Back
to thoughts on imagination, I was stirred to resume on the subjects of violence
and gratuitous violence. An Australian woman, engaged to a Minneapolis man, was
recently shot by a Minneapolis policeman after she reported what she thought
was a sexual assault in her alleyway. The accompanying officer said she ran up
to the car window of the officer who fired his gun at her. She worked as a yoga
instructor.
This
brought back my graduate school years in Minneapolis. The murder rate was worse
per capita than New York City. Residents held night vigils because the police
couldn’t control the situation. In my building one winter night, the back door
window was smashed by a burglar. A
female tenant found the burglar in the laundry room and luckily fled upstairs
unscathed. When the police came, they actually said, “Maybe he was cold.”
We tenants learned from each other about the neighborhood milieu while
there was a lack of confidence in the police. In Minneapolis today, a foreign
woman would probably still need the news and the coaching that women supplied. One
instance of advice: A woman should stay put if she hears violence, and if she
reports it, never to reveal her role. Besides, police attitudes during a crime
wave could be corrosive.
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| Image Stuart Miles @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
During
this decade of my life, I had little interest in violence or crime as reading
or entertainment. I preferred literature that reflected life as it is, usually
with infrequent crimes. Good authors can show the mundane day as development
and make that as interesting as the action parts. I tried to do that in Tug
of the Wishbone where, in the second part, my character Maureen was
neighbor to a Minneapolis woman whose mother was murdered. My book followed another theme so loss from
murder and loss from divorce were perceived.
Since
high school, I wondered at gratuitous violence on television. I wrote a paper
on television violence in college, inquiring whether it might encourage
violence in society. There wasn’t a lot of research on the subject then.
Growing
up in a southern Minnesota county, I knew of one murder. A teenager shot a
teacher through her living room window. In recent years, the Mower County
sheriff’s office requested additional staff because of the unprecedented
numbers of gun permit applications.
Last
year, I watched airings of a show I liked in the 1960’s – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Clever plots, the humor of Napoleon Solo,
the variety of locales all kept my attention. The same thing happened that
happened when I was young. I tired of the torture scenes and the number of
characters shot to death.
My
second job after college was reporter for a suburban St. Paul newspaper. Every
week in 1978, I visited the Maplewood police chief and every week, he had
little to report except for domestic violence. Today, a reporter there would be
much busier. A recent report numbers violent crime at 87 annually with 4
murders and 151 burglaries.
While
sensationalism pervaded journalism, the rise in violence seems sensational in
itself. What does it mean if sensationalism pervades creative writing where the
sky is only the inner limit? And imaginations are used for sensationalism?
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| Image Stuart Miles @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
It
isn't that violence, a part of the human story, should not be portrayed. But
when violence is described without attention to the victim and the pain it
incurs, a story becomes only a partial reality. Although I had opinions about
television violence, I wanted to watch many Alfred Hitchcock movies when the
VHS's were available. Hitchcock gave a more complete reality to the crime
setting. Instead of concentrating on police and criminals as star characters,
he often gave attention to characters affected by the criminal and while they
were oblivious of an ensuing crime. This went along with the definition of
crime – that crime violates other people’s lives.
Some
years ago, I read Ovid’s Metaphorphoses. He retold violent Greek legends
and also a flood myth with pathos and conscience that, even though the stories
were distant in time, conveyed their impact. Ovid was writing in Ancient Rome;
I wondered how far he lived from the Colosseum. Oh, he was banished by Augustus
while writing the Metamorphoses. Previously he wrote love and erotic
poetry. I was stunned at the finale to the unfinished Metamorphoses.
Ovid stated that the human race had become violent because a man killed an
animal for food. He implored the Romans to become vegetarians.
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| Image Simon Howden @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Even
if people don't associate the current crimes in America with the fabrications
in our arts and entertainment industries, it certainly looks as if a parallel
world of real crime has occurred.
