Interpretation
Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that people can’t always see what’s in front of them. However obvious it is. However frantically it jumps up and down right in front of them. However hard it punches them in the face, however red and dripping the clothes it wears, however loud it screams, however charred the flesh, however choking the smoke.
Not that they don’t notice that something is there. But what they – some people, sometimes – have a hard time making out in the fog is a possibility about what the something is. They see the something there – all red and jumping and punching as it is – and they notice it – but they don’t always do a very good job of figuring out what it is, or what it might be – they don’t do a very good job of figuring out that it might not be what they think it is. In other words they think they recognize it, and they don’t stop to consider that the light is bad, that they’re not wearing their glasses, that it’s the middle of the night, that they’re sound asleep. All those courtroom things. ‘I suggest to you that you could not possibly have identified the defendant from two miles away during a blizzard while wearing a blindfold.’
It’s not just the riots. It is those, but it’s other things too. It’s also suicide bombers, and animal rights campaigners, and people who make death threats over plays and movies and novels that ‘offend’ their religion. The possibility that seems to escape a lot of people’s attention is that all these things are far less a matter of protest, and alienation, and revolt, and justified anger, and understandable resentment, than they are just plain old pleasure in sadistic violence. No more edifying than that. Just joy and pleasure and delight in frightening people, and hurting them, and smashing them up, and making them suffer. That can happen, you know. (Read a little Thucydides or Euripides, if you don’t know – it’s all right there. There was no need to wait for Nietzsche or Freud or Foucault; it’s all right there.) People can just plain get off on beating up on people or leaving fake bombs on their porches or stealing the bodies of their relatives from cemeteries or setting fire to the buses they’re sitting in.
That possibility, at least, is part of these events and activities, but it doesn’t always get as much explicit attention as it should. Too often it’s just tactfully swept out of sight and ignored, or never even noticed in the first place. That’s unfortunate. Think of Gladys Wundowa. Think of the driver of the bus she was on, who instead of running away ran upstairs to help his passengers. Think of the woman on crutches who was set on fire in Sevran, outside Paris, on Friday. Think of the driver of the bus she was on, who suffered smoke inhalation in helping her to escape the bus instead of running away. Think of the woman leaning out the window on a high floor of a block of flats where some ‘youths’ had just set fire to a rubbish bin inside the lobby, calling down that she was frightened. Consider possibilities – that’s all.
An interesting perspective indeed, but I am inclined to take that a bit further and propose that even supposed sadism may serve a genuine purpose in consequential emotional empowerment through an act of self-determined certainty.
Sometimes we just want to break free from emotional despair and feel strong. Regardless and by whatever means.
Oh christ. You’re pulling my chain, right? You’re winding me up?
If not – the hell with that. Never mind what ‘we’ want to break free from and what we want to feel. ‘We’ can just suck it up. The point is not what ‘we’ want, it’s what other people want when we come marching down the street feeling strong and brandishing torches and clubs and chains.
Fucking hell. “even supposed sadism may serve a genuine purpose in consequential emotional empowerment through an act of self-determined certainty.” Yeah right. Sade meets Celine meets Franco. Viva la muerte. No thank you.
Ah, but Ophelia, you are denying them their RIGHT to EMPOWERMENT, don’t you know. We can’t do that, can we? :(
The phrase that comes to mind is, “Yeah? How’s it feel to want?”
This can’t be one-sided, you know. What do Sarkozy and the cops want? I mean really want. Total wish fulfillment…
Foucault and Fanon say you’re all wrong, Ophelia.
So there.
One does hate to be arsey and right-on about this, but if we can just differentiate between the majority of the rioters in France and small groups of suicide-bombers, it would help. It would also help to observe that it is possible to turn people into [what look like] savage animals by caging them in lousy conditions and treating them like shit for decades… Unless one has actually seen the celebrated Compagnies Republicaines de Securite patrolling an area with all the tact and sensitivity of the Deep South in the 1950s [not to use any more European examples from a decade earlier], one may not appreciate just how much some of these people have to be angry about. And unless one sees the total whiteness of the French political class, one may not realise just how far they are from being listened to any other way….
Yes, they are not being nice, but ‘society’ is not being nice to them. The State of Nature is all the bad things Hobbes said it was, and you can take your pick of the version of the Social Contract that keeps us from it, but whichever version you prefer, the plain fact is that the inhabitants of the French banlieue are not receiving its full benefits, so why should they stick by it?
Most of the rioters are either children, or young men who have never been allowed to taste the joys of social responsibility. Why should we expect them to be responsible, when no-one has shown them how, or why, it would benefit them?
I’ve been surprised in the discussions of the riots to have seen no mention of Kassovitz’s film of 1995 ‘La Haine’.
It’s all there, bubbling away ten years ago.
La haine has been mentioned countless times in the online discussions I read, Chris.
Ophelia, I’m not sure what to make of your post. I am bemused that you have , so uncharacteristically, reduced so many complex and separate behaviours to one simple explanation.Say, we consider that possibility that all those people are more sadistic little shits than anything else, where do we go after that? On what basis do we then deal with the problems? I emphatise with your despair and sort of understand that you are in rant mode, but isn’t this a dead-end discussion?
It is possible that sane people, caught in the multiply-cleft stick of insane religious bigotry, endemic racism, disregard for the fundamental principles of democratic civilisation, looming ecological meltdown, global energy-crisis and imminent pandemic disease, can find little else coherent to do, if they are not simply to retreat below the bedcovers, than rant… No-one is listening, the world IS mad…
OB wrote: “Oh christ. You’re pulling my chain, right? You’re winding me up?”
Well, yes, but in my defense, I didn’t notice the chain until I pulled it.
“If not – the hell with that. Never mind what ‘we’ want to break free from and what we want to feel.”
You are suggesting that we should only consider part of the data in favor of a convenient (is it?) conclusion?
“The point is not what ‘we’ want, it’s what other people want when we come marching down the street feeling strong and brandishing torches and clubs and chains.”
Why would that be the *sole* point?
“Fucking hell. “even supposed sadism may serve a genuine purpose in consequential emotional empowerment through an act of self-determined certainty.” Yeah right. Sade meets Celine meets Franco. Viva la muerte. No thank you.”
Thank you very much for not inviting me to your little puppy burning party. That’s a fair start.
Why not read in my words that cesperugo is emphasizing that all behavior has a purpose? Why this urgent and selective blind eye to behavioral science?
“propose that even supposed sadism may serve a genuine purpose in consequential emotional empowerment through an act of self-determined certainty.”
What has this got to do with Behavioural science? (Are we talking about Psychology here?)
What does “self- determined certainty” mean?
Why are you referring to yourself in the third person? (“cesperugo is emphasizing that all behavior has a purpose?”)
“I am bemused that you have , so uncharacteristically, reduced so many complex and separate behaviours to one simple explanation.”
But Mirax (should we call you Mirax? Or is it Mira?), I didn’t – I said that some people miss that possibility. I’m not saying that is what’s going on in all these cases, I’m saying it is one possibility, and one that gets ignored too often.
Dave –
It’s okay to be arsey and right-on about it. But – surely it’s not just a coincidence that, as you mention yourself, the rioters are young men. That could mean that only young men (or these particular young men in this particular situation) are idealistic and politically aware and energetic enough to rebel. But it could also mean other things.
Hi Ophelia,
you wrote: The possibility that seems to escape a lot of people’s attention is that all these things are far less a matter of protest, and alienation, and revolt, and justified anger, and understandable resentment, than they are just plain old pleasure in sadistic violence.
If only you had written, ‘not only’ instead of ‘far less’, I would have agreed with you.
BTW, Mirax is fine.
Coincidentally, I just did write that.
Also, the reference to ‘possibility’ was meant to serve the same purpose. The truth is, I do think people ought to recognize the possibility that the sadism really does far outweigh the protest.
An “undercover” researcher into the violence between groups of (young male) football fans that until quite recently was a feature of English Saturday afternoons and evenings in some areas (for some reason Millwall immediately comes to mind) was surprised to find that a fair number of those involved had regular well-paid jobs, and certainly didn’t come from any underclass. It seems they just enjoyed a good punch up in congenial company.
That’s not to say (and Ophelia doesn’t say) that in the current riots in France there’s not a lot more to it. But I think the opportunity to smash some windows and start exciting fires is attractive to some youths without their necessarily having a “purpose” for their behaviour.
And I really don’t think that the throwing of Molotov cocktails can be translated as a mute cry for help:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1638807,00.html
Incidentally, in the afore-cited Guardian article, Timothy Garten Ash really gets to the heart of the problem:
“To address the greatest problem of our continent, and not just of France, we need to do nothing less than to redefine what it means to be a European.”
Good to know that one of our greatest public intellectuals has bent his mind to the problem.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results
Boy, there is a lot of silly stuff in that column. Some good stuff too, but –
‘It seems they just enjoyed a good punch up in congenial company.’
Oh yes, that happens so much more frequently than most people would guess. Just last weekend, my 15 year old nephew and 20 of his schoolmates(boys’ school,not one deprived kid among the lot) ended up at the police station after a private beachside party turned violent for apparently no good reason. 5 have been charged (no, not nephew who claims not to have been involved at all…)
The usual explanations about deprivation, gang affiliation, race, religion, nationality,parental neglect etc all just fall flat when you encounter cases like this.
Hi Mirax
Sorry, I should have been more specific – I had the meeja in mind rather than on-line folk. Then again, maybe they mentioned it as well and I wasn’t watching or reading at that particular moment.
OK – I was wrong…still a great movie though.
Sadism is another form of self validation. I truly feel that everyone who performs any act of anger or violence gets a feeling of power from it, of being heard or seen, of being in control – however briefly.
Some are more needy of that high than others.
All you seem to be saying is that some people are their own ’cause’ and they attach to a more widely accepted ’cause’ without any real emotional investment in it, using it as a convenient reason for behaviours.
Psycopaths exist, and so does every shade of social association or disassociation from here to there.
Or, to stop waffling, I completely agree. Its possible.