April 19, 2007

Yesterday we learned of a different sort of tally in the Virginia Tech tragedy: 27 videoclips, 29 stills, and a rambling manifesto. They were all part of a mixed-media Prelude to a Snuff Film created by a madman determined to further horrify his peers and the public, and hoping to leave a mark on Earth--through media, and from the grave--as he feared he couldn’t in real life.

So-called reality television and 24-7 news, along with the sheer pervasiveness of camcorders, picture-equipped cell phones, and digital cameras have made us accustomed to real-time views. We rather expected to see the remarkable on-the-scene footage, taken by a student and shown on CNN, in which distinct gunshots can be heard, each one punctuating another victim’s demise.

But what we hadn’t considered was that the killer also had access to new technologies, in fact had sought refuge in technology and media as his reliable friends. (He had shunned personal contact and preferred to communicate, if at all, by Instant Message. He viewed as his peers not his fellow students but the troubled student killers of Columbine, with whom he’d developed an affinity via television news and the Internet. And, judging by the paraphernalia he wore in the images released yesterday -- and sent not to a friend, but merely to "NBC" -- it appeared that he took his cues for his rampage, most likely, from violent films and video games.)

What’s more, he had apparently spent the good part of the week planning a post-mortem horror show, replete with home-movie QuickTime files showing his ramblings and tirades, and digital stills revealing a Travis Bickle/Rambo-wannabe, a Glock-to-the-noggin Mark David Chapman knock-off. As crazy as he was, he understood quite clearly that even though he had had difficulty expressing his personal woes to others, through his homicidal and suicidal writings, hinting of a history of abuse and mental illness, he would still be able to effectively communicate and to exact some retribution, of a kind, for all his mortal pains, through mass murder and mass media.

Many of us, as 24-7 news consumers, are addicted to the Rush of the Unfiltered Now. And one of the prices we pay for our voyeurism is: Collateral Image. We are required, amid the public parade, to also witness private, nightmarish horror. This is what the killer-videographer was counting on when creating his Last Picture Show. His warped logic: Through his rampage, he would get his revenge; through his videos, stills, and writings, he would gain some kind of understanding by having a platform for his motives and a medium for validating his sorry, vacant, unbearable existence.

When modern media meets violence and terrorism and war, unfortunately, it is not the victims we know, but the killers. We remember the warriors, not the fallen. We know the twisted inner world of Cho Seung-Hui, and only get glimpses of the lives of the humane and often heroic students at resilient Virginia Tech.