a dreamed pogrom
Music: Ikon: A Moment in Time
It was not mere coincidence that Charles Carl Roberts shot ten girls at an Amish school house on Monday and that congressman Mark Foley resigned from his post shortly thereafter. Before Roberts planned to torture and (presumably) sexually assault the young women he phoned his wife to explain that he was haunted by the death of his premature daughter . . . and that over twenty years ago he molested two family members. The lawyer of the disgraced Foley---who apparently sent "lewd" instant messages to 16 year old "boys"---explained that the representative was "molested as a teen" himself. Both men were obsessed with the question of innocence. That both stories broke within hours of each other indicates this obsession with innocence is overdetermined.
Foley's case, in particular, is quite interesting. Here is a man who built his political career by "crusading" for the protection of children. Now, let me be very clear: I don't think sending a 16 year old boy a lewd message is terrible. I don't think the kid was "harmed"---no more so than playing, say, Grand Theft Auto 16 on PlayStation. The true crime in the popular imaginary, of course, is that Foley is gay. The true crime in my book is the hypocrisy which, of course, is absolutely consistent with the so-called "repression hypothesis." The politically righteous are often the most morally bankrupt.
Of course, for years on this blog I've been suggesting that the disassociation of youth from sexuality---the denial of children as sexual creatures---is paradoxically part of mass media obsession with the violation of innocents: whether it is the next high school shooting or the seduction of a teacher by a sexually aggressive student, the supposed defloration of the "just beginning to bloom" has become, next to the terrorist plot, the popular fantasy of our time. We love to hate our molesters and pederasts! Is it just me, or does Dateline air their "busting a pedophile" programs every other evening now? Clearly there is a widespread, American hang-up about the pure and the pristine.
According to the OED, innocence is "freedom from sin, guilt, or moral wrong in general; the state of being untainted with, or unacquainted with, evil; moral purity." By definition, young people are supposedly beacons of moral purity (although I dare you to watch how greedily those little pink things grab to breast; weaning is downright savage!). It is this romantic fantasy of young people as "innocent" that catalyzes adults to do naughty things to young people; and it is this fantasy of violation that is setting the screened agendas of news organizations today. In both cases---the actual crime and its reportage on the news---the flesh and blood human beings that are made into "victims" are eclipsed by their becoming a symbol of moral purity. Although being shot or sexually assaulted is horrible, so too is becoming a "symbol" a dehumanizing event. Roberts and Foley did not see their "victims" as people. Worse for the television viewer: neither do the major news networks.
Violence against children, sexual or otherwise, is relatively rare. Because the concept of childhood is so heavily symbolic of innocence, over the past century there has been a series of moral panics concerning the violation of innocents. In my last book I detailed how a rumor panic over Satanism in the suburbs transformed---and most especially as a result of sensational reportage---into a full blown rumor panic leading the false imprisonment of hundreds of people (alarmingly, many of them child caretakers). As Philip Jenkins argues in his book Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (Yale, 1998), the figure of the molester is remarkably protean: in the 1970s it was the gay alcoholic (sorry, Foley, your story is a tired one) and in the 1980s it was the Satanic pornographer. It would seem we had something of a respite in the 1990s, but since Columbine the "youth in crisis" narrative has helped to revive the menacing pedophile. In my view, what's worse than our monster of the year is the fashioning of the victim and the maudlin return to the impossible innocence of youthful ignorance.
The more "innocent" children are portrayed, the worse the fantasies of violation and violence are going to get. And by fantasies, of course, I mean to specify the coordinates of our meaningful reality.