, that NBC cared enough to transport the whole crew down, that "this story was going to be heard." Press row has, evidently, become a place where some have come to heal. This news crew, this press row, Meredith explained, showed that the country is with these people in spirit, in thoughts and prayers. Then they cut to a Swiffer commercial.
I've been thinking (as I think we all have) about the "Why" of this. It has led me to look at how I reacted to receiving the news yesterday. I felt a desire to pray, yes...but what I really, really wanted to do was watch the news. Why? Are we at the point where we need Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer to walk us through the valley of the shadow of death? I remembered September 11th...how I spent nearly three straight days watching the TV...watching the pictures, the grief, until I had to go an a TV fast before getting so depressed that I couldn't move...and then, eventually, coming out of my stupor long enough to pray to God to help me understand.
I remembered a discussion we has in my Postmodern/Modern Literature class in 2000. We were talking about Postmodern "shock literature," and it led to a discussion of Columbine. My professor talked about the drawbacks of the fall of modernity and the rise of postmodernity (a process he was strongly in favor of). He talked about the terribly reality that seemed to play out in Columbine: When a person focused on self-development and self-realization comes to the conclusion that there is no way out, they will do desperate and terrible things to regain control and/or recognition. In other words, the goal of a truly self-motivated person is to "be somebody." To get affirmation, esteem, respect, and love. In the context of modern media (particularly in America), this gets translated into notoriety, recognition and (if at all possible) fame. We want our 15 minutes, to be a household name, to be the center of attention. He argued that when somebody completely focused on self realizes that there is no hope for legacy or fame, the most desperate and disconnected of them will settle on infamy. They will show everybody who said they would never amount to anything. They will show that ex-girlfriend. They will go down in history. They will "be somebody."
How do we get to this point? How do we become so self-centered that we resort to these acts of desperation? And, most importantly, where is the church in all of this?
I'm not the guy who blames everything on the media. And I'm not going to sit here and write about all the things people do these days to get on TV. What I am going to write about is that I find it disturbing that I sought comfort in cable news yesterday. That I find it unnerving that people see video cameras and media coverage, there basically to make a buck, as a sign of hope and care. I am overwhelmed and humbled by the realization that my thoughts went immediately to how I would be changed, my desire to be "impacted" by the news...with prayer left as an afterthought.
I am shaken by the basic realization that there are individuals out there so broken, so desperate, so disconnected from community and true purpose, that they will do terrible things to be the center of attention.
But most disturbing of all is the terrible feeling I get that there are plenty of us, from networks to morbid onlookers, who are more than willing to give them exactly what they wanted.
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4 comments:
I don't have cable, so it's been NPR and the web that have gripped my attention. But it's like, I'm in my car driving to wherever, and there's a number of things I could be listening to. My awareness of what is unfolding at Va Tech, the horror and brutality that we're still just coming to understand--my awareness of that makes me feel a certain kind of obligation to listen to talk about that.
I'd rather be distracted. But I feel like I have a duty to take in the awfulness of it all, like it's some kind of shadow solidarity with that community.
The nature of our media today is to involve the participants in events in the reporting (see the cell phone video); so to listen to and watch that kind of reporting makes one feel, in a way, like they are participating in it too.
I understand that, too. I am doing my best to gather information and understand as best I can what happened. I just can't knock that feeling that we are somehow reinforcing the behavior of the student's skewed rationale. Did he do this, in part, because he saw the amount of impact Columbine had?
The other problem I have is the media's tendency to pass around the blame (Campus police, failed recognition of the teachers, etc.) and how that encourages our passivity. Rather than be convicted about how we can look to reach out to broken and angry people in our own communities, we live in denial and accept the scapegoating. Instead of acting, we sit and watch and blame.
But that's nothing new. Our current political climate has shown us that it is ten times easier to blame than to act.
I'm trying to understand how to respond faithfully...and something just doesn't feel right when I watch the news about this. Thanks for talking about it. I've had that general "I'm just being sold entertainment and products" pit in my stomach when I watch the news recently...I'm just still trying to put my finger on exactly why.
Another thing no one talks about...
last night one of our elders, who spent time in Iraq as a medical missionary, mentions that events like VT happen DAILY around Baghdad and we hardly blink! Is it because they aren't OURS? Not to deminish the grief of the VT tragedy, but definitely something to think about.
The difference between this and something in Iraq is that the perpetrator here has a deep and dark internal motive for what he's doing. He wants simply to kill. In Iraq I think we're seeing people who are motivated by some external thing, their religion or their politics. One is certainly not better than the other, just easier to put a name to.
One reason I'm not really critical of the media coverage of this is that it all seems so normal. I mean, our media have had ample practice in how to cover this kind of thing. And, on the whole, I don't think they do a bad job (again, I don't have cable). They asked the right questions, I think, even if those questions sounded like accusations and finger-pointing.
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