roachboy

elphaba: consideration for the families apart--which i underestimated yes---i dont see what you are saying. as for "going out in a final blaze of glory" as an idea, there are dozens upon dozens of films that outline the same logic, so it hardly seems plausible that the circuit of information upon which cho relied was restricted to what he said explicitly in his infotainment package.

the kids who murdered their neighbors at columbine didn't invent anything and they are hardly the only circuit through which someone who decides, for whatever fucked up reason they might develop, might get the idea to go out dillinger style. i would go further even and argue that one possible reason why cho was able to identify with these folk is because he was able to impute his own narrative to their actions, make them over in his own image: had infotainment of the same order been left by them, maybe showing that would have erased that possibility. but then again, maybe not. there's no way to know, really. so i only go on what seems logical to me.

at another level, there is a history of some 40 years now of people who find themselves in overwhelming assymterical political situations of routinized oppression who feel powerless and impotent and without recourse who have chosen to do blwo themselves up as a political act--with far more lucid explanations for why they acted so----and THOSE are the explanatory elements left behind that networks choose routinely not to air. THOSE you dont see. why? i would argue because the expressions of political views are lucid in some of them and so THESE would be the elements that might engender more instances of this type of action.


another way: i think that showing these clips would dissuade potential copycats simply because the kid was in the main incoherent, and showing the material functions to strip away whatever glamour one could possibly associate with this action. like i said, there is no way to say that everything cho reacted to was simply spun out of his head, at the same time the obviously pathological way in whcih he interpreted those elements seem to me to deflate any political significance he might have imputed to his own actions.

it doesnt really matter to me that among the results of showing it is the piling of ambiguity atop ambiguity. there is no way to avoid it in a situation like this--they do not have neat endings.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite