Virginia Tech

For mostly obvious reasons, I've avoided blogging about the Virginia Tech shootings: What new insights could I possibly provide? But now as the media feeding frenzy has reached, inevitably, a point of satiation--which, sadly, is not tantamount to saying that it has stopped feeding--I thought I'd scatter a few observations.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Cho seung-Hui had "Ismail Ax" written on the inside of his arm, and immediately the blogosphere exploded with reactions. Ismail being one version of Ishmael, many concluded that Cho obviously was a Muslim and that his actions were in keeping with Muslim terrorists of his ilk. Of course, this is to say nothing of the fact that Ishmael's role in the Old Testament is well established or of the fact that Cho comes from a decidedly Christian family, or of the fact that with NBC's release of his creepy Napoleon Dynamite intoned rants, Cho fails to imply even a passing interest in Islam. In fact, the tapes are notable for what they do reveal about his motivations: (1) he identified pretty seriously with the crucifixion story and (2) he had a misplaced rage against the excesses of classism--misplaced because from what I remember from a trip a few years back, reasonably priced Virginia Tech has about as modest and middle-class a campus as one can find.

And then there's the picture above and the accompanying piece from the Paper of Record. Now, I should make it clear from the get-go that I think Old Boy is the most incredible film released in the last five years--a nuanced and breath-taking meditation on the nature of revenge (at times lyrically beautiful, and at times depraved in ways previously unknown to film-goers). Anyway, because in one of the pictures Cho sent to NBC he's seen wielding a hammer, because he's Korean, and because a Korean guy also wielded a hammer in Oldboy, ergo, that film was in part what inspired Cho to go on his murderous rampage. Of course, there isn't much evidence suggesting that Cho was inspired by Old Boy, but in juxtaposing the two images the Times lets our collective racist mind wander: fucked up Korean guy obviously influenced by fucked up Korean movie.

But what pisses me off really is this: The New York Times suggests that Cho was motivated by a Korean film, the blogosphere in its charmingly shrill way accuses him of being a Muslim terrorist, news outlets make noise about his residency status (preferring the otherizing term, "resident alien," over "permanent resident" or "green card holder"), and totally unnecessarily and repeatedly, the Government of Korea expreses its condolences to the United States, and so it remains as true today as ever--as a nation we cannot face tragedy or ugliness or violence without externalizing it. We cannot assume any sort of responsibility for evil that grows within the fold of our amber waves, our purple majesty. We live in a culture that glorifies handgun violence, one that desensitizes children to its consequences, while at the same time putting few obstacles in their path towards armament, yet we grasp at straws when something like this massacre happens. Maybe guns don't kill people. Maybe capitalism isn't godless. But when we let the homicidally deranged have access to guns, when we let the socially isolated and the financially aggrieved get a permit for them, let's at least man up a bit. We didn't make Cho Seung-Hui crazy, but we gave him the road-map from crazy to Columbine-style, faux-martyr fame. Maybe that's the price we pay for living in a free America--I don't know--but let's recognize it as our burden and ours alone.