The Copycat Effect

I don’t plan on commenting on every single book that I read, but we will call this two in a row for now. I recently read through Loren Coleman’s The Copycat Effect. The book left me unfulfilled. I picked it up some time ago thinking that it would be a discussion of the information age and the proliferation of individuals copying what they see in the media. Instead the book was largely a collection of historic suicides, mass murders, and murder-suicides and similar ones that occurred shortly thereafter (or annually, in some cases). What the book lacked was actual discussion of a trigger or specific psychological precedents in individuals who display this copycat effect. The author instead points a finger, and the blame, at the media itself for showing and discussing these horrors.

The author’s conclusion contains a list of 7 suggestions to the media in order to reduce the copycat effect. I will reproduce the suggestions below, in what may be the closest I come to a severe copyright violation, and provide my own (non-expert/unprofessional) commentary.

1.) The media must be more aware of the power of their words. Using language like "successful" sniper attacks, suicides, and bridge jumpers, and "failed" murder-suicides, for example, clearly suggest to viewers and readers that someone should keep trying again until they "succeed". We may wish to "succeed" in relationships, sports, and jobs, but we do not want rampage or serial killers, architects of murder-suicide, and suicide bombers to make further attempts after "failing". Words are important. Even the use of suicide or rampage in headlines, news alerts, and breaking bulletins should be reconsidered.

In other words, this means the media should censor itself. Speaking of failures and successes in suicides and such is actually proper terminology. We discussed that at length in my grad level classes. The word the author uses throughout the book is “completed” in order to describe a successful attempt. What that suggests is that attempts that don’t get finished are therefore incomplete, and we live in a culture that speaks poorly of people who leave things unfinished. I’m not sure if that’s good wording. Of course, one has to ask what else there is to say? And what words other than rampage or serial killers? The new words would mean the same thing, and what you would create then is a rotating list of words to describe the same thing. The ultimate solution, sadly, is to leave the news unreported.

2.) The media must drop their clichéd stories about the "nice boy next door" or the "lone nut". The copycat violent individual is neither mysterious nor healthy, or usually an overachiever. They are often a fatal combination of despondency, depression, and mental illness. School shooters are suicidal youth that slipped through the cracks, but it is a complex issue, nevertheless. People are not simple. The formulaic stories are too often too simplistic.

I waited through the entire book for this, characteristics of copycat individuals. Instead of suggesting an intervention, though, the author says that the media should take responsibility. What about the schools? What about the parents? It’s ironic that it’s stated that people are not simple and the stories shouldn’t be presented as simple but the solution itself oversimplifies.

3.) The media must cease its graphic and sensationalized wall-to-wall commentary and coverage of violent acts and the details of the actual methods and places where they occur. Photographs of murder victims, tapes of people jumping off bridges, and live shots of things like car chases ending in deadly crashes, for example, merely glamorize those deaths, and create models for others--down to the method, the place, the timing, and the type of individual involved. Even fictional entertainment, such as the screening of The Deer Hunter, provides vivid copycatting stimuli for vulnerable, unstable, angry, and depressed individuals.

There’s a case to be made for these vulnerable individuals’ latching onto anything in this situation. If not the sensationalized and graphic, then the implied yet disturbing. This is another suggestion for censorship. I can’t get behind that. It’s another situation in which I suggest interventions over censorship.

4.) The media should show more details about the grief of the survivors and victims (without glorifying the death), highlight the alternatives to the violent acts, and mention the relevant background traits that may have brought this event to this deathly end. They should also avoid setting up the incident as a logical or reasonable way to solve a problem.

I can’t disagree with this. Detailing the grief of survivors and victims is a great way to bring light to the situation without dwelling on the methodology, but highlighting alternatives doesn’t make enough sense to me. The world is full of alternatives. The problem may be that the individual sees the horrid act as the last resort, ignoring all other suggestions. I can’t stress this enough, but maybe we should be publicizing interventions along with those relevant background traits.

5.) The media must avoid ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural stereotypes in portraying the victims or the perpetrators. Why set up situations that like-minded individuals (e.g., neo-Nazis) can use as a road map for future rampages against similar victims?

Chances are that like-minded individuals such as neo-Nazis already have in mind who they want to hurt. Ethnic, racial, religious and cultural information might be helpful information, especially in terms of studying what has happened and why. This then turns into another case of censoring the news. That’s not helpful.

6.) The media should never publish a report on suicide or murder-suicide without adding the protective factors, such as the contact information for hotlines, help lines, soft lines, and other available community resources, including e-mail addresses, websites, and phone numbers. To run a story on suicide or a gangland murder without thinking about the damage the story can do is simply not responsible. It's like giving a child a loaded gun. The media should try to balance such stories with some concern and consideration for those who may use it to imitate the act described.

I agree that protective factors should be provided, but it’s not the responsibility of the news to provide it. I say it would be the goodwill of the news to provide it. As for comparing the information provided by the news to giving a child a loaded gun, that’s disgustingly extreme. You know what’s more like giving a child a loaded gun? Giving a child a loaded gun! Hasn’t anyone ever read a story about a child committing an act of violence or self-harm and then asked, “Hey, how did that kid get the weapon(s) in the first place?”

7.) And finally, the media should reflect more on their role in creating our increasingly perceived violent society. Honest reporting on the positive nature of being alive in the twenty-first century may actually decrease the negative outcomes of the copycat effect, and create a wave of self-awareness that this life is rather good after all. Most of our lives are mundane, safe, and uneventful. This is something that an alien watching television news from outer space, as they say, would never know. The media should "get real" and try to use their influence and the copycat effect to spread a little peace rather than mayhem.

As it stands, the book merely makes the case for the copycat effect, but it’s not a scientifically proven theory. Given that information, it hasn’t been tested. How do we know that the copycat effect can lead to positive behavior? Sounds like an idea for a follow-up book, but I have a feeling that won’t be written. (Which leads one to wonder if the Mr. Coleman is hypocritically cashing in on the sensationalization of death and murder himself.) An idea on a whim like that makes for a poor suggestion, although I do like the idea of reporting on more positive news stories.

Obviously, I don’t like blaming the media for people’s ills. It will likely contribute in various ways, no doubt, but it’s hardly the source or the place to implement the solution. And let me be clear, censorship is not the solution. Education and awareness make for better solutions, but they’re often ignored because they’re far from simple.

There was a time when educational system included more mindful subjects like philosophy, or we could call it critical thinking. If more individuals were brought up with a better understanding of how to interpret the media, there would be fewer problems with it. If our educational system also included classes on being more inclusive and understanding of people, even better. If we could ultimately find a way to help foster more benevolent feelings and provide individuals with solid social support structures, we’d be many steps closer to utopia. I realize fully that the last one is a stretch and a nigh impossibility, but one can dream. After all, we provide individuals of autism with lessons about the importance of empathy and reinforce it for years. Why not for individuals on the more normative spectrum?

Loren Coleman’s book is ultimately successful in arguing for the prevalence of the copycat effect in American (and Japanese) society, but the fault of the book is that the individuals reading it already agree. The book’s lack of discussion on triggers and precedents makes the whole thing come across weak, and at times it literally reads like a list of unfortunate incidents. The inclusion of a list of suggestions by a man whose field of study doesn’t even involve the effects of the media (he’s got a Master’s in Social Work but he’s primarily, I kid you not, a cryptozoologist) is completely understood and good natured but also of little merit. However, just as I was easily able to pick at his suggestions, I expect my responses will be just as easily dissected and dismissed. The book, much like this entry, may be best regarded as the ice breaker for a larger discussion about the role the media plays in our lives and the responsibilities the individuals on both sides of the transmissions.

What is Generation Y?

You know how historians call people who came of age during World War II ‘the greatest generation’? No one will ever say that about us. We’ll be ‘the cool generation.’ That’s all we’re good at, and that’s all you and your friends seem to aspire to.

I can’t help but think these words aimed at Generation X, from Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, could be somewhat applied to Generation Y as well. (Note: The words are not Klosterman’s own but rather a friend of his. Read the book for context. For the purpose of this entry, the context doesn’t matter.) Generation X was known for posturing and wanting nothing to do with the Baby Boomers who spawned them. They’ve since settled into being pretty much the same as their parents. Meanwhile, Generation Y wants to be cool, so many of them buy cool.

I want us to be able to claim responsibility, but we were brought up without knowing better. From the moment we awoke in our Sesame Street cribs, rolled over on our Sesame Street pillows, looked out at our Sesame Street wallpaper, and clutched our stuffed Big Birds, we realized that our identities were tied into the products that we bought and the  images we presented. We haven’t changed since then, since the cultural signals we received were all about accumulating things and putting on an image. Our cartoons were designed to sell toys (e.g., Transformers, GI Joe, Popples, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, etc.), and later even our video games did the same. (We were the first generation to encounter Pokemon.) Even the supposedly adult television shows from our collective childhood focused on image and owning stuff. I’ll give you two of the most egregious examples from my childhood: Miami Vice and Knight Rider. The former featured cool guys wearing nice suits, and the latter, subliminally subtitled FuckAwesome Car, featured a bland protagonist whose entire identity was tied to the vehicle he drove. What sort of information will children glean from that content?

Look at Generation Y today. We have so many sub-cultural identities that it’s confusing. We bought into the leftover identities from the previous generation, such as goth, but were also provided with additional ones. We’ve got the hip-hop and rap subculture, we’ve got emo, and we even have hipster. None of these identities grew organically, like the grunge movement of yesteryear. Each one of these was manufactured because Generation Y doesn’t know how to grow anything on its own. We’ve been exploited, and it’s all because we’re too naive to figure out that someone else has made us for their purposes.

But the truth is that all generations are products of the previous. It’s more than obvious to say that we’re genetic products of our priors, but I feel the need to put that out there before some smart ass comes along and tells me. Our identities are often built in reaction to the previous generations. Generation X was a result of rejecting the the suburban sprawl, boxes in a row that all look the same mentality of the Baby Boomers. Boomers wanted to make the most of the money they came into because they were the children of the penny-pinchers who came out of the Great Depression. “The greatest generation” was a united front of patriotism in response to World War II, which was a war for which they obviously weren’t responsible. Generation Y breaks the mold by not being reactionary. Our priors have purposely given us our cultural identity and are exploiting us for money.

I don’t even have to make an argument. Turn on your television or radio to imbibe the Kool-Aid. The radio is probably the most distilled form of this, as the stations mainly play the heavily manufactured nu-metal, emo (the self-indulgent “I was given everything but still feel like nothing” crap), and the current forms of rap and hip-hop. The music is less sincere than what previous generations received. (Although one has to admit that Gen X were the ones who really had to grow up with the hair bands and heavy synth of the 80’s, but their own musical movement made everything better.) All we get now are messages to buy into the music, buy into the fashion, and buy into the identities. After all, what are we if we don’t buy these identities?

Nothing.

If you respond with, “But I’m certainly not one of the people you’re talking about!”, I don’t want to hear it. You’re either a liar or an outlier, and speaking up either makes you naive or smug. Hipsters will probably be quite outspoken, as they are supposedly the intellectuals of the generation. Too bad their identity was manufactured as well, albeit in a more clever way than the others. The embrace of the postmodern gives them an automatic defense mechanism. They can simultaneously embrace aspects of the other subcultures while rejecting them completely simply by saying they love something ironically. (Somehow it’s cool to love things insincerely.) The aesthetic is complicated, though. They mainly scrounge around the second-hand stores; but occasionally girls will want new berets, guys will want swanker looking hats, both will want new retro vintage t-shirts, and both will want some nice looking skinny jeans. And their subculture’s identity, again manufactured, is simply to exist and say that they aren’t part of the other cultures.

I’ve been wondering what historians will say about Generation Y when all is said and done. The recession is probably the period during which we can establish our own identity, but do we have it in us? We’ve never had an opportunity before to claim anything of our own. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to believe that people will settle into variations of the previously established identities once the economy recovers. In the end our greatest accomplishment would be proving some sociological theory. We’ve proven that cultural identity is malleable, programmable, and exploitable. We’ve proven that an entire generation of people can be brought up with its greatest distinction being that they are incapable of distinguishing themselves. I guess that makes us “the programmable generation”. I sure am proud.

South Park: “Whale Whores” and racism

Last week’s episode of South Park was a pretty biting commentary on reactions to whaling as well as to the show Whale Wars. At first I thought it was being unnecessarily racist to the Japanese, a culture Trey Parker appreciates enough to have become fluent in the language. By the end of the episode, you see where it all goes. It’s pretty brilliant.

Watch the episode here.

What at first looks like a racist commentary of Japanese whaling turns into a commentary on cultural norms. We kill cows and chickens all the time. Hell, we breed them specifically for the purpose of consuming them. It’s the American way. The Japanese eat whale meat. So long as they target whales of sufficient population size, it shouldn’t be a problem. Cow and chicken populations aren’t threatened, and that’s why the world embraces our desire to ravage those particular species.

But it’s probably presumptuous to say that everyone will understand what Parker and Stone were saying with that South Park episode. The ending was just a high brow tag to an otherwise very low brow episode. Many viewers were probably snickering too much at the racism to realize that the projection of our values on other cultures is even more racist.

I want to give credit to the South Park team for how they handled the episode, but I don’t think they intended on the result they have here. The episode, as I saw it, was presented through the perspective of an unintentional racist who just happens to see the practices of other cultures as silly and primitively brutal. This is an embellishment of the perspective we have whenever we are approached by something foreign and say, “What the—? That’s not right!” And don’t say that people don’t do that. Try going out to dinner at the average American diner and strike up a conversation about the consumption of dogs and cats in other cultures. Get back to me with notes on the reactions.

The roundabout point of the episode was that whaling isn’t such a big deal considering what we do over here. I just think the meaning can easily be extrapolated for other discussion on norms, especially given the fact that they went out of their way to make the Japanese mere caricatures of their own culture. Now I just wish more episodes could be more like “Whale Whores” and less like “Butters’ Bottom Bitch”.

Dollhouse, science fiction, and television culture

Science fiction television, and the related subgenres, does not seem to last very long anymore. It’s kind of disappointing. When I was younger, every week had a new Star Trek episode. There were special science fiction miniseries on various channels. Heck, science fiction movies used to air on local networks on the weekends. Science fiction, for better or for worse, was something people wanted to see.

What happened? The various Star Trek series tapered off, and shows living in the outer layers of science fiction started taking off. Lost fits in with most science fiction, although many viewers refuse to admit it. Heroes may be wavering in its quality right now, but the first season’s mash-up of X-Men powers and storylines with prime time drama tropes made for must-see TV among the usually unenthused. Then there’s Fringe, which I think only gets watched because it has an X-Files vibe and is made by the same people who make Lost. And now we have FlashForward, a show that I enjoy quite a bit despite some pre-release crap about its not being science fiction. Explain to me how a show with the premise that there was a worldwide epidemic of people suffering blackouts and seeing their lives six months in the future is not part of the genre.

That’s a handful of shows on TV today, but none really push what science fiction is supposed to be. FOX, a channel reviled for its practices, actually supported the production of two great series that just weren’t meant to last. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles was basically about time travel, sentient robots, the creation of artificial intelligence, and the making of a hero. The show died just before its story could kick into high gear. Then there’s Dollhouse, for which I should not have to remind you about my love. The story deals with a place that can rent out the person of your dreams for the right price, the price paid by the participants, the price paid by the staff, and ultimately the price that will be paid by a world in which the technology to erase and rewrite the mind exists – especially in a world with such a great divide in class and power.

Great science fiction like the aforementioned shows gets overlooked because of not only the complexity of the themes but also the complexity of the story structure. The old series Hill Street Blues popularized the current serialized nature of television, but these shows that aren’t making it seem to take the serialization to another level. It’s not just about paying attention to multiple storylines from episode to episode. It’s about paying attention to the details. These are shows that work great on DVD, where the viewer can flip back and forth between episodes as if they were chapters in a book. That structure doesn’t work out so well for weekly television, especially to the casual viewer.

I’m bringing this up, with an unnecessarily long introduction, because FOX is going to cancel my favorite television series of the past year. Dollhouse’s ratings since the beginning of the season have been poor. They’ve been so poor that FOX is pulling the show during the November sweeps and replacing it with reruns of House and Bones. The show will come back on in December with back-to-back episode airings as FOX tries to rush through the remaining episodes. This is very, very bad news.

It was expected news, however. The only reason the series was renewed was because the Hulu and DVR numbers were promising in the first season. They thought that they could build upon that, and Joss Whedon promised to cut the price-per-episode. I doubt the numbers will be enough this time around to ensure an extension to the current season, let alone a renewal for another season.

And I can’t pretend I don’t know why people aren’t latching onto the show like they should be. Dollhouse is really good, but it’s complicated – Philip K. Dick complicated. The whole series is based on questions of morality and ethics, not to mention what it takes to be a human and what it means to be an individual. And power. Power is a huge theme being investigated this season, especially in the two most recent episodes. Episode 3, “Belle Chose”, explored the falsehoods of men in power suggesting that the victims are the ones in power and basically bring things upon themselves. The participants in this exercise were a serial killer with dangerous mommy issues and an English professor who enjoys the whore in Chaucer’s bathhouse just a little too much. Episode 4, “Belonging”, explored how Sierra ended up in the Dollhouse. As alluded to in season one, there was a very powerful man who wanted her but was rejected, so he did everything he could to turn her into a whore. Meanwhile, we have members of the Dollhouse staff who find him repulsive and wish to save her from him – but what kind of moral ground do staffers in what one could deem far more questionable than prostitution have in this kind of situation? And what is justice?

A few years ago a pop psychology book called Everything Bad is Good for You came to my attention. It was about the development of the complexity of multimedia and the subsequent mental development of the viewers. The more complicated television becomes, the more it pushes the viewers to process and work their brains closer to their limits. Hill Street Blues was cited as the example for complex television, running a couple of serialized storylines alongside the episodic elements. That was in the 80’s. An example of how complex shows have become was The Sopranos, with several serialized storylines running at once during any given episode.

I just wonder where a series like Dollhouse would fall into the author’s discussion of complexity. Due to the abbreviated nature of each season (13 episodes), there isn’t much time to develop subplots. As it stands, the subplots exist but are pretty understated. The real complexity comes in the form of the episodic elements and the questions the viewers face every week. This is not too different from the original intent of Star Trek, but the commentary often found itself obscured under the loud makeup and hammy acting. (That which we love, by the way.) However, Dollhouse treats the viewers like the dolls/actives themselves. Since you consented to watching the show, it’s going to treat you like its whore and ram you headlong into everything it has. The show doesn’t hesitate to tell you that the actives are often prostitutes. It doesn’t hold back in it story about rape and being enslaved in the Dollhouse. It doesn’t even lie to you and tell you that the people who work in the Dollhouse are pure and working for the greater good. These people are possibly wicked. What does it say about you when you want Adelle Dewitt, a rich slave driver with no link to the real world, and Topher Brink, a sociopathic genius, to succeed week after week?

People don’t like questions like these and tend to avoid them. The ratings for Dollhouse are reflective of that. I just wonder if viewing a series that is even remotely philosophical like this could be good for people in the long run, as would be suggested by Everything Bad is Good for You. Or maybe people aren’t watching because they just aren’t ready for that level of complexity. Yet.

One Year Later

One year ago today, I started this blog off on a very wrong note. I made fun an internet celebrity not because I had problems with her but because I had a problem with the internet message board culture who decided that she was the pinnacle of all that a woman should be. I’m pointing out that particular misstep to emphasize the fact that Let Me Say It has made many, many missteps along the way in finding its voice.

Let Me Say It started off as a project to help me maintain some degree of my sanity while venting my frustrations indirectly. I had earned a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology in California some months before the start of the blog, and I had been unable to find a job in the ailing economy. I was angry and depressed. All I really had were my computer and television, so I decided that the blog should be a commentary on the multimedia.

I’ve always had an interest in multimedia, so this made sense. My integrated paper at the end of my Master’s program was about the utilization of various forms of media as a means to enhancing the therapeutic relationship between a therapist and an adolescent, given the relative success of film therapy and the fact that many adolescents have a world view informed by pop culture. So the blog was about what I wanted to see in this pop culture.

The last year was spent writing the wrong way and about the wrong things. While some have enjoyed my reviews of various television series and movies, save for this guy, I ultimately look back on those entries and ask myself why I bothered. Very little I shared could not be found in some other review, especially if you look at a review aggregate like Metacritic. I’m not a film critic, so that should certainly not be one of my main draws. Also, reporting news is not my forte, even if it’s a geektastic, “LOOK AT WHAT’S COMING OUT THAT ONLY I CARE ABOUT!”

To keep myself busy, as I was jobless for a good long time and then only found part time work, I tried to update at least five days a week. Obvious, I’ve dropped that. Regular posting keeps the number of hits fairly steady, but it doesn’t speak much for the quality. Really, what was I saying? What was I saying that I really wanted someone to let me say?

Nothing. Let Me Say It was a compromised title, coming out of my original Just Let Me Say It! The idea was to share unpopular opinions I might have or discuss pointedly the elephant that might be in the room. That’s the goal of the blog in the next year. Hopefully I can post at least once a week, but there are more important matters in life that take priority over that lesser goal. I’d like to think that my last handful of posts have demonstrated the type of direction I’d like to take the blog.

Up until now, I’ve tried my best to keep my personal life out of the blog. This is a blog about commentary rather than introspection. I’ve shared material as it has become appropriate, like how my job has affected how I view certain aspects and potential tools in multimedia. This time around, I decided it would be appropriate to share the conception of the blog because it’s important to know where it comes from before discussing where it will go.

Before I go, I’d like to add that discussion is incredibly important. Please feel free to leave comments. I would love for people to bounce ideas off of me just as I bounce ideas off of them, so say something. I’m not the only one capable of opining, and I welcome anything others have to say. I won’t necessarily agree, but everyone is certainly welcome to share.