“My writing teacher Tom Spanbauer always quotes this saying:
“When you meet someone, look them in the eye and be kind, because within those eyes there is a great battle waging.”
That’s all I could think about while I read this.
You might remember the author of this piece as the Isla Vista shooter. Which you might remember as the event that various news outlets chalked up to the perpetrator being a misogynist. Which also ignited the #notallmen hashtag, out of which came #yesallwomen.
While I obviously don’t condone, endorse, or believe in what he did, and while his beliefs are very, VERY far from my own…I read the entire damn thing, and I think that saying misogyny is responsible for the events is a gross, irresponsible oversimplification.
The young man said some very misogynist things, and don’t get me wrong, a lot of the writing was certainly misogynist. The writer didn’t seem to think of women as people so much as indicators of status. Yes, at it’s heart, the piece is misogynist.
However.
That ignores a boatload of other things. And I can’t help but notice a pattern. Whenever something like this happens, we look to the issues of the day to say, “Here’s why it happened.”
Columbine was Marilyn Manson’s fault. Or Grand Theft Auto’s. One killing blames gun control, another lack of mental health care. Or the parents. Or racism. Bullying. Whatever we’re talking about, lo and behold, we then say “Oh, here’s why this happened” dust our hands and walk away. We can be satisfied because we have something to do now, an issue to address.
What I can’t help but feel is that the response to the Isla Vista killings was a representation of exactly why news is really, really fucked up right now. Because I looked, and there was some very bad newswriting going on right after the crimes. It seemed that very few actually read this manifesto, which was out there and a valuable piece of the story. Yet so many sources used the same quotes from the last 10% of the writings. There are many, many disturbing things in here. Near the end of his life, the perpetrator has a very bizarre obsession with winning the lottery. He makes multiple trips to Arizona because he is 100% convinced he will win Powerball. This happens half a dozen times, and each time he’s convinced that the lottery is the only way to change his life.
He makes a lot of references to how he’s destined for greatness. Not infamy, but greatness.
He talks a lot about men and women, couples, and he talks about them with obvious immaturity and lack of personal development. He mentions at least three times when he dumped liquids on people, from his car or once after buying a Super Soaker and filling it with orange juice, just because he felt personally attacked by them having fun or having what he perceived as good lives.
There are also parts that were cripplingly lonely. Especially when he talks about his childhood, his anxiety around other people. He talks quite a bit about being small and weak. As a kid, he realizes that basketball players are tall, and he uses kid logic to deduce that playing basketball makes a person tall. So he spends hours shooting hoops at home, waiting to grow. He cries more than any other person in any other piece of writing I’ve ever read. As an adult, he cries very, very often.
While I say there were many disturbing things, there’s also something disturbing the reader brings to the table. Honestly, when he was young, his experiences were not unlike those of most normal American kids.
There was a battle waging within Elliot Rodger. No doubt. Even near the end, towards the very end of this piece, he says over and over how he feels trapped, how he’s scared to die and how he doesn’t really want to do what he did, but he just feels like there’s no other path for him. It’s very strange, and he seems very, very scared.
Just to say again. I don’t think any of what he did was right. And I would never seek to excuse it.
What I want to say, after reading this, is that…well, I guess I feel like someone shoots up a place, we come up with the quickest answer as to why, and then we move on. We decide what to label the killer, and then we don’t think of that person as a person anymore. They’re just, simply, a murderer.
Tom Spanbauer taught me something else really important, the idea of unpacking something. You can call someone a dad in a story, and then let someone fill in the details typical of a sitcom dad. But when you unpack that character, really describe, it’s harder to ignore the reality of that person.
We pack away killers like Elliot Rodger with a word like misogyny. Then we can say we’re not like him, so we’re safe. We can check the box and then ignore the rest of an entire life that led to such horrible acts. We do that, file it away, and then we’re shocked that this happens again and again.
I’m calling us out for that behavior. For skimming the surface of something, finding the first answer that pops up, and accepting it as the entirety of the truth. It’s sad, but we can’t read news anymore and know what the fuck happened, what’s going on. If you want to talk about something, then you’d better look into it yourself. No one else is going to do it for you.
And news outlets, if you want to maintain any credibility, do the work. Tell the story right, and don’t blend in other content just to get clicks. I’ll call it out right now, I think Slate is an example of an outlet that fused this particular story with more attractive elements because, let’s face it, saying “Someone killed and we can’t really say why” is a less clickable story than “Misogynist Killers Endanger Us All.” And how will that help your revenue? Who is going to click a boring headline, and more importantly, click the Prudential Insurance banner that’s currently (11/20/2014) above the story?
Quick calling out of marketing bullshit, by the way, Prudential, are you aware your ad is at the top of this page? Is that where you want to be? And Slate, is this an accident, having insurance above a story about a killer? Just thought that was interesting.
I guess what I’m saying with all of this, what Tom Spanbauer says is true. Look someone in the eyes, see the battle. If you don’t have the time or energy to do that, then don’t pretend like you did.
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