Today while I was on the elliptical machine at the gym, I saw for the first time the viral video of junior high kids mocking a bus monitor that has made it into the news recently. First off, it is sad to see that kind of cruelty displayed by children, especially to a nice, old lady like that. It is a sad example of youth's insolence, ignorance, and pettiness.
The main thrust of the boys' comments made fun of the woman's weight, looks, and seeming poverty. I looked for a transcript of the video and was unable to find one. This kind of immature, narrow-minded behavior is nothing new for junior high kids, but what is interesting is the popularity of the video and the community response to its existence. For a time on the bus, the monitor seemed surrounded by kids that were taunting her. She was an object of ridicule and seemed to passively accept and endure what the kid were throwing at her. Granted, there was not much she could do to MAKE them stop, but she could have moved or enlisted the bus driver's help. Her hands were largely tied by the strict rules governing how much school authorities are allowed to discipline unruly children.
The boys' crime was filmed for us to see, but in their minds the woman had committed a crime, of not fitting their ideal notion of beauty, slenderness, or even respectable age. In a sense, the boys are representatives of a culture which does prize youth, slenderness, and a narrow definition of beauty. And they were publicly condemning the guilty party, in their minds. The boys' actions were a kind of public punishment or emotional torture for the crime of being old, overweight, and poor. In the chapter "The Spectacle of the Scaffold" in his _Discipline and Punish_ Foucault writes that "public torture . . . must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as its triumph. The very excess of the violence employed is one of the elements of its glory" (34). The boys went on for ten minutes; it was not just a comment or two that was quickly let go by the tormentors. They also captured their punishment on video and put it on facebook. They made fun of the bus monitor in public on the bus, then showed their handiwork to their online community. (I'm not sure how it got on youtube; I think a facebook friend did it to show how horrible the boys were). The video shows the bus monitor sitting on a bus seat by herself, and one can hear the voices of several boys in seats surrounding her. However, with the exception of one boy who pops on the screen for just a second, we don't see the punishers, only the punished. What many in society see as the real crime is only heard on the video, not seen. For the tormentors, her "body, displayed, exhibited in procession, tortured, serve[s] as the public support of a procedure that had hitherto remained in the shade; in [her], on [her], the sentence had to be legible for all" (Foucault 43). I'm sure those boys had conferred several times to poke fun and discuss what they saw as deficient in the woman. I'm also sure that many viewers, while maybe not willing to participate in the public, punishing act, felt the same way those boys did toward the woman.
However, ultimately, the spectacle was reversed and now the boys are on display for culture to see. We judge their impertinent, hurtful actions and rush to help a victim who did not deserve the punishment she received. It is interesting that in way, the film which recorded such cruel acts, made a perfect video that people would love to hate, a video that "went viral" and was viewed by millions, and a video that ultimately made entertainment for our culture. News stations still consider it newsworthy. Now, people have raised money to help this woman, not only go on a vacation as was the original intent, but now to maybe retire or start a foundation. Foucault does mention that if the public torture and punishment is too harsh, then the spectators may rebel against those inflicting the penalty for the crime. In a sense, this is maybe what happened. Clearly, the boys' sentiments do represent a large portion of American middle class culture: a distaste for the poor and a narrow definition of beauty that can be harshly exclusive. However , they were so harsh in their public punishment of this woman, that bloggers and news agencies pounced on them to show how they were too harsh, too disrespectful, and too hurtful.
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