When a kidnapping victim begins to feel sympathy or even love for their kidnapper, we call it the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, but what is it called when an individual feels admiration for a mass murderer?
The Internet is a platform for freedom of speech and yet it also is a stage for some deeply disturbing people to project their opinions. It’s easy to have a visceral reaction to what you see on the Internet. One’s first instinct may be to send anonymous hate yet it would only spur the determination of the people who are clearly brave or shameless or foolish enough to support James Holmes. No matter how you look at it, it appears to be just as disturbing to let the glorification of a murderer (whose mental health is till to be determined) go unchecked.
Their insistence on ‘freedom of speech’ is fascinatingly hypocritical. Freedom of speech is only a right when one expresses in a manner which doesn’t hurt others. That’s where defamation laws come in. However, in this instance, it’s not as simple as hurting someone else’s reputation, but instead, every time someone posts a message supporting the ‘Holmies’, the family members of those killed in Aurora are deeply hurt and angered. I’m lucky enough to have never been put into such a situation yet I pose such a question to the ‘Holmies’: if it was your mother, father, brother or sister James Holmes killed, would you be wearing plaid and sipping slurpies like it was nothing?
The belief that the ‘Holmies’ are humanising Holmes or perhaps providing another side of the story is deeply misguided. Indeed, the closest example I can think of is ‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote yet the novel is also extremely different. Capote never legitimize the murders, nor did he ever portray the murderers as people to be admired. He simply presented the facts, as they were, to the reader to allow them to struggle with this moral dilemma on their own. Once again, I ask, is wearing ‘plaid’, drinking ‘slurpies’, professing ‘love’ and drawing cute little pictures of Holmes a moral discussion? Or is it simply a misguided attempt to understand the murderer.
Be it a fad or foolishness, please know this: you are hurting people far more then you will ever realise.
-
Melville was SO ahead of his time. Before Capote wrote In Cold Blood, Melville was regularly taking stories from national interest and turning them into deeply realized, transformed, and meaningful narratives.
-
"Perry was always asking me: Why are you writing this book? What is it supposed to mean? I don’t understand why you’re doing it. Tell me in one sentence why you want to do it. So I would say that it didn’t have anything to do with changing the readers’ opinion about anything, nor did I have any moral reasons worthy of calling them such – it was just that I had a strictly aesthetic theory about creating a book which could result in a work of art.
“That’s really the truth, Perry,” I’d tell him, and Perry would say, “A work of art, a work of art,” and then he’d laugh and say, “What an irony, what an irony.” I’d ask what he meant, and he’d tell me that all he ever wanted to do in his life was to produce a work of art. “That’s all I ever wanted in my whole life,” he said. “And now, what has happened? An incredible situation where I kill four people, and you’re going to produce a work of art."(via peemsterandhalsadick) -
80 - In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967)
5/5
-
-
Your letter to her, and this, her answer to you, failed in their objectives. Your letter was an attempt to explain your outlook on life, as you are necessarily affected by it. It was destined to be misunderstood, or taken too literally because your ideas are opposed to conventionalism. What could be more conventional than a housewife with three children, who is “dedicated” to her family???? What could be more natural than that she would resent an unconventional person. There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn’t a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you can remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures. Her letter failed because she couldn’t conceive of the profundity of your problem—she couldn’t fathom the pressures brought to bear upon you because of environment, intellectual frustration and a growing tendency toward isolationism.
— From a letter to Perry Smith from his friend Willie-Jay - “In Cold Blood,”by Truman Capote
-
“It is no shame to have a dirty face-the shame comes when you keep it dirty.”
— From a letter to Perry Smith from his sister Barbara - “In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote
I like all these quotes from the Barbara letter, but doesn’t Capote weaken it on purpose by setting it up for Willie-Jay’s dissection?
-
Bought In Cold Blood and 50 Shades of Grey last night, I probably shouldve started my school reading months ago… Oops.
Wait…are both of those readings for school? Hmm…
-
Time for summer reading.
C’est la vie.
Most of the In Cold Blood tag is filled with people doing summer reading. They’re probably taking what I’m teaching this semester: AP Lang & Comp!
-
weird. capote’s shorter than smith? I always pictured him as looking a bit like Henri de Toulouse-Latrec.
-
“Shooting an Elephant” can go with In Cold Blood. The tie-in is the funeral and the auction, mob mentality (or similar phenomena) and Perry’s feeling of otherness. Hmm…
