A full week after the shootings at Virginia tech that snuffed out the lives of 32 young adults that had everything to live for but didn't have fate on their side, the country is just starting to get back to normal. Classes at the University resumed today, the TV news is no longer bombarding us with images of the assassin and other worthwhile stories are again starting to grab top headlines.
But that doesn't mean that the stories Virginia tech will end any time soon, and while no organizations have yet been blamed or scapegoated for the senseless deaths, it seems clear that the entertainment industry isn't totally out of the woods. The magnitude of the tragedy and the obvious instability of the gunman have so far prevented conservative and family groups from taking aim at the music and film businesses for some sort of perceived role they may have had in influencing the psychotic action of Cho Sueng-Hui. That could soon change.
The current issue of Time reports that Cho liked music and once wrote a verse from the Collective Soul song, "Shine," on the walls of his dorm room: "Teach me how to speak/ Teach me how to share/ Teach me where to go/ Tell me will love be there." It's hardly the stuff of mass murder, but in the same article Time writes that Cho had no hobbies except "hours spent downloading music." So far, police have not indicated what songs are stashed away on his computer hard drive and maybe they never will. But in today's media-as-arbiter-of-justice climate, it seems more likely that, in the days ahead, the music Cho listened to will be revealed, and if any of it was metal, we could be in for a witch hunt against the music industry that will make the PMRC hearings look like toddler playdates.
For some reason, hardly anything has been made of the fact that one of Cho's disturbing plays was titled "Mr. Brownstone" and that it quotes much of the Guns N' Roses song of the same name. Similarly little has been mentioned about Cho's poses with a hammer being eerily similar to shots from the Park Chan-Wook film "Oldboy."
Enough has already been lost in this catastrophe: lives, love, safety, media respectability. Hopefully free expression and creativity won't become the next innocent victims.
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