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The Poetics of a School Shooter: Decoding Political Signification in Cho Seung-Hui's Multimedia Manifesto

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 4-5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10714413.2010.510355

1556-3022

Edward J. Carvalho,

Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Portions of this essay were first developed as a graduate course paper for Dr. Kenneth Sherwood's media poetics class at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2007 (Carvalho 2007). I mention this to acknowledge some areas of inevitable critical overlap with Douglas Kellner's compelling study of domestic terror and school shootings, Guys and Guns Amok (Paradigm, 2008), released after portions of my initial research had been conducted. I also would like to thank Susan Searls Giroux for her many valuable editing suggestions as well as for her and Henry A. Giroux's kind support of my work. Notes On the morning of April 16, 2007, I was picking up poet Martín Espada from a Pittsburgh hotel for a reading later that evening at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I remember distinctly that the news was on in the hotel lobby, and the live feed from a helicopter focused on police officers in SWAT-like gear strafing with weapons drawn along brick buildings. At the bottom of the screen, the news ticker referenced shootings on the Virginia Tech campus, citing at least two people injured or killed. For the better part of that day, I was with Espada on a classroom visit and meet-and-greet with Literature and Criticism graduate students, completely out of contact with news outlets and therefore unaware of how the full atrocity would play out in Virginia. It was not until just before the reading—around 6 p.m. that evening—that when passing by a big-screen TV in a student lobby area we learned that Cho Seung-Hui had killed 32 students and himself in what we recognize today as the single most violent school shooting of the modern era. NBC Anchorman, Brian Williams, is credited as the first to label Seung-Hui's audiovisual statements as a “multimedia manifesto” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18183171/displaymode/1107/s/2/ (accessed November 5, 2007). Here I am specifically referencing “Report: Virginia Tech Shooter's Family Sought Better Life in U.S.” that posted to FOXNews.com on April 17, 2007, as listed in the references. See also Kellner (Citation2007), 131–137. Alternatively, Kellner (Citation2007) goes much further in his interpretation of the manifesto content and its media reception. An example of this appears in a section devoted to exposing the media depictions of cultural “borderlands between” the Korean and the American (36, 131–137). But he stops just short, however, of advancing an equally necessary, dialectic survey of the American borderland that exists between the Korean, that is, the U.S. financial stake in the region, as I attempt to take up in the current section of this essay. The reader is encouraged to read chapter 4, “Uneven Geographical Developments,” of Harvey's (Citation2005) Brief History for a more substantive account of the South Korean economic collapse. See especially 106–112. Seung-Hui's emphasis on hypermasculine identity in the manifesto could have been an attempt to compensate for the economic emasculation of his father. The resentment of the father is a theme Seung-Hui explores in his play Richard McBeef. It is interesting to consider how that ideological conflict led us to where we are today—in Afghanistan. See Chomsky (Citation2001), 30–32. The previous passage is absolutely analogous with sentiment across America immediately following 9/11. And what consequences have our historical amnesia had with respect to post-9/11 affairs? Many, actually. Segueing from Ohmann's example, between the radicalization of Iran, one could argue that U.S. intervention all those years ago squelched democracy in that country and instead left us today with having to face down Mahmoud Ahmanidejad on nuclear proliferation. With respect to its neighbor, Iraq, Arundhati Roy (Citation2004) reveals also that not more than ten years later in 1963 “the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad” that resulted in the “new Ba'ath regime systematically elminat[ing] hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists” (45). Most telling, a “young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath” (45). It would be utterly redundant to elaborate on the profound irony at work, the billions of dollars wasted, and the vast global insecurity caused by our fickle political allegiances with Hussein. Even more contemporarily on the historical timeline, Chalmers Johnson (2000/2004) reminds us that “[t]he CIA supported Osama bin Laden, like so many other extreme fundamentalists among the mujahideen in Afghanistan, from at least 1984 on,” and shortly thereafter “[i]n 1986 it built for him the training complex and [Khost] weapons storage tunnels” (xiv). The above narrative rather precisely defines the term “blowback” Johnson co-opted in his analysis of “the costs and consequences of American Empire” (xi–xv). History will show throughout this essay that the term is certainly applicable to finding meaning in Cho Seung-Hui's actions. I have addressed some of these historical overtones elsewhere, specifically as it relates to the Star Wars missile defense program and its resonance in the post-9/11 present. See my “Star Wars and ‘Star Wars.’” The term is derived from an interview with poet Martín Espada by poet E. Ethelbert Miller and corresponds to Espada's take on the Puerto Rican American experience of colonial dislocation. Despite this context, I nonetheless see a broader theoretical application in this concept, useful for rethinking DuBois's notion of double-consciousness and grounding the pathology of a subject's psychical alienation in his or her physical remove. See Miller (Citation2007). A fact of no minor significance in relation to how Seung-Hui's image was subverted by the media amid the raging illegal immigration debate of that period. In the same report, the AP acknowledges that Seung-Hui lived on campus at the time of the shootings. The following corresponds to Seung-Hui's self-referential “Question Mark.” I find it incredible (and at the same time eerie) that of those who interacted occupationally with the alleged Ft. Hood shooter (Maj. Nidal M. Hasan), most acknowledged him as one would a prisoner, by a reductive numeric moniker (Rucker Citation2009, n.p.): Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, had moved into the 27-unit Casa del Norte apartments in late July when he was transferred to Ford Hood from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District. During his nearly four-month stay in apartment No. 9, Hasan made few friends. Most other tenants didn't know his name, referring to him as “Number Nine.” (n.p.) The controversy surrounding the “Ismail Ax” moniker is reviewed in some detail by Kellner (Citation2007). See 40–47. This is echoed in the following report from Dr. Michael Welner, professor of psychiatry and chairman of The Forensic Panel at New York University: This is not him […]. These videos do not help us understand him. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character. (quoted in Childs Citation2007, n.p.) See Sell (Citation2007). Kellner (Citation2007) also uses a similar term, describing the construct of Seung-Hui's “multimedia dossier” as “a postmodern pastiche” 41, 178n21. See Giroux (Citation2004), especially 40–43, for an analysis on how the militarization of culture has impacted and targeted youth markets. Giroux writes: “In light of the militaristic transformation of the country, attitudes toward war play have changed dramatically and can be observed in the major increase in the sales, marketing, and consumption of military toys, games, videos, and clothing” (42). With respect to the Doom franchise, Giroux provides the following historical overview: Video games such as Doom have a long history of using violent graphics and shooting techniques that appeal to hyper-modes of masculinity. The Marine Corps was so taken with Doom in the mid-1990 s that it produced its own version of the game, Marine Doom, and made it available to download for free. (2004, 40) For a related deconstruction of Seung-Hui's reliance on martyrdom imagery, see Kellner (Citation2007), 42, 48. In a 2010 e-mail, colleague Jennifer M. Woolston pointed out the following connections to the movie Heathers after reading an earlier draft of this essay. She writes J.D. (Slater's character notes) “You want to wipe the slate clean as much as I do. Okay, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school because nobody loves me.” Also, before strapping the bomb to himself and committing suicide (while ironically assuming a Christ pose), J.D. again remarks, “The slate is clean.” (n.p.) The relevant passage from Spivak's (Citation2005) analysis in “Scattered speculations” reads as follows: If the repetition of singularity that gives multiplicity is the repetition of difference, agency calls for the putting aside of difference. Agency presumes collectivity, which is where a group acts by synecdoche: the part that seems to agree is taken to stand for the whole. I put aside the surplus of my subjectivity and metonymise myself, count myself as the part by which I am connected to the particular predicament so that I can claim collectivity, and engage in action validated by that very collective. A performative contradiction connects the metonymy and the synecdoche into agential identity. All calls to collectivity are metonymic because attached to a situation. (480) See Monitor staff, Montgomery, and Ryan (Citation2009) for a list of terror plots since 9/11. See Churchill (Citation2003). For more on this subject see Kellner (Citation2007); see also Searls Giroux (2008–2009) as well as Giroux (Citation2009). Reminds one of the lyrics from the Soundgarden song, “Jesus Christ Pose” (Badmotorfinger 1991). But you're staring at me Like I'm driving the nails In your jesus christ pose And you stare at me In your jesus christ pose Arms held out like its The coming of the lord And would it pay you more to walk on water Than to wear a crown of thorns It wouldn't pain me more to bury you rich Than to bury you poor In your jesus christ pose (n.p.) See also Kellner (Citation2007), 41 for a few remarks on Seung-Hui's dual use of Christ imagery as one part “sacrificial and redemptive” and opposingly as rationale for the “rampage” that would follow. The “Live from Golgotha” reference alludes to the work of Gore Vidal (Citation1992/1993) of the same name. As for the Seung-Hui image that is referenced, see “What We Know” (Citation2007) (Path: “Photos sent by Cho”/Image 10). Consider the double-entendre effect when Seung-Hui also refers to Moses in the following audiovisual excerpt of the manifesto: “Like Moses, I split the sea and lead my people, the weak, the defenseless, the innocent children of all ages” (2007, n.p.). Churchill uses the old biblical proverb from Gallatians 6:7, “As ye reap, so shall ye sow,” to open his expanded commentary on this matter. See Churchill (Citation2003). To parallel the 50 Cent image with Seung-Hui's crucifixion performativity, first see “The Week in Pictures” (Citation2006) and compare with “What We Know” (Citation2007) (Path: “Photos sent by Cho”/Image 1). The image to which I am referring appears on numerous Web sites. For an example, see “Police Uncover” (2007). As with note 29, the following image is also in wide circulation among mainstream news outlets, accompanying a variety of stories on the Virginia Tech tragedy. See Friedman (Citation2009). See Faas (Citation2004) to view and learn more on the background of Adams's photograph. The corresponding picture from Seung-Hui is housed on the MSNBC.com gallery installation. See “What We Know” (Citation2007) (Path: “Photos sent by Cho”/Image 13). As Kellner (Citation2007) reminds us, the scene is “an iconic image of Old Boy” but it also reflects the famous culmination of violence in Taxi Driver (1973), where Robert De Niro, as antihero Travis Bickle runs out of bullets, shapes his index finger and thumb into a mock gun, and figuratively shoots himself in the temple multiple times (40).