Paparazzi

While reading Room, I wasn't particularly fascinated by the whole media aspect at first, because some of it felt so unrealistic. It was a part of the story I hadn't expected to hear about, and instances such as the women in the mall asking for Jack's autograph or the helicopter flying overhead just felt so weird and over-the-top. And I was disgusted with the interviewer who just wasn't able to read Ma at all; I thought if this is her job she should have some experience with respecting people's emotions. However, I looked into the story Mr. Mitchell brought up in class of the Cleveland kidnapping victims, and it turns out some of this paparazzi stuff isn't quite as unrealistic as I thought. Seeing the sheer number of articles and Youtube videos on the three women makes me rethink how real this topic of our fascination with such a horrible thing is. After reading Room, I didn't really want to hear all the details of the Cleveland victims, especially since I knew it wasn't a fictional case and they weren't presenting their story through the optimistic eyes of a 5-year-old. I looked into it anyways though (mostly because I needed something to write this post on, but partly because it did sound a little interesting).

       First of all, the similarities between the Cleveland victims and Room are overwhelming. The women were abused while their captor pretended everything was normal (similar to Old Nick playing the badgered husband), their only connection to the real world was through a TV, and one of the women had a child and created a little schoolhouse for her within their room. There were also some huge differences, like the fact that they were chained up almost all the time, and that there were three women who had a very different relationship than we see from Ma and Jack. The media coverage of the kidnapping is pretty extensive and also very similar to that of Ma and Jack's escape, with several videos of their homecoming and interviews with the police officers. It's been a couple years since their escape, so there are some pretty nice interviews out there where the interviewer is actually respectful and asks them about their future plans and what they do to keep moving forward, and there's also some interviewers that keep bringing up the rape and the chains. I feel like once that sort of abuse has been reported and dealt with in court you can stop bringing it up a year later when they're trying to move on, but it seems like the public is really fixated on the torturous element which is pretty sickening. Some of the worst parts of the media coverage of this include a television movie, where there are actually people cast as the three women. It came out a few days ago and I just don't understand why someone would make this into a movie. I even found an article about the movie that says: "These scenes of violence are depicted because what we’re watching is based on true events, but their purpose overall is to be taboo, to viscerally scare the audience even further. It’s torture porn—but this isn’t Saw, because these things actually happened." ...Like what? I can understand media coverage of this story because it's remarkable to hear how these women survived such a situation and were able to keep hope and want to help others afterwards, but apparently this movie focuses much more on the torture during those 10 years instead of the recovery afterwards and I just can't imagine why anyone would want to watch that, knowing that it actually happened. 

Another sickening article I found is all about why only two of the women wrote a memoir together, and the third published a book on her own. It talks about the captor trying to turn the women against each other and about the tension with one of them. Apparently there was a bigger age difference in one of the victims, who was also the captor's least favorite and most abused. The commenters keep trying to say which one was the real hero and how could the women not be bonded for life because of this and did the two women shut the 3rd out or why did the 3rd write a book by herself instead of with the others? Why does the public care about their relationship-- doesn't it make sense that these women might not want to see each other for a while afterwards? They aren't like Ma and Jack who have only each other and know nothing else. They all had previous lives, and while the families of two of the women never gave up hope (they even watched their parents searching for them on TV), the family of the third thought she ran away and they eventually moved away. Their lives are going to be terrible for a while and people need to back off.

       I don't really know what I'm trying to say about this media stuff except that because of reading Room, I'm more aware of  how strange it is that we have such an obsession with crime dramas and victims of abuse. While I think it's important for people to know that this sort of thing happens, and I think it's amazing that these women have been able to use writing as a way to recover from and come to terms with their experience, it's scary to think of how the line blurs from news report to entertainment. I felt really uncomfortable watching Youtube videos of the women telling their stories, because I could just hear Ma's voice from Room, wanting to yell at the interviewer and going into a depressive state afterwards, and I just wish people could have more compassion for a person's sense of privacy. As for the reader's position in reading a book like Room, I'm also not really sure-- because I did enjoy the book even though it was incredibly dark. I enjoyed it mostly though because of Jack's narration and how interesting it was to grasp his concept of the world and watch his world view and his language change, definitely not because of their horrible situation. Yet it is the horrible situation of Room that allows Jack to be a satisfying heroic character. I would say it's okay to like the book because it's fictional, but that excuse is pretty much invalid when such a similar story did occur in Cleveland. I don't have any answers only to point out that Emma Donoghue made a really interesting and gutsy choice by including the press coverage and its psychological effects in Room, and I'd be interested in what other people think of this subject.