The ever-interesting Tom Junod, in Esquire:
NOBODY KNOWS who he is and nobody knows who he was. When he was a young man—a boy, really—his anonymity fueled his desperation, and for a short time his desperation made him known. He didn’t become famous the way other desperate and aggrieved young men have, but he made himself well-known enough to think that when he came home after eight and a half years in prison, there might be cameras waiting for him on his front lawn and people interested in asking him questions. There weren’t. There was just his family and the rest of his life.
So Trunk—a nickname he acquired when he went away—has returned to where he started out…
Trunk does, however, think often of the person who is out there right now feeling the way he used to feel. The person with a grievance. The person with a plan. The person with a gun—hell, an arsenal. The person we feel powerless against, because we don’t know who he is. All we know is what he—or she—is going to do.
Can he or she—they—be stopped before they become what we in America call “mass shooters”? We are so convinced they can’t be that we don’t even know if anyone is trying to stop them. Can they be understood? We are so convinced the evil they represent is inexplicable that we don’t try to explicate it. Mass shootings have become by now American rituals—blood sacrifices, propitiations to our angry American gods, made all the more terrible by our apparent acceptance of them. They have become a feature of American life, and we know very well what follows each one: the shock, the horror, the demonization of the guilty, the prayers for the innocent, the calls for action, the finger-pointing, the paralysis, and finally the forgetting. We know that they change everything only so that everything may remain unchanged.
But we are wrong about that. Mass shootings are not unstoppable, and there are people trying to stop them. They are not even inexplicable, because every time Trunk hears of one he understands why it happened and who did it. We have come to believe that mass shooters can’t be stopped because we never know who they are until they make themselves known. But Trunk was almost one of them once. He was a heartbeat away. And what he understands is that shooters want to be known, not through the infamy of a massacre, but before they have to go through with it. They want to be known as much as he, years later, wants to remain unknown, walking to the bus stop in the rain…
Trunk, of course, is short for “Trunk Full of Guns”. And then there is… well, the anti-Trunk:
… Simons is the answer to the question who is trying to stop “the next one”—the next active shooter, the next act of targeted violence, the next mass killing. Within the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, there exists the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime; within the NCAVC, there are the Behavioral Analysis units, made famous by movies and television for profiling serial killers. Behavioral Analysis Unit 1 concerns itself with counterterrorism; Behavioral Analysis units 3 and 4 with crimes against children and crimes against adults. Simons is in charge of Behavioral Analysis Unit 2, which assesses threats. This sounds like an impossibly broad category of endeavor, but in fact it’s quite specific. “Threat assessment” is just now becoming such a formal discipline that Simons describes himself and the members of his team as “threat-assessment professionals.” It is becoming such an accepted practice that its practitioners refer to it as TA for short and have their own professional organization and scholarly journal. And, although very few people know what it is, threat assessment has been America’s best and perhaps only response to the accelerating epidemic of active shooters and mass shootings, with Andre Simons foremost among the federal officials trying to implement it on a national level…
… We tend to think of perpetrators of targeted violence as either psychopaths—cold, isolated, highly motivated, and conscienceless—or troubled individuals who one day “just snap.” According to the tenets of threat assessment, they are neither. Indeed, according to the tenets of threat assessment, nobody just snaps; everybody follows an explicable course, even those intent on accomplishing the inexplicable. “The people who carry out these attacks typically do them out of a sense of desperation,” says Marisa Randazzo, a former Secret Service psychologist who collaborated with Fein and Vossekuil on several papers and is now a partner at Sigma Threat Management Associates. “They typically have been of concern to people who know them for long periods of time. And when we did interviews with school shooters, they expressed a level of ambivalence that surprised me. Part of them felt they had to go through with it; part of them felt they didn’t want to at all. Part of them looked for encouragement; part of them looked for someone to stop them. The national mind-set is that they’re determined to go through with it no matter what. That is absolutely not the case.”…
The article is, in its way, oddly optimistic — read the whole thing.
e.a.f.
really good article. never saw it written about this way. thank you.
sm*t cl*de
there are the Behavioral Analysis units, made famous by movies and television for profiling serial killers
Outside of the movies and TV, are their profiles any more accurate and useful than those of TV psychics?
NotMax
Bought a pretty new salt and pepper mill for myself while away. Stainless steel and glass, both compartments pre-filled. The old wood and copper ones at home are over 40 now and beginning to get cranky.
Tossed it into carry-on bag for flight, lying horizontally. Didn’t even occur to me about the bag being scanned and what it might look like, what with blades and gears in it, loaded with stuff that might be misconstrued for chemicals and all.
The TSA critters at the screen stopped the belt and just stared. Then motioned over 2 more TSA people. Those then motioned over two more. All of them stared at the screen as if mesmerized for a full 90 seconds, then one of them turned to me and asked “What the hell is that?”
I told them. Obviously someone asked me to move to the side table so he could open the bag, which he did, took but a glance of the box labeled “Salt & Pepper Mill” and told the people at the screen “Yup, that’s what it is all right. Start the belt up.” To me, “Thank you very much. None of us have ever seen anything like that show up before. If they let us, I’d print out a picture of the screen for you so you could see what had us so stumped. Oh, and that’s a nice looking mill. Where did you get it?”
lamh36
tsquared2001
I must take exception to the title and the whole premise of the article. I KNOW mass shooters will be white guys between the ages of 16 and 24. That shit is quite clear.
Always with the white default. Aargh
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@lamh36: I don’t read TwitterSpeak all that well and am a couple of “I’ve Met that Grouse Befores” to the good. What has happened?
lamh36
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): acording to CNN, Ferguson cop shot (someone said in bicep) “alleged” shooter killed by PD
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@lamh36: Jesus.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Thank you. Any copy/pasted Twitter things are usually complete gibberish to me, too.
lamh36
Ok, this shot Ferguson officer story is being updated as we speak.
There is definite reports on Officer being shot and NOT killed, but now some differing stories on whether or not suspect is dead or what the suspect status is
ETA: Multiple reports that cop was shot in arm, but no confirmation yet on shooter or if this had any relation to protest.
But I’l say it again, letting this grand jury go on until November or January was a very bad decision. It just let’s tempers and unease fester
lamh36
I hope the media has learned to check and recheck ANYTHING that comes from Ferguson PD.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@lamh36: I understand* where you are coming from regarding the time the GJ is taking. It really is plausible form a legal point of view for it too take time. Just saying and just from a legal point of view.
*I know I can’t really understand, but there really isn’t a good word for “I get it to the extent that I can but I really can’t” so I just used understand.
PhoenixRising
@tsquared2001: Or, you know, Asian.
I’m not denying that white dudes under 25 take home the gold, but Asian-Americans are well into the running for the silver.
In addition to these young men, 2 Cambodian immigrant grandmas have killed everyone in the house in the past 4 years alone…but they’re not ‘mass shooters’ because unloading a gun on your kids & grandchildren doesn’t count.
The first school shooting, in Stockton, CA, was an assault by a post-VN-era washout from the US Army…on Cambodian grade schoolers.
He felt ignored, marginalized & hard done by, but those around him were not concerned. Probably because his expression of those feelings was in line with the background level of racism against his eventual targets.
So, do behavioral analysts do any good? Good question. What are they listening for, and who are they directed by?
lamh36
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): and from a legal standpoint, I get that, but aren’t arrangments made in high profile cases like this one?
All I’m saying, this simmering is NOT helping Ferguson PD, the people and citizens of St Louis are anyone else for that matter. The cameras are gone and the national media are only interested in the story as it relates to Obama.
So cameras gone, national media presence and coverage low and this simmering untrust, outright hatred is NOT sustainable
lamh36
Captain Johnson said that the only person shot is an officer. He’s saying no one is dead, but not really talking about alleged shooter. He told the crowd they need to leave and he will only say it once
As you can imagine, Capt Johnson is no longer trusted by people in Ferguson.
ETA; “Ron Johnson says ONLY the police officer got shot out here. And many say they heard “TARGET DOWN” less than a hour ago #Ferguson”
https://twitter.com/Nettaaaaaaaa/status/516064842277343232
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@lamh36: I understand. I also hope that the GJ is taking its time in order to come to the right decision. I cannot promise that is what is happening. But I hope it is.
tsquared2001
@PhoenixRising My badly expressed point was that these articles are always written from a white perspective. Fuck that noise
JoyfulA
Twitter tells me things like police shot back and hit a child, who’s dead, per the “target down,” and police are massed outside a church on a hill, with pictures of many cop cars with headlights on.
What’s really going on, I guess we’ll know by tomorrow.
MomSense
This article reminds me of Antoinette Tuff who was the school employee who talked to a would be school shooter and managed to prevent a mass shooting. I think it was an elementary school in Georgia. She treated him with kindness, told him about all of her hardships and disappointments, and said she would stay with him while he dealt with the consequences.
lamh36
@JoyfulA: so far all I’ve seen that has been confirmed is that cop shot in arm and not killed.
Catp Johnson saying no one dead only officer shot. I havent heard anything confirmed about the suspect
MomSense
@lamh36:
It is really hard to figure out what is happening from all the conflicting information on twitter. Hopefully Capt. Johnson is providing accurate information.
tsquared2001
@MomSense: Hadn’t heard that name but, old girl got a story going on.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-day-antoinette-tuff-lived-up-to-her-name-school-clerk-talked-gunman-into-putting-down-weapon-8781006.html
lamh36
@MomSense: I hope so, but he didn’t say much else.
Honeslty, thought, doesn’t matter what Johnson said, any capital he ever had is no longer there. The people of Ferguson don’t seem to consider him to be anything other than a stooge for the PD now
dance around in your bones
“Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?!”
Fucking fuckers.
lamh36
https://twitter.com/ksdknews/status/516075433235075073
tsquared2001
Fucking menopause is fucking with me.
MomSense
@tsquared2001: She was lying on the ground waiting for him to shoot her and somehow she is able to tell him that she loves him and that she is proud of him–and given her deep faith I absolutely believe that she meant it.
@lamh36: The legal system has not only failed Ferguson but they have suffered a terrible kind of predatory policing for years. I don’t think Johnson has enough real power or authority to make good on all the statements and promises he has made. He has lost credibility.
tsquared2001
@MomSense: All I can say is Toni was a mensch AND a pisser.
I am SO not a believer but when religion works, it can work.
Betty Cracker
Interesting article, but it didn’t disabuse me of any preexisting ideas about mass shooters. I never thought mass shooters were red, scaly beings with bifurcated tails who carry a hayfork.
I do think they are ammosexuals writ large, i.e., pathetic little nobodies who combine in a highly volatile mix a massive inferiority complex with delusions of grandeur. What separates them from garden-variety ammosexuals is that they extend their twisted notion of power from the threat of violence to its implementation.
Hal
Speaking of Ferguson, I’m shocked Obama’s mention of Ferguson at the UN along with his (very true) statement that the US does not live up to it’s vaunted ideals wasn’t a bigger deal. I feel like people flipped out more of the latte salute. Or did I just miss the apoplexy on the right?
tsquared2001
@Betty Cracker: And of caucasian persuasion. Don’t forgot that aspect.
tsquared2001
Normally, when those active shooter happenings happen, I just KNOW that it will not be a POC.
Honkies, man – what you gonna do?
Anoniminous
@Hal:
I’m not shocked. Conservatives absolutely Do. Not. Want. A frank discussion and assessment of US racism.
Mnemosyne
@dance around in your bones:
Assuming you just finished watching the movie, did you notice that Rico is gay? He’s very, very gay, but some of the signifiers have changed in the past 70+ years, plus people assume that gay people didn’t exist in the movies until recently, so it tends to go over the heads of modern viewers.
Betty Cracker
@tsquared2001: Except the most prolific mass shooter, the VA Tech killer, who was a Korean dude. And the Long Island Railroad killer, who was a black guy, as were the DC-area snipers awhile back and the Navy complex shooter more recently. Testosterone seems a more consistent marker for mass violence than whiteness, but even that’s not 100%.
@Hal: Cheney popped a ‘roid over the Ferguson mention on Fox. Unsurprisingly, he completely missed the point and criticized Obama for making a “false equivalence” between the cops in Ferguson and ISIS.
Gian
@tsquared2001:
it’s the old % in the population thing. Which doesn’t work when counting arrests and contacts with cops (funny that) but does work for people like the DC sniper, and there was a mass shooter in new Orleans decades ago… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Essex
off the top of my head that’s all that comes to mind.
for my pop psych discussion? mass shootings are on the rise, and on the rise in young white and Asian males because they have in their minds played by the rules, hit their 20s and have no career real job and no real girlfriend while the stressors are common to every young male these subgroups had higher expectations to disappoint. Because there is racism or at least disparate impact, other races have similar or worse outcomes, but lacked the expectations.
hence the anger comes from failure to reach what one expected to reach, despite having advantages and having worked for it. As the greed of the .01% goes ever further, it’ll hit other communities too. (here ends the pop psych rant pulled out of thin air with no research)
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
GO COUGS! That is all…
tsquared2001
@Mnemosyne: I was watching Public Enemy the other night – was Tom’s “I hear you been reading poetry at college” a jab at his older brother Mike’s sexuality? Because then Mike goes to war,comes back as a invalid and doesn’t actually marry his sweetheart.
I have watched that movie a dozen times but during this latest viewing, that kind of shit got in my head.
Betty Cracker
@Gian: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.
Bill D.
@tsquared2001:
@tsquared2001:
So it’s our (people like me) problem, we need to do something about it, but we shouldn’t talk about what to do about it because by definition that’s just noise.
Incoherent much?
Mnemosyne
@tsquared2001:
I’d have to watch it again, but I don’t think it was about his brother’s sexuality. A lot of soldiers came back from WWI either impotent because of chemical warfare or with injuries to that area, to the point that “war wounds” was a common excuse for/joke about impotence. A lot of 1920s writers, including Hemingway, use it as a plot point in their novels.
Random note if you catch any of Herbert Marshall’s films on TCM — Marshall lost a leg in WWI and wore a prosthetic limb, so you’ll rarely see him walk any distance on camera or see him filmed below the waist. If a character he plays is shown running (like in Trouble in Paradise), it’s a body double.
tsquared2001
@Betty Cracker: And I can counter with Adam Lanza, Charles Whitman, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and James Holmes, ecertera,ecertera
I SO did not want to get into a Butcher’s Bill contest with you about mass shootings.
Gophers 30-Michigan 14
John Revolta
@Betty Cracker: What the hell? Raskolnikov only wanted to kill one old woman to get some money. He ended up killing another woman out of sheer bad luck. Not your typical “mass killer” scenario in any way.
tsquared2001
@Mnemosyne:
I kind of dislike Herbert Marshall if only because of he is such a lame husband to Bette Davis in The Letter and the Little Foxes.
tsquared2001
@Bill D.: No fair quoting my comments out of order.
A narrative – how fuck does it work?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I can’t see the comments on the Esquire site, and I’m morbidly curious: has anyone figured out Trunk’s identity yet? I wonder what kind of hell it will create in his life when that happens, and how he’ll handle it. The kind of pressure the media could bring to bear now on that guy would make TV cameras on the lawn look like a tea party for dolls.
Jordan Rules
@Bill D.:I think you might be conflating 2 separate points.
Betty Cracker
@John Revolta: The mindset Gian described: underperforming young males who feel entitled to society’s goodies and are ready to resort to violence when denied. Raskolnikov’s plan was different (he didn’t intend notoriety), but his sense of aggrieved entitlement was similar.
Betty Cracker
@tsquared2001: I’m not saying the butcher’s bill isn’t dominated by Team Whitey, just pointing out that it’s not the primary marker. You seemed to say the opposite.
tsquared2001
@Gian: I only started commentating on this thread to bring up the point that these articles about mass shootings have a default white perspective and now I am in a fight with Anne Laurie (who I read) and dumbass Bill D.
Gophers 30 – Michigan 14
John Revolta
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’ll grant ya the mindset and the entitlement parts. But he was a long way from “I’ll make them all pay and go out in a blaze of glory!!1!11!!” though.
Jordan Rules
@tsquared2001: Meh, you’re not really in a fight with anyone, but it’s Betty and not Anne that you’re not in a fight with any way. LOL
sm*t cl*de
I am enough of a cynic that when I read statements like
threat assessment has been America’s best and perhaps only response to the accelerating epidemic of active shooters and mass shootings, with Andre Simons foremost among the federal officials trying to implement it on a national level
I wonder whether it actually works; and when statements come from
a former Secret Service psychologist who collaborated with Fein and Vossekuil on several papers and is now a partner at Sigma Threat Management Associates
it sounds like someone trying to justify their place at the money teat.
Mnemosyne
@tsquared2001:
Ah, but in the Pre-Code version of The Letter, Marshall played the lover, not the husband.
(Though he played his share of stuffy husbands even in Pre-Code movies, like Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich and Riptide with Norma Shearer.)
Mnemosyne
@sm*t cl*de:
There are some interesting studies about serial killers and mass murderers, who have somewhat different psychologies. A Canadia sociologist wrote a book years ago called Hunting Humans that covered a lot of it. It works very poorly as prediction, but there are enough similarities to make it a valid field to study (even if only after the fact) and see if there are any preventative steps that could be taken.
dance around in your bones
@Mnemosyne: Ok, I can’t sleep and I just read your comment.
I’ve been watching all the Pre-Code movies on TCM that I can (AND IT’S ALL YER FAULT!) and enjoying them very much, especially The Red Headed Woman and Red Dust and I’m No Angel….well, I could go on and on, but I think I’d be like Alec Baldwin talking about movies from an actor’s point of view (in my case, a watcher’s POV) against a film historian like Robert Osborne…
A long-winded way of saying, NO! it never occurred to me that Little Caesar was gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just thought he wanted to BE SOMEBODY, ya know? That was his downfall in the end.
JoyfulA
@lamh36: The latest is that there were two separate police shootings in the vicinity tonight, neither connected to the protests.
sm*t cl*de
There are some interesting studies about serial killers and mass murderers, who have somewhat different psychologies.
Over the years I have read any number of memoirs from FBI profilers, and two points stood out:
1. The absence of any independent evaluation to see whether advice from profilers was any more useful in apprehending perps than (for instance) advice from self-proclaimed psychics; and
2. The level of projection involved. If some expert emphasised the role of control in the killer psychology, you could be sure that the expert’s anecdotes about his private life would involve control, like playing sadistic practical jokes on colleagues and ex-wife.
I can’t say it’s surprising to find psychologists so lacking insight into their own psychologies and how it was affecting their perceptions, but it was still diisappointing.
John Revolta
@dance around in your bones: I’m witchoo. I’ve seen the movie manymany times and the idea never occurred to me.
JoyfulA
These stories are oddly similar to a book I am reading right now called “The Alienist” which is partly fiction and partly history, based upon Theodore Roosevelt’s takeover of the New York Police Department in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book chronicles what were then called “alienists” or the case in the book, one alienist who could be compared to modern FBI profilers. In the book the search is on for one “Jack the Ripper” style killer but for anyone interested in profilers and the history of police work and profiling murderer’s I recommend it highly. Rich in historical detail.
JoyfulA
The book was certainly controversial but is a reminder how little civilization has progressed in the last 100 years, despite our false belief that civilization is “progressing” apace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alienist
NotMax
@JoyfulA
Read it 20 years ago. Good page turner, exacting research into NYC locales, streets, landmarks, etc.
The term alienist is not specifically applicable to profilers. It was a common (though now archaic) term for any psychologist or psychiatrist.
NotMax
@JoyfulA
Oh, and T.R.’s tenure as police superintendent was effective but short, lasting only from 1895 – 1897.
Aimai
@Betty Cracker: yup. Something about the article really rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe calling janet napolitano a “liar”. Maybe letting trunk , the would be killer, assert that his intervention–of all the interventions that these kids have had–would get through to them.
Mike
Andre Simons, cited by Junod, is flat out wrong in his assertion that no one in ta behavioral assessment team was asking ‘the right questions’ about James Holmes. The Denver post reported that the psychiatrist who evaluated Holmes at U. Colorado called in the campus BAT, including campus police, about her concerns that Holmes was dangerous mere weeks before Holmes shot up the movie theater.
Similarly you can find Brett Sokolow Jr. – a lawyer who runs his own school threat assessment advisory/policy making/litigation shop – telling CNN that the community college that Laughner attended acted appropriately by assessing Laughner and pushing him out of the institution.
This stuff is easily turned up by a google search, and would be immediately recognized by anyone following this issue in the last several years.
Simons is full of it. It’s unreal that he is taken seriously.
Mike
@Mike:
Upon further consideration (a close rereading of the paragraph I was referring to above), the problem may be less Simons’ views and more Junod’s reporting than I initially assumed.
Also, I didn’t think I’d ever find myself in agreement with Ray Kelly.
Finally, the notion that the BITs/BATs render irrelevant a consideration of the legality/right to obtain arms (or any right; privacy of medical records is mentioned earlier) is truly disturbing.
The ends justify the means, folks… if you believe that sort of thing.
JGabriel
Tom Junod @ Esquire:
Except that mass shootings aren’t blood sacrifices to angry American gods; they’re blood sacrifices to the gun lobby, the NRA, Second Amendment extremists, and pro-gun conservatives in general.
None of those groups are gods. They just like to think they are.
Frankensteinbeck
Didn’t we read not long back about the statistics of mass shooters? I couldn’t find it in an immediate Google, but I found information to back up what I remember – mass shootings are not on the rise, the vast majority of the perpetrators are white males (I thought I remembered 30+, didn’t see age listings), and the vast majority of victims are female? No demographic is immune, but the skew is huge.
Mnemosyne
@sm*t cl*de:
The Layton book I cited above is different than a profiler’s memoir because (IIRC), Layton never spoke to any of the men he writes about. He compiled his information from other people’s interviews with them, and Layton has no personal anecdotes in the book at all. Because it’s a sociological survey, it’s much more about what Layton sees as the societal pressures and desires that drove their killings rather than each person’s psychology.
TL;DR — Layton’s book is a bit more scientific than, say, a John Douglas memoir, though by definition it’s hard for a social science like sociology to be “scientific.”
Mnemosyne
@dance around in your bones:
@John Revolta:
Like I said, it’s not as clear to us today because the signals the movie uses are different than the way movies currently signal it, but it was clear enough to contemporary audiences that the author of the book Little Caesar was based on complained publicly about it.
Remember when Rico goes to pieces and becomes an alcoholic after the police shootout? His reaction seems a little extreme until you realize that his devoted henchman Otero who was killed in the shootout was also his boyfriend. Rico shows no interest in women and is never shown with a moll the way Tony Camonte (Scarface) or Tom Powers (The Public Enemy) are. It’s also less visible to us today because Rico’s being gay isn’t presented as a moral issue or something that shows why he became a gangster — it’s just a fact about him.
Ruviana
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Looks to be Matthew Lovett who with some younger unidentified friends planned a shooting attack that began with a failed carjacking. When that failed the group was going home when they were arrested. Easy to google the name and a number of identifiers track.
Bill D.
@tsquared2001: Your comments came across as more random than narrative.
@Jordan Rules: Maybe I’m a dumbass as per tsquared2001, but I went back, looked, and didn’t see that.
That said, these shooters *are* disproportionately white. I’m happy to hear useful analysis from anyone on what might be causing this or what we can do about it. However, in looking at these shooters I think we need to separate out those who are truly mentally ill, like One Goh, from the merely disaffected like most of the rest.
Another Holocene Human
@tsquared2001: They’re not all white, but they may be disproportionately so.
Another Holocene Human
@sm*t cl*de: No shit. To me, (I’ve had “trainings”) it’s about as fucking scientific as land use planning (well, they use sciency tools, ya see?), and oh yeah, some someones and most definitely getting paid.
Matt McIrvin
Maybe it’s just that fashions in mass murder come and go. We used to be fascinated by serial killers, but there haven’t been many of them in the news lately… or the ones who do appear are characterized as terrorists instead. (Though I guess “Criminal Minds” is still on, as is “Hannibal”, so the fictional type are still all over the place on TV.)
dance around in your bones
@Mnemosyne: I’m still not totally convinced,
There was no portrayal of his relationship with Otero beyond their gang membership and that “You can never quit!” IMHO.
I agree that he never showed any interest in women, but then his only interest in men was in what he could command them to do.
It all seemed like a power thing to me; he got his self-worth from “being somebody”, just like he read about in the newspaper in the beginning of the movie (about Pete Montana , which made me think of Tony/Carmonte/ Montana in the 2 Scarface movies).
I could be totally wrong – I am typing this while watching Goosebumps with a couple of grandkids, one of which is in “The Nonny Circle” which keeps him safe from anything scary. That means he’s munching popcorn while sitting in the circle of my legs.
MikeJake
@Matt McIrvin: I wonder if advances in DNA evidence and an increased emphasis on addressing rape kit backlogs will result in serial killers being stopped before they become really interesting.
@Bill D.: You know, a lot of important historical events happened because disaffected men banded together and did violent things. I’m not sure if its comforting that so many of our violent nuts have entirely personal motivations rather than political. I mean, if you’re that miserable, why not do the rest of us a solid and target a Koch brother or something?
Hob
@tsquared2001: You might want to read the article, because it does not ignore the point you’re making. Quote: “If Elliot Rodger had been a Pakistani immigrant, would the Santa Barbara deputies have taken him at his word about the content of his videos? Would they have left his apartment without asking basic questions?”
Mnemosyne
@dance around in your bones:
It’s a bit in the eye of the beholder, but this essay (not by me) has a pretty good explanation. Short version: Rico’s and Joe’s relationships are presented as being parallel and equivalent to each other (though, again, things had to be a bit on the down-low since the Pre-Code era did have a few rules).
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: I think it’s more about looking at old things with new eyes. I’m familiar with the movie conventions from back then and I know the “codes” they commonly used. So yeah, the tailor in the suit-fitting scene is presented as gay, but tailors were often portrayed that way, and mostly for laughs. And it was also very common for men to share beds together, e.g. in hotels and such, until fairly recently without anybody reading anything into it. Rico didn’t like “dames”, but this was a standard tough-guy mannerism of the time.
So yeah, the argument can be made, but eye of the beholder for sure.
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
Movie conventions from the Production Code era (late 1934 to 1968) or movie conventions in the Pre-Code era (1929 to mid-1934)? The conventions are quite a bit different since they could say more in the Pre-Code era, or at least weren’t forced to deliberately mislead the audience.
ETA: Here a Wikipedia link for the reference to the book’s author complaining about the gay subtext when the film first came out.
dance around in your bones
@Mnemosyne: Ok, I am trying to read the article (with grandkids wound around my legs still…..
But I kinda don’t buy the antisocial/homosexual angle. I mean, most of us ol’ hippies could be included in the antisocial/don’t trust the Man group.
And this is from Wikipedia but…
Ok, well shit. You just linked to the link that I linked so I am going to monitor this thread but bow out for now :)
I imagine that the author of the novel the movie was made from would carry some weight. Sorry, but the grandkids are killin’ me! Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Dance Around In Your Bones?!!
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
Also, too, not liking “dames” was not as common in Pre-Code gangster films as you seem to think — Tom Powers and Tony Camonte are surrounded by women, though not always the ones they want. Most of the Pre-Code gangster movies have a lot of women in them … except Little Caesar.
Again, don’t confused Pre-Code with Production Code movies — women were removed from a lot of the Production Code gangster films because those films were forbidden from showing “immorality” and instead focused more on the police work aspects or the relationships between men (like Angels with Dirty Faces from 1938, which is firmly inside the parameters of the Production Code).
Mnemosyne
@dance around in your bones:
The contemporary reaction to the film is what tipped me over into the “yes” column — if people who watched it when it was first released thought Rico was gay, who am I to tell them they were wrong?
dance around in your bones
@Mnemosyne: Well, did people at that time think anyone who was ‘different’ was automatically gay?
I just thought that folks back then thought anyone who didn’t toe the line was a gangster, outcast, alternately feared and admired. See – well, a million movies like Bonnie and Clyde, the Godfather trilogy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…..I’m sure you know better than I do, since this is your passion.
I’m just saying I don’t get a gay vibe off of Rico – just a tough guy who wants to ‘Be Somebody’ in the only way he knew how.
sm*t cl*de
The answer to any threat, however small, is always “more surveillance” and “more money for private contractors”.
Bill D.
@MikeJake: What we’ve seen so far is lone-wolf individuals doing these killings, whether the perps are disaffected or mentally ill. That’s different from the larger-scale killings by groups of disaffected rightists that could well break out one of these years.