NBC as an element in the production of mass murderers

JackRiddler

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Thu Apr-19-07 06:44 PM
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NBC as an element in the production of mass murderers

The Murder-Entertainment Complex

In the first "Scream" flick, the teenagers who are about to be hunted down and killed by the murderer talk about whether the horror movies they love to watch create serial killers. No, one of them answers: Horror movies just make the killers smarter.

The mass media do not create human timebombs. No doubt some people are born with a high predilection for fits of psychotic, murderous rage, a drive to kill beyond the violent urges shared by all humans (at any rate by almost all men). No doubt such tendencies develop or are inhibited through environmental factors: upbringing, trauma, the stations of one's experience.

But the culture-at-large certainly will affect how a timebomb personality is likely to blow. As a violent psychosis arises, its carrier might do nothing until he crashes a car, jumps off a bridge, or lashes out suddenly and fatally within familiar surroundings, at people close to him. He might sign up with the military, or become a mercenary. Sociopaths with good social skills have been known to make careers in politics and organized crime. (Am I being redundant?)

Why is it that in recent decades, in the United States and elsewhere, so many timebomb personalities have instead exploded into mass-murder rampages of the type exemplified by Columbine and now Virginia Tech? The easy availability of guns only explains the choice of weapon and the often-high number of casualties.

I submit that the corporate media have played a willing, lucrative and immoral role in the cultural chain of production that creates mass murderers of this type. I sumbit that they became fully conscious of this role long ago. They have created an industry of mass-murder consumption, glorifying the perpetrators in direct proportion to the number of victims killed and the amount of spectacle generated. (A group of Amish girls in a one-room school is not as impressive as 32 college-age victims in two locations several hours apart, is it? So you don't even remember the name of that murderer, who committed his crime just a few months ago, whereas Cho will be with us for many years.)

In the case of real-life killers, this celebration of their exploits is camouflaged by the exploitation of grief, rituals of moral approbation, and "the public's right to know." But the fictional treatments generally do without need of piety or pomposity: The most prolific and profitable of all Hollywood genres are the ones dealing with serial killers, some of them supernatural, some of them seen mostly as shadows pursued by a heroic cop. Mass murderers are stars. More movies are made about them than about all scientists and do-gooders and athletes combined. Manson and Ted Bundy and Son of Sam are brand-names alongside their fictional, supernatural counterparts, Freddy and Jason and Hannibal Lecter. (Yes, this is just as much a commentary on the market as on the media who serve it.)

On receiving the package from Cho (or "Ismail Ax," his supervillain identity), NBC could have taken one picture, broadcast it at low resolution, and described the other contents of the package factually. That would have fulfilled the requirements of "delivering the news." They could have devoted a few minutes to the package as the second or third story of their program. They could have kept a copy of the material to protect themselves, and left the rest to the cops.

Instead, NBC gave the Cho package full coverage as top-plus story. They showed the text of his "manifesto" so that anyone taping it could read it, released all of the stills and broadcast much of the video. They used Cho's choice of imagery as icons to sell their program. And every single other corporate media outlet followed suit. Today, the front page of every tabloid in New York features the same shot of Cho with two guns, and I'm sure that's true in almost every other US city and town.

The broadcast of the material amounts to a glorification. Yes, they call him "evil," which is exactly what he wanted. The lonely, frustrated psychotic is now a comic-book character, a myth, an immortal. He's joined the killers' pantheon alongside his inspirations, Dylan and Eric, whose celebrity requires no last name. Reality once again meets the standard of satire, for this is exactly like the scene in "Natural Born Killers" when the imprisoned Woody Harrelson discusses with Robert Downey the impact of his media persona, compared to that of other famous mass murderers.

Without a doubt, this encourages future timebombs to choose the same path, as Cho predicts in his own bloody-minded images and words. This is obvious to everyone with minimal sense, and no talk on NBC's part about how they agonized over the decision to broadcast this material can mitigate the reality. (At least the tabloids don't bother with the bogus moral justifications.)

Here's a little mental exercise: Imagine Cho had killed 33 people meeting in a corporate boardroom, or the head of state's cabinet, or a group of generals discussing next year's biowarfare and nuclear weapons acquisitions. Imagine the manifesto justifying his murders actually had a comprehensible political basis. On receiving such a package, what would NBC do? I submit they would never dare to broadcast it, even though it would actually be relevant, it would undeniably constitute "news." Because that would reward and encourage the murder of power-brokers, of owners, of elites. (No one would be wondering whether his act qualified as terrorism.)

Because Cho killed students and teachers at random, it is safe for NBC and the corporate media to publicize the material he provided. His victims are expendable, an acceptable and fully externalized cost in the chain of production for the murder-entertainment complex. NBC and all the corporate media companies who followed its lead are therefore free to maximize their Cho windfall. And for the mass murderers of the future, they are providing the ideas, the model, the how-to, the fashion tips, the incentive, the encouragement: the glory.