The Tripod

As I saw the news reports and the endless subsequent analyses of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, I could see the media following a seemingly rehearsed pattern of politicizing issues and putting undue emphasis on subjects such as school safety, gun control, or regulation of the production of violent films and music. I am always amazed at how such scholarly professionals can be so amazingly thick-headed and ignorant in regard to understanding a serious problem.

The fact is that Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech attacks, was a mentally disturbed, ostracized, and self-isolated individual living in a society where his invisibility was facilitated if not encouraged. Many articles have discussed how Cho literally had no friends and was isolated from his family due to hard-working and arguably negligent parents. The soul sickness felt by Cho was seemingly so potent that it brought him to want to destroy the people around him.

So-called scholars say that if Cho had been exposed to less violent movies, he would not have been influenced to attack his classmates. They say that if there had been more stringent gun control laws, the violence could have been avoided. The frustrating thing is that no one is looking at what can be done to avoid the mental illness that causes such violent actions.

America has gotten to the point where community life and altruistic values such as friendliness, honor, and integrity have been given secondary status, overshadowed by egotism, greed, and materialism. The fact is that Cho was mentally disturbed and nothing was able to save him before he snapped. Judging from the background we have received from various media sources, it seems questionable as to whether or not anyone ever tried to save him. We focus on preventing his ability to commit violence, but we don't focus on preventing his desire to commit violence. Honestly, for a person as disturbed as Cho, would gun control really have prevented him from hurting someone? Every day in society we trust that no one has the desire to commit violence, while driving in our car, walking down a crowded flight of stairs, or standing on the edge of a subway platform. My point is that if a person like Cho was unable to access a gun, who knows how else he would have decided to hurt the people around him. Imagine if he had made a bomb from household materials and had killed three or four times the amount of people that he did. And if you think that its not possible, just look at the Oklahoma City bombing.

For me, the least convincing argument espoused by the media is that violent media, such as action movies or heavy metal music, influenced or encouraged Cho to go on his killing spree. Let's imagine though what it would be like if we were to follow the teachings of some of our more narrow-minded thinkers; what if we were to pull movies like The Matrix or the Korean film Oldboy off the shelves? Should we then include death metal albums? What about classic rock? If you think that there is no violent imagery in such music, take for example the classic Beatles song, "Maxwell Silver Hammer," in which a young college student kills his girlfriend, teacher, and the judge presiding over his trial with a silver hammer. One of the pictures that Cho sent to NBC was of him holding a hammer threateningly; should we assume then that Cho was channeling Paul McCartney and John Lennon when he started firing? And what about the classic "Catcher in the Rye," which has been linked to more than its share of violent publicity since its publication. In it, the teenage Holden Caulfield makes reference to picking people off with a gun, while wearing his red plaid hunting cap.

The fact is that we are never going to be able to prevent disturbed people from seeking out violent media, and to try would cause a freezing effect for creativity and expression while being ultimately pointless and damaging to society. The events at Virginia Tech are unarguably disturbing and saddening, but we must prevent ourselves from being drawn into blaming specific laws or forms of media. The unfortunate truth seems to be that Cho's actions probably had their origin in much more complicated societal problems, and no one seems to have any idea how to solve them.

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