tragedy and the virtual (updated)

NBC revealed today that it received a number of photographs and quicktime videos in the mail which had been sent to them by the shooter at Virginia Tech (between the two shootings) - it described these materials as a "Multimedia Manifesto," a term which the New York Times quickly adopted for its latest headline. From the New York times blog:

An Image’s Ties to a Dark Movie | 8:07 PM ET

A self-shot photo of Mr. Cho, above, and a still from the Web site of the movie ‘Oldboy.’ (Photos: NBC News, top; Tartan Films)

The inspiration for perhaps the most inexplicable image in the set that Cho Seung-Hui mailed to NBC news on Monday may be a movie from South Korea that won the Gran Prix prize at Cannes Film Festival in 2004.

The poses in the two images are nearly very similar, and the plot of the movie, Oldboy, seems dark enough to merit at least some further study. Following is The Times’s plot summary:

The film centers on a seemingly ordinary businessman, Dae-su (the terrific Choi Min-sik), who, after being mysteriously imprisoned, goes on an extensive, exhausting rampage, seeking answers and all manner of bloody revenge.

It was the hope of a Virginia Tech professor, Paul Harrill, that passing on this observation would shed some light on what led Mr. Cho to kill 32 on Monday before turning the gun on himself.

Of course, this observation may indeed serve to revive the old controversy concerning the influence of media violence (or any representation of unethical behavior) on impressionable spectators. Perhaps it won't be mentioned, however, in those newsworthy debates that Cho Seung-Hui not only reproduced the simulated violence of Old Boy in a physical manner, but also reproduced it virtually by engendering the interminable media coverage surrounding his rampage - which is presently subsuming any and all type of "eye-witness" account (video) of the actual events or the history of the killer's unstable psyche (each witness a "newly christened I-reporter": see below). It seems that this was Cho's aim in sending the "multimedia manifesto" not to the administrative offices at Virginia Tech, but instead to Rockefeller Plaza.
There was a Bank of America video advertisement that played before the video confession that I saw today on the NBC website. It told me that the only "No" you will hear at Bank of America will come before the words payments, fees, and charges. Cho Seung-Hui went on to tell me how he had been denied any options other than the rampage ("I" had denied him, or "we," or NBC, or his peers at Virginia Tech, or the viewers of his video, depending on one's interpretation of his use of the word "you").

also today: At least 164 people are killed when four large bombs explode in mostly Shiite locations of Baghdad.

Also from the new york times running massacre/tragedy blog:

The Citizen Videographer | 5:44 PM ET Jamal Albarghouti, a graduate student in civil engineering at Virginia Tech and newly christened I-reporter at CNN, is telling the network how he got the most widely-distributed footage of the carnage.

Initially, he felt “really safe,” but then realized that he was in a “serious situation” after a loud boom was followed by a cop screaming at him. Watch the video to see for yourself.

A Nokia N70, a cellphone that costs $427 on Amazon, was his tool of choice.

I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions about that post. Do watch the video (it is completely uninformative, of course). Also, I think these other posts are quite interesting, in regards to how the internet is now seen as a site of mourning:


Linking Victims With Myspace | 10:38 AM ET

MyDeathSpace.com, a site that specializes in “respects and tributes to the recently deceased MySpace.com” members, links to the profiles of some of the victims, and posts their profile photos. Of the ones they display, two are not on the campus newspaper’s list at this time: Mary Read and Brian Bluhm.

Hokie Nation Unites | 10:05 AM ET

Adeel Khan, president of Virginia Tech’s student union, just predicted on CNN that 40,000 people would attend a candlelight vigil on campus tonight. He also described how student leaders began organizing for the healing process on the Web minutes after the horrifying news emerged on Monday afternoon.

Several parts of a growing online response are outlined on MTV’s Web site, and the Washington Post gathered excerpts from Facebook pages. Many Facebookers are replacing their profile photos with a a symbol of mourning and solidarity, left.