Why would a group of teenage girls attack one of their own and proudly videotape the crime? One expert said on television this morning that this collective psychopathology is related to the easy "star making" power of YouTube and My Space and the internet.
This is nonsense—the assertion that a form of media desensitizes people and turns them into stone cold predators is ridiculous. Americans invariably swallow this "media-centric" explanation every time we witness a scene of unexplainable violence. "It’s Elvis Presley’s hips!"; "It’s Moe, Curly, and Larry!"; "It’s MTV!"—and on and on.
People who video their own acts of cruelty are not emulating TV or cyberspace. They are simply vicious and heartless and proud of it. How do such people materialize?
Nature or Nurture? The crème filling in Twinkies?
Why did a whole nation follow Hitler? They didn’t have YouTube or junk food.
The answer to such questions invariably forces a return to the concept of stigma and its associated concept of "spoiled identity". The best book on this subject is the famous study by Erving Goffman.
Societies hand out permission to stigmatize certain groups of people. Today’s teens are more materialistic than their predecessors. Issues of identity and social value are prevalent. Who will be the chosen outsider?
As Goffman notes: the stigmatized individual is almost always a person with a disability.
Why?
Because social legitimacy depends on the act of casting an atypical person "out".
I don’t know enough about this current story, but I can safely say that the matter at hand is far more complex than the availability of YouTube. One could argue that YouTube helps us catch such predatory and atavistic people before they can do any further harm.
"I’m just sayin’"
S.K.
LINKS:
Goffman was a brilliant man--his work on stigma is as relevant today as it was the when written in 1963. As pointed out, the disabled are always stigmatized and singled out for abuse--this is a constant theme theoretically and in the day to day reality for those with an obvious physical impairment.
I am not sure why but this Youtube incident makes me wonder what Goffman would have had to say on the matter. Based on what my professors told me when in graduate school, Goffman had the ability to fit in almost anywhere. He apparently was a bit odd and always had a different reaction to what one would expect. As one who always doubts such statements about scholars, I asked Bob Murphy, author of the Body Silent, about this. He proceeded to tell me the following story. Murphy had not seen or met Goffman in many years and due to a spinal cord tumor Murphy was paralyzed. Murphy was on a PhD committee along with Goffman and others and was curious as to how Goffman would react to his paralysis (Goffman did not know Murphy was paralyzed). When the two men met, Goffman paused, took a long look at Murphy and slowly walked toward him. Goffman, without saying a word, bent over Murphy and kissed him on the forehead. This symbolic gesture deeply moved Murphy as he thought it spoke volumes about his current social status as a disabled man--a stigmatized identity both men studied.
When I see incidents like the Youtube video discussed or an earlier Florida crime when Brian Sterner who uses a wheelchair was dumped out of his wheelchair onto the floor by the police, it makes me realize just how stigmatized disabled people remain today. This identity is one I am reminded of every time I leave my house and, as I tease my friends, is the perfect antidote for developing a big ego.
Posted by: william Peace | April 10, 2008 at 08:49 AM