Have we forfeited the right to outrage?
I was by chance in Boston on April 15 when the bombs went off, on the other side of the Charles River. I did not hear the explosions, but felt the shock waves of human reaction moving through the city.
Like millions of other people in Boston that day, my email and Facebook swelled with concerned messages, wondering if I was OK. Wrapped in news coverage, however, I sent essential notes to my mother and sister, then returned to the television, less outraged over what was happening just blocks away than I was over the outrage itself in the people around me.
When was the last time you went to the movies? The average showing nowadays has, let’s say, eight previews before the feature film. And of those eight previews, probably four of them feature bombs. What is a movie anymore without explosions, without limbs ejected from their sockets and corpses scattered prone on the ground? Maybe you are picking up on my theme, and why I was disturbed on the day of the marathon. The right to outrage is forfeited when what we elevate as entertainment becomes reality. Sexy, glib killing on screen has a different feeling on the sidewalks of Boston, doesn’t it?
Probably no one was buttering up popcorn and sipping root beer floats for live news on the day of the explosions and the day of the manhunt. Why do we do this for the latest thriller? I am reminded of how I felt last summer, when a gunman entered a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” and murdered 12 people and wounded 58. The duplicity was there too. Culture glorifies the marshal spirit by making this movie the eighth highest grossing film of all time, then is horrified when someone with a weapon is not contained in the screen, but standing in front of the screen.
Popular imagination is also fueled by the shifting antagonists of the film industry. How many films can you think of in the next 10 seconds where the villain is either — starting further back in history — Native American, Japanese or German, Korean or Vietnamese, Soviet or Russian, Arab or Muslim, and now with the success of “Argo,” Persian? Movie makers choose scripts riffing off the threat of the moment, capitalizing on our fears. These movies subtly suggest a vision of the world breaking neatly into two sides — America and Everyone Else — and the assumption that hatred along cultural borders is just the way it is.
The negative influence of visual entertainment goes further still. Video game culture desensitizes the mind not only to witnessing violence, but to participation in violence. I was struck recently by the words of a high-school teacher who writes in testimonial style about carrying pistols, knives, and shotguns to high school when he was a teenager, and his fantasies of maiming and killing. But, he writes, “there is one significant difference between me at 16 and 17 years of age and most high-school shooters: I didn’t play video games.” He goes on to detail the hundreds of hours of virtual killing practiced by the shooters at Newtown, Red Lake, and Clackamas.
How can we not cringe when we see a 13-year old kid glaze-eyed before a screen, loading up a virtual ammunition belt so as to destroy virtual human beings, passing recreational hours in honing the skill sets of virtual murder? Doesn’t this fiction touch a little to closely to the reality we condemn? I know some awfully sweet kids who love violent video games. The filth we allow into their impressionable minds, the double standards we reinforce subconsciously, these have consequences. Anyways, by all accounts, the younger brother accused in the Boston bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was a very sweet guy…
My point is not to suggest a one-to-one linkage between violent entertainment and domestic terror. That’s an old bell to ring, and it’s more complex than that. No one imputes the Boston bombing to “Air Force One” or “Call of Duty.” Nor is my point simply, “Stop watching those movies and playing those games.” My call simply is for the reader to think a moment, to ask whether there is alignment between the values in our country on human life and respect, and the entertainment into which we invest enormous amounts of time, money, and the enthusiasm of our children.
When there is alignment, there will be justified outrage.
Ryan Gregg, currently of Brentwood, Calif, is a 2006 Flathead High School graduate.