Monday afternoon I saw the killer's face on msn.com. Then I saw my parents were watching the same face, the same picture on tv. He was the main topic of our conversation during dinner as we tried to fathom the unbelievable. Then the next day as I was over a friend's house, he popped up again. I kept asking if anyone knew why he did it. The answer I kept getting was depression. The news was all over the place, yet there were no answers.
Just to put it out there, I'd like to thank the media for bombarding me with images of the killer. Normally I don't watch the news and sadly I don't keep up with current events. But this was different. This was unavoidable. And I admit, the first time I was merely alarmed. The twentieth time, I was depressed and in tears. I guess that's what the media is all about. I can't hate it for speaking about what should be heard. But I can't love it because it has its ways of swaying and manipulating readers. I guess it's sort of bittersweet, no?
In the mail today, I got Time's Special Report: Virginia Tech, the cover displaying the faces of the innocent victims of this massacre. Inside the magazine, this memorial to them consists of a third of a page telling us that yes, these people were going places. Then it moves on to him with 8 or so pages of how he's the bad guy. Umm, thanks, but I think we established this already. Trying to Make Sense of a Massacre, the cover page reads, yet nowhere did I find satisfaction and maybe that's because it's very very difficult to make sense of it. Maybe it's impossible. What I did get a sense of, however, was the targetting of this one man who is dead. Time may as well have said "this man is evil, look what he did to 32 people who were all going places".
It was made clear that he was mentally ill, that he needed help, that he was getting help. Yet the media want to give us a full description of who he was, adding in snippets of useless (or useful? what do you think?) information such as his habit of sleeping with the lights on, his lack of hobbies besides downloading music, and his love for Led Zeppelin, all to show us how strange he was. My favorite detail is that he was quiet. Well, I'm really very quiet. So does that make me a danger to my school? As my mom demeaningly read aloud that part of the article, I reminded her that she too sleeps with the lights on. How far will the media go and how far will readers and viewers follow? What I got out of all this was that when people can't comprehend, they target. I was particularly drawn to this case because in a way, I feel it has added relevance to me, being an Asian American. As I read that he moved to the U.S. from South Korea at the age of eight, I started worrying that this could turn into another post- 9/11 security issue. Perhaps that's a stretch, but only time will tell.
Of course this is all something that can not be forgotten. But all the news is making me wonder, how will it be remembered?
