Reaction to Littleton:
Another example of parent bashing
by Cliff Bostock
(Originally published in the "Paradigms" column of Creative
Loafing)
A reader writes: "Thank you for your website and insights.I watched
(as have many) with horror at the aftermath of the teenage killings in
Littleton, Co. What do you believe it is that our youth are showing us
about ourselves? What is this shadow and how do we go about transforming
this?" - R.C. Rodgers.<P>
Like most Americans, I was not only horrified but
transfixed before the television by the events in Littleton. My thoughts
immediately went to the 1959 film "Compulsion<P", the true
story of two rich-kid college students, Leopold and Loeb, who attempted
the perfect murder. I also thought of the 1976 "Carrie,", in
which a girl incinerates her high school as revenge for being tormented.
In other words, the events had the timeless quality of a waking dream.
And indeed it was notable how often interviewed residents of Littleton
said they kept waiting to "wake up." Thus, from a psychological
perspective, one could say that the events plunged the country into the
unconscious, or its negative "shadow," to use Mr. Rodgers' term.
The reactions, more than the killings themselves, were revelatory. In
one of the most amazing uses of television I've ever seen, "Nightline"
organized a "town meeting" in which residents of Jonesboro,
Ark., where a similar shooting occurred the year before, gathered in a
church to talk about their experience for the benefit of Littleton residents.
Littleton folks in understandably smaller numbers gathered in a television
studio to listen and respond.
What was eminently clear was the need to fix blame and, of course, parents
were immediately held responsible for the behavior of the murdering children.
To everyone's surprise, the mother of one of the young Jonesboro killers
showed up at the Nightline meeting. Other parents and host Ted Koppel
demanded she apologize for her child's actions. A juvenile court officer
who tried to speak about the suffering of the woman's child was silenced
in rage.
Thus, once again, pathology was reduced to family dynamics. The infuriated
blame of parents for the acts of children with obvious mental illness
demonstrates how much we continue to live in the myth of developmental
psychology - the idea that all of our problems can be reduced to what
occurs in the interactions of children and family.
Indeed, any effort to construct a larger view of what occurred in Littleton
was immediately resisted. The mother of one slain Jonesboro student blamed
"gun-toting" America, the broad culture of violence. Although
she was applauded, another man sprang to his feet to defend guns with
the tedious and long disproved bromide that guns don't kill people, etc.
(We know from the experience of Great Britain, just for starters, that
gun control does help reduce violent crime.)
The response to gun control is indicative, too, of how we are thrashing
about in unconscious irrational feelings and thoughts. Despite incontrovertible
evidence that gun control reduces violent crime, people of all intellectual
capacities argue against it passionately, as if King George were still
at the door and the only thing standing between the integrity of the Constitution
and anarchy were Charlton Heston and his six-shooter.
The wisest voices in the Nightline event belonged to other children.
They, without exception, noted that these were not children from bad families.
But they were not kids who had ordinary problems, either. They described
kids who were daily abused at school - thrown against lockers, beaten
up and called names -- by other children. They were so ashamed of their
experience that they didn't even confide in their parents. (Instead they
told the world on the internet, which in itself is a statement about how
unconscious we are about violence. We don't even take it seriously when
it's publicly threatened.) In other words, the kids were victims of violence
themselves.
Could there be more surreal irony than hearing angry adults argue for
the right to own guns to protect themselves from assault, even as they
criticize other parents for their children's obtaining guns as a defense
against
the violence <I>they <P>are suffering? What insanity to think
that people can be abused regularly without seeking retribution modeled
by the culture in which they live.
The idea that children's experience in 1999 can be completely contained
and regulated in the family is absurd. Parents cannot monitor their children's
exposure to all media, including the internet, television and popular
music. What insanity, on the one hand to note how violent forces have
overtaken America's popular arts, and on the other hand continue to support
unrestricted gun ownership. We're going to ban Marilyn Manson for his
violent imagination and give Charlton Heston, who has the real guns, a
medal? Such radical cognitive dissonance - a failure to resolve what is
rational and true with one's beliefs -- points to our culture's utter
devotion to its cowboy ethics at any cost - even the cost of its children's
lives. A child's world has grown far, far beyond the reach of the immediate
family, just as the world of adults has grown far beyond its earlier containers
in the church and job.
So, to answer Mr. Rodgers' question, what is being revealed in Littleton
is the violent nature of America finally turning back on itself - as do
all disowned impulses and instincts. It is the unconscious demanding conscious
acknowledgement. It will not be transformed by blaming parents or censoring
popular culture or avoiding our responsibility to act unpopularly by speaking
out against guns. Nor do I think the school curriculum can be held accountable.
I think as a start real controls need to be put into place to limit access
to guns, in the way we attempt to regulate any symptom as the first approach.
Let's try it, if only as an experiment.
Then we must find some means, through our political, educational and
spiritual organizations perhaps, to acknowledge, rather than deny, the
violent impulses that have ruled America so long. It is important to understand
that these violent impulses are rooted in the same aggression that has
built America into a world power. This country was seized from another
culture - the Native American one - and this ethic of righteous violence
has never ceased to rule us and saturate all our interactions, so that
we are always sorting ourselves into the powerful and the weak. Go anywhere
in the world except within our own boundaries and you will hear this repeatedly
stated.
I do not mean for a moment to suggest that this process might not be
somehow inherent to human nature, particularly in the male. But as long
as we deny that we have given permission for our violent impulses to run
us without inhibition, we cannot offer protection to those who need it.
It doesn't matter that aggression may be natural and by offering protection
to wounded and abused children - and adults - we intervene against our
own instincts. What matters is that, unlike lower animals, we are <I>able><P>
as self-reflective individuals to do that and should.
Copyright 1999 by Creative Loafing
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