550:678) Jonathan Hayes
Date: 18-JUN-94  22:23


 I was wondering the same thing too, xue - how my indifference to the media
 spectacle last night related to my real feelings for a fellow human being
 in pain, and how they related to Shakespearean tragedy (ROMEO AND JULIET
 was what I was thinking), or even ET.

 I don't know what the answer is. I cry in OTHELLO (well, at the opera, not
 the play so much, because it is too familiar and lacks the bombast). I
 also cry in ET. But there it's different - the piece has predisposed me to
 view the actions of Othello with sympathy.

 I do believe it IS the television which lifts and separates here. Some
 years ago I watched (in a professional capacity) the videotape of the death
 of Larry "Bud" Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who had been accused of
 financial improprieties. Dwyer held a press conference, and, clearly
 suffering, spoke a few words against the charges and apologized to everyone
 for all of the trouble. He then pulled out a gun, and, amidst screams and
 shouts of "Larry, NO!", stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger,
 blowing a hole in the back of his head. He collapsed back against a wall,
 and slid to the floor, the blood gushing from his nose and mouth, the
 cameraman zooming tight, the screaming in the background.

 I found this emotionally devastating. I had watched the entire tape, maybe
 7 minutes of him coming into the press room, speaking, handing out
 envelopes to his staff. I had some sense of the man, of what he was
 feeling, of what he was thinking. And then, when he finally killed himself,
 it was really really horrifying. This was the death of another person, a
 real person, a person like me.

 But with OJ, it was different. There was no preamble, we just cut away
 from whatever program was on to some bizarre shot of a white car driving al
 on the highway, pumped by the bloodlust of the reporters and the choppers
 and the psychoanalysts. NO ONE SET UP THE CLIP. There was nothing human
 there to which I could attach myself, no narrative space in which to
 install pity, or compassion. This was an anhistoric event, a sequence from
 a movie where I had missed the first hour.

 I was also thinking that it was interesting that you chose OTHELLO. What
 significance is it, if any, that his ex-wife was white?

 Believe me, xue, I am not a cold person. But what I was doing last night
 was taking a cynical dip in the electronic aether, refusing to embrace what
 was tragic about that ride.

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