Friday, June 10, 2005
It occurs to me that the media's recent fascination with 'missing white girl stories' (which I read various liberal bloggers lamenting the prevalence of and the presence of which drowning out important stories like the Downing Street memo or Darfur or Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib/Bagram or etc.) = the national unconscious (that would be the media) asking "Where is our innocence?"
They like the answer to be that some bad man took her (her being transformed at this point from a person to a personification) by force or misinformation and did bad things to her, though this isn't always how it turns out (one of the difficulties of trying to shoehorn real people into mythic roles). Why is this the satisfying (if grim) outcome for the narrative?
I'm thinking that maybe eventually the psychic repressive force will grow to where an angry and ashamed country will name the bad man by name.
An aside: It is interesting to look at the way the fiance of that woman who ran from her wedding was considered publicly, basically told he was an idiot for taking the words of someone he trusted at face value and not weighing her actions against normative reality. And then taking her back for a second chance. Sounds like projected collective shame to me.
(Thus ends a foray into political blogging from a psychohistorical perspective.)
They like the answer to be that some bad man took her (her being transformed at this point from a person to a personification) by force or misinformation and did bad things to her, though this isn't always how it turns out (one of the difficulties of trying to shoehorn real people into mythic roles). Why is this the satisfying (if grim) outcome for the narrative?
I'm thinking that maybe eventually the psychic repressive force will grow to where an angry and ashamed country will name the bad man by name.
An aside: It is interesting to look at the way the fiance of that woman who ran from her wedding was considered publicly, basically told he was an idiot for taking the words of someone he trusted at face value and not weighing her actions against normative reality. And then taking her back for a second chance. Sounds like projected collective shame to me.
(Thus ends a foray into political blogging from a psychohistorical perspective.)
