Walter Mosley on America's Obsession with Crime
BY NEWSWEEK STAFF 7/31/09 AT 8:00 PM
FILED UNDER: U.S.
Everybody is guilty of something. This is a truism of the
West. It goes all the way back to Cain and original sin and has been a central
topic of discourse among members of society from the construction of the laws
of ancient Rome, through the Inquisition, into the Jim Crow system of the South
(and North), stopping to wallow in the culture of the Soviet Union, and going
right to the rotted heart of the race laws of Nazi Germany.
In 2,000 years of Western civilization we have been guilty
of heresy, perversion, theft, and murder; of fighting and refusing to fight; of
loving, lusting after, and sometimes just looking. We have been guilty of
speaking out and keeping silent, of walking, marching, and running away. We
have been found culpable for following orders and for refusing to follow them,
for adultery, child endangerment, sexual harassment, and elder abuse. We have
also been guilty of our religion, national origin, skin color, sexual
preference, gender, and, now and then, of the blood in our veins.
Guilt is the mainstay of who we are and how we are
organized, and is, seemingly, our undeniable destiny, along with Death and
Taxes.
Our relationship with guilt is as old as the DNA that
defines our species. But the nature of culpability changes with technology and
technique. These changes affect the way we see the world and the way we seek to
understand our predicament. True-crime stories, murder mysteries,
up-to-the-minute online news reports, and (as always) rumor and innuendo grab
our attention faster than any call for justice, human rights, or ceasefires.
This is because most of us see ourselves as powerless cogs
in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and
insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any
time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil.
Because of this vulnerability we have questions that need to
be answered to ensure our safety. One such question is, what would happen if …?
What if you saw a man shoot somebody? Should you tell the police? Would they
protect you from murky vengeance? You saw a true-crime TV show once that profiled
a man who identified a murderer and was himself murdered for giving evidence.
Would you be guilty of being stupid for doing what you were taught was right?
Another question is, is it safe? Is it safe for you to walk
the streets, drink the water, fly on commercial airliners, speak
to an attractive stranger, to believe the words of political, religious,
corporate, and social leaders?
In smaller societies we worked side by side with leaders,
wealthy property owners, and local ministers. Face-to-face meetings and
friendly gossip gave us at least the illusion of understanding where we stood
and what was right. But today the working urban dweller gets all this
information from TV and computer screens … and so often, we know, the media
misinform.
The feeling of being lied to brings about a hunger for
truth. We want to know if the man on death row was really guilty. Were there
actually WMDs in the hills of Iraq? Are people being tortured, and am I morally
responsible for my government's actions?
In order to answer these questions we first turn, with a
mistrustful eye, to objective opinion sources. Editorials in newspapers and
magazines, talk shows and news programs, public radio, blogs, and (because
there's just too much for one person to read, listen to, and view) friends who
have gleaned information from other impartial venues.
But even as we take in the information shoveled out at a
stupendous rate from dozens of different sources, we begin to worry. Who owns
the news? How do bloggers pay their rent? Why, in spite of what I'm being told,
is the economy, and the world in general, getting worse?
This dissatisfaction brings us to fictional accounts. Crime
shows, mysteries, and films speak to the bystander in a dangerous world. These
forms of entertainment corroborate our feelings of distrust and allow us to
think about how we might fit into a world that wouldn't even be aware of us
getting crushed under its collective weight.
Fiction, better than reality, gives us heroes who can't let
us down, who cannot be arrested, convicted, or vilified. Maybe these stories
won't be able to resolve our dilemmas in the real world, but they can offer
escape through a fantasy where even a common everyday Joe (or Jane) can be
saved.
This salvation has always been our goal. Forgiveness for our
sinful desires and secret trysts, for our failures and broken commandments, for
our weakness beside the machine that covers the world with its cold, gray
shadow.
This is why we have TV psychologists and mother substitutes,
confessionals and paparazzi. On the one hand we're looking for deliverance, and
on the other we seek to show how even the rich and famous are flawed.
We need forgiveness and someone to blame. So the story of crime fills our TVs, theaters, cinemas, computer files, and bookshelves. We are fascinated with stories of crime, real or imagined, because we need them to cleanse the modern world from our souls.