It would be a terrible mistake to think that what often happens on America's mass media after a gun massacre is an attempt to ensure that such things never happen again. Of the numerous gun massacres that have happened in the United States only in the last five years or so, one of the things that one often sees is the number of people who come on TV pontificating on the whys and the wherefores of the events. Some speak of the mass shooters as deranged, psychopaths, sociopath, or racists, depending on how the massacre happened. Others blame the gun culture and the NRA (National Rifle Association) for putting profit over people. Others yet talk about legislation to curb gun violence, while others say that pastors and teachers should have guns in their pockets while they are preaching or teaching. One may be tempted to interpret all this as an attempt to understand why these gun massacres happen so as to preempt them in the future. Such interpretation would however be grossly mistaken.
What is actually going on is that all of the anger from the aggrieved, the blame of the NRA, the description of the shooter as mentally ill or a thug or whatever, are what I have here called America's Mourning Shows. Simply put, it is a way for America to mourn its dead, on TV, on radio, the Internet, and the Newspapers, and move on. America has come to see that gun deaths, like death in general, is inevitable, and the best way to approach it is to mourn it. All what goes in the mass media are forms of this mourning, understood as expressing grief for a loss or losses. Just as mourning is a proper way to seek closure in a case of death, so too are all these rants on TV, newspaper, or the internet just a means to find closure - for the moment - until the next gun massacre happens again. Understanding what happens after a mass shooting as mourning is important because it alerts us to the fact that gun massacres in America, just as the facts of death and taxes, have come to be seen as inevitable, as normal. The best that can be done is to mourn the departed, find closure, and move on. This performance is especially choreographed by the mass media, which are now like priests who help America mourn its violent deaths.
What is actually going on is that all of the anger from the aggrieved, the blame of the NRA, the description of the shooter as mentally ill or a thug or whatever, are what I have here called America's Mourning Shows. Simply put, it is a way for America to mourn its dead, on TV, on radio, the Internet, and the Newspapers, and move on. America has come to see that gun deaths, like death in general, is inevitable, and the best way to approach it is to mourn it. All what goes in the mass media are forms of this mourning, understood as expressing grief for a loss or losses. Just as mourning is a proper way to seek closure in a case of death, so too are all these rants on TV, newspaper, or the internet just a means to find closure - for the moment - until the next gun massacre happens again. Understanding what happens after a mass shooting as mourning is important because it alerts us to the fact that gun massacres in America, just as the facts of death and taxes, have come to be seen as inevitable, as normal. The best that can be done is to mourn the departed, find closure, and move on. This performance is especially choreographed by the mass media, which are now like priests who help America mourn its violent deaths.
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