One thing that’s bothering me about the Rolling Stone controversy:
That Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cover was a huge mistake, because to young men who are prone to violence, it adds another extremely appealing element of glamor to this act of violence.
But a Rolling Stone cover isn’t the only kind of media coverage that makes a massive act of violence appealing to sick, violent men. Think of all the coverage that follows any mass shooting. Camera crews are dispatched to the neighborhood where the killer grew up. Reporters interview anyone who knew him throughout his life. They often describe him as brilliant, as a young man who had a lot of promise before he took a shocking left turn and became violent. And sick people see this and decide that this is exactly the kind of end they want - “Everyone in the country will know my name," they think, “and the people who ignored me will be sorry they underestimated me."
I don’t blame people for asking “Who is this man and why did he do this?" Of course people are interested. But Gavin de Becker laid out the correct way for the media to describe assassins and mass shooters - we should talk about them only in unappealing terms. Describe them as pathetic, lonely, delusional losers. Make them out to be the kind of person who know one would want to emulate. I would prefer that horrific acts of violence never be used to create a media circus, but given that this country seems to have an endless appetite for this kind of voyeurism, the least we can do is stop turning mass murder into a sure-fire ticket to instant fame. Because that leads DIRECTLY to copycats.
I think one of the big reasons we have so many mass shootings in the US is because our culture glorifies this sort of behavior. America is all about rugged individualism, doing things your own way, standing up for what you believe in, and violently protecting what you believe to be yours. However warped, these shooters play out some of our country’s most common fantasies surrounding masculinity. People only really get upset when they disagree with the targets of the violence.
People are quick to blame guns for our problems and argue that if only we regulated guns, we’d have less violence. To some extent, I agree with this. I think reducing the number of guns available would drive down the number of deaths, if only because fewer people would have them. However, the reason it’s so hard to push through gun control laws is because we live in a society obsessed with gun violence, whose definitions of masculinity often hinge on violent demonstrations of power, control, and ownership.
Tsarnaev maybe picked the wrong “bad guys," but otherwise, his behavior is exactly what we encourage here. Small wonder people are curious about him or other mass murderers or want to give them the rockstar treatment.