Friday, December 15, 2006
The Ipswich Murders 2
My previous post on this grim matter concerned the curious emptiness of serial killer stories and the way they act as mirrors, reflecting not the thing itself but the faces of those who aspire to fill this void. Now the television coverage has become intolerable. As I write, Sky News is, a little too enthusiastically, recounting the terrible details of previous serial killings. Anchors have now been relocated to Ipswich and a curiously unsavoury band of 'experts' pass before my gaze, recycling theories about... what? Families of the dead girls are being paraded before the cameras. In the streets of Ipswich, people earnestly confirm that, yes, it is terrible and, yes, they are anxious. Book deals are doubtless being done. Last night I saw a senior policewoman taken to one of the murder sites to confirm that, yes, she too found it all very disturbing. Perhaps they thought she was like Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, but Jane Tennison would have snarled at any such intrusion. This is a grotesque circus composed of spin, ghoulishness and, if we are honest, some very nasty impulses indeed. And all is justified by a spurious public interest defence. Sometimes it's just better not to know.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I totally agree. I was shocked to see Sky News interviewing prostitutes on the streets of Bradford a couple of nights ago (the obvious connection being the Yorkshire Ripper Murders). Their answers: Yes it is terrible and yes we are afraid. Well thankyou Sky for that useless piece of journalism.
ReplyDelete24hr rolling news is always faced with this 'problem.' It has space to fill and ends up in the same place as the Express and People newspapers.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a bit oblique, but there is a fantastic book by Arnold Mindell, "City Shadows," that discusses the pathology of mental illness as a projection of the group's shadow (in the Jungian sense) onto the "insane" individual. Mindell is dealing with patients who are acting-out the group's repressed darker sides, and he is doing it for the purpose of helping these people. One of hte points Mindell makes is that what we call mental illness is not really so alien to us, but rather an extreme state of mind, milder forms of which we have all experienced.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that the serial killer phenomenon has some parallels to what Minell is talking about. Similarly, the media circus around it, as around the death of Princess Diana, is an unconscious acting-out of some very deep archetypal forces.
None of which is to validate Sky's ridiculous excesses, of course.
It should be apparent that Sky and the media in general have little concern with the good, their prime aim being the perpetuation of themselves. They are basically parasites feeding on news-stories, the Ipswich murders being particularly tasty and fulsome morsels. And one can be sure they won't leave till every scrap is picked clean.
ReplyDeleteI find Sky News a particularly gross phenomenon and exactly the kind of propaganda news organisation one would expect were the Nazis a little more contemporary. Take away the shiney gloss and what is one left with- an idiotic barrage upon consciousness.
Unfortunately, everything Andrew said about Sky is true. It is unfortunately equally true of Fox News in the US, which is just as bad.
ReplyDeleteTabloid TV, at its worst.
i think tht the press need to have more compassion for the girls families - its almost an excited frenzy to pass on more "news". regards the murders if it is tom stephens then he gives the game away when he says he could not tell the prostitutes he could keep them safe now and also - mabe th eprettiest all rejected him leading them to be murdered. he also is saying that on paper he feels that he is a good catch but there is something about him that women do not like - herin lies the motive/s. and what on earth was he siggin in his garden a month ago? ............sky news camped out in neighbours bedrooms over christmas watchin it getting dug up?
ReplyDeletei went off topic slightly - interviewing prostitutes is really sad - paying them less proabaly than some of their punters - exploitation by the media - many out of their heads o drugs and who may have family members of children who do not know that they are prostitues - how sad - you turn on the news and here's your mum or you sister on the news - like the older women in bradford who were connenting last week - they looked like grannies - how embarassing for family!
ReplyDeleteas a working girl and a heroin user, i know exactly what the girls have been through. but, i still have no sympathy for them. i still manage to look after my children. and they dnt want for anything. i have my own house. what do u all have to SAY TO THAT????????
ReplyDelete