I moved to the country because I wanted my children to embrace a slower, simpler and ostensibly safer way of life. Cows are our nearest neighbors. Country music is played on school buses. People wake early and go to bed the same. Out here, I wanted to believe in some idealistic tenets of Americana.
While my role as a professor of writing and literature is to teach, my students at the college never cease to alert me to various (ahem) other things as well. Today during class, a vibrant discussion about racial profiling and how the events of September 11, 2001 have changed our view of society and people in this country led them to enlightening me about a video on social media where a man believed to be from a Mexican village beheads his wife for cheating. Facebook won't remove the video, stating that people are "sharing the video to condemn it" and a spokesperson for Facebook said "Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they're connected to controversial events..." A BBC article offers an excellent discussion here.
The video shows a woman in a hot pink tank top and jeans on her knees outside in the dirt, hands bound behind her back, with a man - assumed to be her husband - holding her head up by her hair. Another person presumably is filming, and there are others around. She does not struggle or fight; she seems to accept her fate, only wincing at the first cuts of the knife. Within 15 seconds, she is gone. The last seconds of her life taken from her by her husband in such a gruesome way, recorded and put out on the Net for anyone with a connection to the interwebs to witness. A warning to other women, perhaps. A misogynistic hallmark that says boldly: cheat, and you will face a similar fate - a fate of humiliation, domination and control.
Social media has changed our culture (says the blogger), and not always for the better. Sure, it's made marketing to many different audiences easier, connects us to loved ones far away and is a source for information and entertainment. But at what expense?
I remember in high school, back in the days of VHS tapes, a buzz circulating about a movie called Faces of Death. We have a morbid curiosity for pain and hurt in others, and while I didn't see the movie, I know it depicted real and graphic scenes of death and dying.
In the early 1990s the Net - the "Information Superhighway" as it was called - was unheard of yet. There were computers, but not in every American household. I learned how to type on a typewriter.
Today, one can conjure up real and graphic scenes of not only death and dying, but torture, rape and mutilation in a 10 second Google search.
I am angered and disturbed about multiple elements of this particular video, which has spawned a debate (ironically, across social media and the Net) about how social media has or hasn't gone too far. Where do we draw the line? Has social media gone too far? Is freedom of speech worth exposure to such graphic forms of violence? Or, more importantly, worth potentially exposing our youth to?
And while these issues are certainly key, this video has me thinking a lot about other issues, like control. Like the insidious nature of domination and control. Like the control of men over women, or even people over other people; the control of a culture which is still so obviously rooted in archaic and barbaric means; and our own lack of self-control with regard to social media.
I am a mother to two daughters. I am a sister, and an aunt. And I shudder with rage and disgust to think that my girls could be exposed to such graphic images. Some things should be left to crime scene investigators, not exposed on social media.
Call me an idealist, but I want to insulate my daughters, sisters and nieces from a world in which such hatred for women exists.
And yet, they must learn sometime the realities, that life isn't always good.
I hope they learn that through me, with my guidance, not through their Facebook page.
