Posted: 01:44 hours (GMT+8)
People know I have a habit of blog-hopping. Today I came across this blog about true crime through a link on author Max Barry’s blog.
My attention was brought to this story, where they profiled the victims of a cold-blooded mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska (USA).
It struck me again, the simple psychology used by the media. You could call this one of the oldest tricks in the book.
When you want your audience to care, give them a character to relate to. People care more if they have a name, face or personality to connect the story to.
Take for example a typical action movie. You are given the profile of the hero. You know his name, his background, what he looks like, his personal problems and other traits. So when something happens to him you feel some obligation to care. When the villain tortures or threatens him, it garners some sort of feelings, supportive of either the hero or the villain. Yet when “extras” (uncredited characters) are killed off in dramatic fight scenes, you forget about them very quickly. They’re nobody after all, so very generic. Oftentimes you don’t even get to see their faces properly.
I’d say the best movies that show this would be the Austin Powers series. In one of the movies (I can’t remember which, I think it was the first one), he steamrolls to death one of Dr. Evil’s henchmen. The scene is changed and we watch the henchman’s family mourn his death before the movie continues.
On a more personal note, I’m not sure if I should feel like a heartless bastard for admitting here now that when the September 11 attacks took place, I wasn’t as particularly affected as compared to my classmates. I remember I was meeting some of them at a fast-food restaurant and someone returned with the afternoon paper, openly calling the attacks sick. I felt rather indifferent as I glanced at the picture of the Twin Towers burning and continued eating. It was only later that I felt some tinge of emotion, when it was highlighted that families, friends and other loved ones missed the victims and would be holding memorials or helping in rescue efforts. That’s when it really hit home that these people had a life prior to this and had been a part of others’ lives.
The same can be said for the victims of the Omaha mall shooting. Each and every one of them made a difference in their own way and none of them were seen as insignificant, even if they thought themselves to be. Perhaps this is why the killer did what he did; He wanted to be significant in some way, to make some sort of difference, albeit a negative one, if that was the last thing he was ever going to do. There are so many other possible reasons but we’ll never know for sure. His mother had nothing much to say about him but the media analysed every last detail of his final actions, portraying to the world the kind of person he was.
Hey, but what do I know. I’m just some half-jaded teenager who is going to sleep now because she’s damn tired and is going out tomorrow. Whee.
