Roots of Evil

Originally published May 28, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1332

And so it starts.

Actually, its beginnings go all the way to the beginning. There was Adam in the Garden of Eden, and he had nothing in particular to do. So God gave him what could be considered busy work: name stuff.

As was mentioned in the recent issue of Aria, naming is powerful magic, for to name something is to define it, and to define it is to control it. There is one overwhelming impulse hardwired into mankind’s mainframe: Survival. From survival stems the sex drive, necessary for man to survive as a species. That’s why it feels so good; to make it an attractive pastime in order to heighten the likelihood of perpetuating mankind. It’s sure not because it’s the most dignified looking thing a person can engage in to kill an hour or three. Or a minute or three. From survival stems the Second Amendment, and the defiant NRA war-cry about getting their guns when they are pried from their cold, dead fingers (to which the obvious response seems to be, “Sounds like a plan”). And, on a fairly global scale, from survival stems the need to control the environment in which man lives.

This one has remained the most elusive. Titanic commanded the seas, up until the time that the seas said otherwise. Californians can earthquake-proof their buildings all they want; if a crevice opens up under one, I’m sure that all those books and tsatskes neatly secured onto shelves will stay all nice and neat while the building itself topples. Tornados come sweeping in to remind us just how easily the finger of nature can wipe away whatever we’ve put up. Oh, sure, we’re tough guys when it comes to whacking down the Amazon rainforest. We can slice through acres of that in a day, no problem. Of course, when the oxygen then goes away, nature once again has the last laugh.

But another way we try to control our environment is to have it make sense. From that urge come conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination, which were nicely skewered in the recent brilliant book by The Onion, Our Dumb Century, in which a headline for the November 22, 1963 edition of The Onion blares, “Kennedy Slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons,” with a subheading reading, “President Shot 129 Times from 43 Different Angles.”

From that urge to make sense of the world, some would contend, comes all forms of religion.

And now we endeavor to make sense of the tragedy in Colorado. It couldn’t be something as simple as that some people are just evil and do evil things. That they do not consider human life sacred. That there’s something wrong with them. The perpetrators are not at fault, no, no. It was society. Society drove them to their brutal act.

My father bought a blue Buick a bunch of years back. My dad, he generally likes Buicks. Most Buicks have run well for him, so he’s stuck with the brand.

So he bought this blue Buick, and man, was this thing a lemon from the get-go. It was constantly in the shop. One thing went wrong with it, something else went wrong with it, and so on. And as soon as it went past the warranty period, it really went to hell in a handbasket.

The term for what my dad did is “throw good money after bad,” because he kept sinking bucks into the stupid Buick, convinced that as soon as this one-more-thing was fixed, the car would run fine. He didn’t know, apparently, that the vehicle had actually been spit up from the bowels of hell for the single and sole purpose of driving him nuts. Which is what it did until he got rid of it, finally and mercifully.

Everyone can accept that sometimes there are particular cars which are lemons. Which are just defects. And cars are remarkably simple machines when compared to the machine that is the human beings. Furthermore, the more complex a machine is, the more ways there are for the machine to break down, malfunction. The brake suddenly goes on the Buick while you’re driving, and suddenly that device is an engine of death, for the driver and whoever’s in its way. So when the morality brake goes on a human being—same thing applies. The thing is, society didn’t make the brake go on the car. It simply wore out, or perhaps was never installed properly to begin with. Same deal with humans.

But no, the media must discover what it was that brought about the tragedy, what facilitated the slaughter of innocents by evil people. And naturally the news media finds fault in—the entertainment media. Not that the news media itself could be at fault, oh no. The compelling and horrifying images shown on the news—a bloodied boy tottering out of a window, sobbing parents, and so forth—these pictures shown over and over again on CNN and morning news and evening news and newsbreaks—these couldn’t possibly prompt some budding sociopath to say, “Wow, great idea. I want to make people suffer, too. I want my picture on national TV. And look! All these experts are saying that even if I go in and blow away half the school, I’m not really at fault! It’s society! Where’s my gun?”

No, we must protect our children from the horrors of entertainment. Doom. They play Doom. That must be it. Sure, hundreds of thousands of kids play the same game and don’t go around icing the homecoming queen. Sure, it could even be considered that such games provide a harmless outlet for pent-up hostilities, channeling them into assault on electronic monsters rather than flesh-and-blood people. And before Doom, it was Dungeons & Dragons that was destroying children’s sense of reality and right and wrong.

An article that ran in the Washington Post, breathlessly entitled, “When Death Imitates Art,” knew right where to point the blame. The journalists wrote, among other observations:

“This slide to the shocking takes many forms. You can see it in pro wrestling, whose televised stompfests bring a ratings bonanza. You can see it in cartoons like South Park and Futurama, in which Tuesday night’s episode featured a planet run by robots whose goal is to kill all humans. And in Family Guy, a cartoon featuring an infant neo-Nazi character who keeps bumping people off.”

As if the idolizing of wrestlers is anything new. Quick, kids: Add Gorgeous George to the list of people responsible for bringing about JFK’s death. Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t at fault; it was society’s worship of the long-haired wrestler that corrupted his sense of right and wrong.

South Park? An absurdist send-up, a Charlie Brown special on acid, was responsible for kids dying? I might give it some fragment of credence if only kids named Kenny had been targeted.

Futurama? The episode cited ends with the race of robots realizing that humans aren’t so bad at all. It was, in fact, an episode preaching for tolerance and against prejudice.

Family Guy? Stewie of Family Guy? A character capable of inventing world-conquering machines and yet finds himself helpless before the seductive cooing of the Teletubbies? My eldest, Shana, thinks Stewie is hilarious. I don’t for a moment think that it means Shana is now a menace to the life and limb of her fellow students.

But the article gets even better:

“Dark themes pervade the comic book industry, too. The trend started in 1986, according to some industry experts, with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman (sic.) In one, Batman ruthlessly kills off bad guys to clean up the city. The other is a murder mystery in which someone keeps snuffing out super-heroes who are discovered to be flawed characters.”

Ahhh… so now it’s the fault of comic books.

Never mind that the examples are utterly specious. Never mind that in Dark Knight Returns, Batman makes a point of using rubber bullets to cut down hordes of criminals in order to preserve their lives. Never mind that Watchmen (they couldn’t even get the name right), a complex and award-winning piece that defies any easy categorization, is a murder mystery in about the same way that Hamlet is a murder mystery (although I still take issue with several aspects of the story’s conclusion, but that’s neither here nor there). Comic books are what’s causing kids to flip out. Just like Catcher in the Rye was the cause of John Lennon’s death.

What the media pundits still don’t get is that just because evil people are attracted to certain comic books or TV shows, that doesn’t make the comics and the TV shows inherently evil. I mean, why don’t psychopaths influenced by Dark Knight Returns use rubber bullets? Why don’t readers of Watchmen imitate Night Owl or Silk Spectre and go out and try to stop crimes or rescue people from burning buildings? Why do pundits feel the need not only to hold up “negative influences” as being the only type that can possibly delineate human behavior, but also feel compelled to make stuff up when it isn’t there in the first place?

In the meantime, Chuck Heston hits the lecture circuit and warns against any infringement upon the Second Amendment. Restrictions, says he, are inherently bad because the next thing you know, “There’s no guns at all,” quoth he. Wow. Now there’s a threat to conjure with.

By all means, put an end to violence on television but keep the guns. Do away with the fictional murders but fight to maintain the means for performing the real ones. No one’s ever used a Magnavox to turn a student body into a pile of student bodies, no one’s ever used a copy of Watchmen to blow someone’s head off, but hey, one has to have priorities.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Bull. People with guns kill people. Can’t rid of the people, so therefore…

Guess it all goes back to defining a problem, looking for answers, trying to make sense of it all, looking for a convenient scapegoat. Stewie the evil baby caused the deaths in Colorado, not the guns.

In an insane world, perhaps that’s the most consistent answer yet.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)