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Message |
| Posted By: |
UT |
| Date: |
23-Jul-2003-10:50:46 |
| Subject: |
Cheering At The Screen |
Lately I've been paying more attention to an interesting phenomenon.
I think of it as "cheering at the screen," so that I don't have to think
of it as what it really is, "bloodlust," or "loss of humanity."
I've noticed it for a while, but it really struck home yesterday, when
news articles started appearing about US soldiers killing Saddam
Hussein's two sons. Shortly after reading it, I walked over to check
out the results of the fire at the Eiffel Tower and then went for a drink.
In the bar was a rather loud American offering to buy drinks for
everyone to celebrate their deaths.
Then this morning on the AOL main screen there was a poll to see
whether their deaths had "improved morale" and whether members
thought Saddam would be next. Given the sensibilities of AOL-Time
Warner, I'm surprised they didn't make it a contest. "Win a free year
of AOL...predict the date and time of Saddam's death!"
Yeah, yeah...they were Bad Guys. But it disturbs me when human
beings are so out of touch with the reality of both life and death that
they can celebrate the death of another human being. And I'm fairly
convinced that one of the main reasons that they *are* out of touch
is the constant bombardment of make-believe violence and death they
see on TV and in movies. They know it's not real. It's a fictional shoot-
out between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. So when one of
the Bad Guys takes a slug in the belly from the Good Guy's 44
magnum, "the most powerful handgun known to man," they cheer.
Right has prevailed. Evil has been vanquished. It's a simple world,
for simple minds.
But it makes me remember a day a few years ago. I had flown into
La Guardia to attend a seminar and was driving back to the airport.
But I was 'way early, too early to think about going straight to the
terminal. So, when I passed a multiplex movie theater in the Bronx,
I said to myself, "Self, why not take in a movie?" So I stopped, and
bought a ticket for the only film that was starting at that time.
It was a film called "Colors," starring Robert Duvall and Emilio Esteves,
and was about gangs in L.A. I was a little early so I walked in and sat
down in one of the front rows and munched my popcorn and waited
for the film to start. But before it did, about 40 guys and gals came
in. They, too, liked the front, so they filled in all the seats around me.
And it didn't take a real genius to figure out that the reason they'd
picked this particular film to see on a Monday afternoon was that
they were all members of a local gang.
So the movie started. And the guys and gals around me really got
into it. They were remarkably friendly to me, offering to share popcorn,
cokes, joints...whatever they were passing around. But I noticed that
it made for a different type of movie-going experience than usual. On
screen, when one of the gang members got killed, the gang members
booed. When one of the cops got killed, they cheered.
Mainstream Americans and the media seem to make a big thing out
of it when crowds of Iraqis, seeing a convoy of the troops who invaded
their homeland hit by an RPG, and American soldiers lying bleeding
in the road, cheer. Yet they think nothing of buying a round for the
bar and cheering themselves when *their* Bad Guys get killed.
It isn't about Bad Guys or Good Guys. It's about death. It's about
someone being knocked across a room by the force of a metal slug
propelled by enough powder to blow up a tree stump. It's about a
human being blown into little pieces by an explosion. It's about some-
one's family's life being shattered, and women and children in tears.
It's about death.
And those who laugh and cheer about it are, in my opinion, not only
in danger of losing the last handhold they had on their own humanity,
they're creating some really interesting karma for the circumstances
of their own deaths. Cheer not for whom the Evening News gloats;
it gloats for thee.
Uncle Tantra
23 juilliet 2003, Paris
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