Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
They are the heroes and victims upon which we affix life's tragic lessons and drill them into your head. Plus: Is James Ellroy snubbing L.A.?
Dec 10, 1999 | Elian Gonzalez, Cassie Bernal, Matthew Shepard: How we media types love our poster children. They are supposed to be the antidotes to soulless statistics, but turning a real-life tragedy into a nationally broadcast morality play often serves to cheapen, not amplify, it. How many times do we have to look at Matthew Shephard's boyish smile and slightly mussed hair before the horror he endured ceases to register?
But there's the conundrum. We're a nation that thinks with its eyes. We'd just as soon overlook unpleasantness -- unless it comes with a pretty face and a compelling story. So we dress up tragedy in a visual language and cross our fingers that we haven't pissed all over our object lesson's life or grave. We hope we've allowed our subject to retain his or her uniqueness, even as the story ratchets up thousands of hits on the Internet. They're yelling at each other again on CNN. A poster child is born.
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L.A. Weekly, Dec. 10-16
"The Dutiful Daughter" by Jim Crogan
"Not just a nameless, faceless statistic on the city's traffic-accident rolls, Maria Luisa Forester, the 66th pedestrian killed on Los Angeles streets this year, was someone's daughter, mother and wife. On December 16, she would have turned 59." The author, Jim Crogan, is practically a witness to her death. She is struck by a vehicle, which doesn't stick around, just outside his house. In vivid, anguished language he relives those confused moments as he discovers her body, calls for help. He speaks with her relatives to find out who she was. Once he has painted a full picture, he shares how easily her death may have been avoided: a few additional street lights.
Crogan achieves the perfect balance between overdramatization and cold summation, which in turns allows his subject to be a poster child for a cause without sacrificing her uniqueness. Explaining this accomplishment, he writes: "As a reporter, I've seen plenty of human tragedy, covering cops, courts, gangs and corruption. I've also covered the L.A. riots and the war in El Salvador. But when I'm working, there's a switch inside me that automatically clicks off the emotions. It gives me some small distance from the trauma and sadness that I regularly encounter ... This was different. I was home."
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Miami New Times, Dec. 9-15
"Her so-called life" by Lissette Corsa
Porsche Williams' life and death were indeed tragic, but there are too many lessons here to fit onto one poster: poverty, a mother who died of AIDS, pregnancy in middle school, a social network that failed to intervene and, finally, an abusive boyfriend who murdered her when she tried to leave him. Lissette Corsa clearly wants to blame someone for Porsche's death, but there is no clear culprit. Without a villain, the story loses its impact. This, of course, does not mean that Porsche's story doesn't deserved to be told -- though without cliched flourishes such as this one would be nice: "'Mama, I'm scared,' Porsche confessed before leaving the 91-year-old matriarch who helped raise her." The reality is, this victim's name and face will never be used to rally forces against the confluence of circumstances that resulted in her demise.
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