The spectacular triple-murder-rape invasion of the Petit family home in Cheshire Connecticut drew comparison to the brutality of the supersexed ruffians from A Clockwork Orange. Sam Peckinpaw’s Straw Dogs was released the same year, banned in the UK until only recently, and depicted the similar rapist bogeyman but focused on cultured man’s incapacity to safe-keep his house and blonde.
Failing as a protector is a timeless phobia which has driven such memorable protagonists as Braveheart, Rob Roy, Josey Wales, the Coward of the County, ad manipulatum. So well explored in fiction and fantasy, why must the media exploit those unlucky victims in real life?
We already know legions still vicariously work over the ritual assault of little JonBenet. Our whole populace displayed an embarrassingly unhealthy curiosity about the ease with which an unaccompanied young white girl could vanish in Aruba. And then there’s the slut fetish, aimed at Nicole Simpson, defiler of America’s Hertz sweetheart, given her due, where we got to stalk her sexual promiscuity and cut it quick. Those ugly national predilections are known. Why then parade the Petit cadavers through the grinder?
The Petit blondes were murdered, their house burned, the perpetrators apprehended. Already the story sows fear and drives firearm sales and home alarm upgrades. Why dwell further into the grim of their grisly deaths? Can we not resist hearing that mother and daughters were tied to beds, raped, etc, tormented, revisited, etc? The two joy-rapists are going to be celebrated in prison. Not only for despoiling the rich man’s white women, but for Goldielocks taste testing womanhood from a controlled sample: supple experience, freshly husked, and Media’s favorite fixation the forbidden fruit. And though the news pretends a hushed reverential tone, a voyeur America along for the ride.
I’m merging my response to this and another blog titled “Say Hello to My Little Friend”. First, I’m not sure I would typecast voyeurism as exclusive to Americans nor am I ready to start picking which YouTube video that should be banned and which is of “merit”.
I agree per the excessive amount of media violence we feed our selves, kids, and culture to chew or eschew, but the media debate remains open as to measures of Cause and Affect, interpretation and influence. Recently I criticized a few YouTube videos for glamorizing Spain’s Running of The Bulls, so I’d be a hypocrite to say that I am in favor of cruelty’s promotion.
Since film great Ingmar Bergman passed away this week, I’ll call the inability to separate reality from role play “Scenes from A Mirage”. The entendre is acute, as there is obviously a “marriage” between fantasy and reality. Whether by book or by film – idealism is a component of our hope and our cope.
I adore Dore. His stark drawings of mythical interpretation are often filled with gluttonous violence as well as the occasional triumphant angel. Should I feel guilt for admoring his pen-craft?
Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg” is an intriguing story of a chain of evil events that immerse poor circus acrobat Abel following WWI. “When an artist feels anxiety, it’s his duty to express it, ” said Mr. Bergman of the film. Yet in the attempt at sourcing the anxiety – Berman felt need to recall the backstabbing nature of Brutus from Shakespeare as title to the film.
“And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg
Which hatch’d, would, as his kind grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell.”
To be honest, I’ve never heard of the Petit crimes – but I have seen both films that you mention. I think both are great conduits towards motivating non-violence – each film (when I’ve viewed them) exacts a terrible gutwretch of empathy. Both films, as well as Bergman’s “Serpent’s Egg” suggests more than fear or emulation as source for the violence found within their stories.
When Bergman was asked if his film “The Serpent’s Egg” was a symbol for Universal Guilt, Bergman deflected the question with a personal confession and irony, answering, “I think directors are very brave who say why they are making films while they are still making them—I only knew once, and then I was making the film for money.”
Alas, Bergman is a self-confessed “sellout”. Perhaps. I’d prefer to think otherwise.
So, rather than play “devil’s advocate” to a scourge of potential directors and authors gathered as “counter-productive” – I’ll ask quite simply – what genre of films do you like? Do you believe in censorship? And aren’t you glad that Buster Keaton made “The General” even knowing it was built to laugh at the horrors of the civil war in a romantic train to bridge collapse?
These questions are not sheerly for Eric – they are (as this issue) an open question to other readers as well – and I think – very hard to answer – if answerable at all.
Homefront home invasions:
An altogether overlooked parallel to the ghastly Connecticut home invasion are the house raids we are conducting as part of our invasion of Iraq. Marie remarked that the pillage/rape/murder/burn-down-the-house home invasion was exactly what the Spaniards did in the New World, except they stayed.
Iraq War vets recount among their ill deeds, the hundreds of home invasions with which they took part, certain that we’ve galvanized Iraqi resentment as a result. Part of the US soldier’s daily routine involved conducting searches of Iraqi homes suspected of housing insurgents. The home raids meant kicking down doors, breaking locks, upturning all the furniture, emptying shelves and cabinets of contents, making sure all the family’s possessions wound up on the floor. If a plate didn’t break hitting the floor, the GI would step on it to be sure it did.
Probably in time we’ll learn, as we did in Vietnam, that our home invasions involved robbery and personal violation too. Though to the Muslims what our soldiers do is violation enough.
The only thing the Spanish murderers had on us was that they stayed on to occupy the Americas. Home invasion and occupation.
Wow. I’m from the town of Cheshire, where this home invasion took place, and even if though you make a good point, that picture is extremely offense. I’ve met and talked to Dr. Petit a few times, and I’m just appalled, as I’m sure he would be. (Yes i know i’m about 3 and a half years late, but it still doesn’t make it right).
One home invasion/multiple rape/multiple murder gets a lot of press, or did, because it reinforced racist stereotypes, and diverted attention from other really serious ongoing crime sprees.
The systematic lootings of America, Britain, Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, both financial and spiritual.
The same crime with a different cast of protagonists/antagonists carried out day after long endless month after year, home invasions, robberies, murders and rapes, reporting them would destroy the same racist stereotypes.
So the guilty parties of the second set of crimes, politicized a crime in your town. Hurts a lot, I know.
American reporters don’t publish pictures of the victims. Not laying dead in their homes at least. Not the ones in America or the ones in Haditha or Gaza or the Swat province.
The ones in America they’ll show their high-school yearbook pictures, or some picture of the victim smiling and with her kid on her lap… and it’s considered enough accentuation of the tragedies. They won’t publish the same kinds of pictures of the victims in other countries though.
They might show the victim holding a rifle and smiling, big deal. There are pictures of ME as a 15 year old, holding a rifle as part of my High School ROTC.
When they show a recently decapitated by Vulcan motorized Gatling gun fire person, not laying dead of course, with a similar Their-Version-Of-Boy-Scouts-Or-ROTC picture of the person wearing a uniform and holding a gun, it’s “proof of the inherent militancy of THEIR culture” and given as an excuse for invading their country and killing their people.
And of course seizing the Natural Resources of those countries for American Corporations.
How do they portray such an image here?
Or similar Paramilitary exploitation of the gullibility of American youth?
Ask the guest named Badger1911.