Elizabeth Smart was wandering just miles from her home the entire time Amber Alert sirens were spicing up ratings for news channels and pumping adrenaline into the veins of sluggish Midwesterners. JonBenet who?
The latest fable gone awry became the disappearance of a young, blonde, blue-eyed ‘angel,’ who played the harp and was reared in a devout home in an upper- middle class neighborhood in Salt Lake City, Utah. When the 15-year-old was declared missing, neighborhood watch groups buckled their belts and got to work, flashlights in hand. Public sympathy poured into the Smart home in the form of letters and calls. Everyone gasped and whined about the kidnapping from their comfortable couches, teary-eyed as Smart family videos played excessively on news stations. Men in the neighborhood began to feel a bit more important, realizing that the missing was one of their own; a mini surge of civic patriotism got the town buzzing. Meanwhile the local looney, who identifies himself as a prophet named Emmanuel and at times calls himself ‘God,’ has recently labored at the Smart home in exchange for charity and now has a new member in his cult, accompanying him around town garbed in a white sheet; yet no one questions who it could be.
When I think of this town on alert, I picture a bunch of chickens running around with their heads cut off and a crowd of housewives and couch potatoes entranced by television sets tuned into the ‘latest developments,’ though there never really were any substantial ones. How could they not have discovered her?
Yet the plot thickens, for underlying the media circus and local oblivion there lays a battle of piety. Brian David Mitchell, Smart’s kidnapper and a mentally ill religious cult figure, created his own homicidal, hallucinogenic form of religion and recruited followers to carry out acts of pure evil vs. the devoted, devout Smart father, who is the member of an established and recognized Christian community and church.
Immediately Apocalypse Now, a movie based on the famous book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, comes to my mind. Conrad’s story is about an obedient soldier sent on a voyage to kill a military man, Kurtz, who has recognized the hypocrisies of the civilized world and decides to live among and rule ‘savages’ rather than return to civilization. In the film, Kurtz is treated like a god by native peoples, who emulate ancient civilizations and worship idols, fight with spears, live off of the land and the like. Kurtz assumes the role of ruler, not leader, brainwashing his followers to affirm his vision of the destruction of the world. They await the end of the world and eagerly try to speed its coming through prayer, signs and ritual dances.
Kurtz’s heart of darkness is analogous to Mitchell’s, as the cult leader is suspected of having brainwashed Smart into adjusting to her captivity, thereby planting the seeds for her to have serious mental problems in the future. Her horrific experiences may never be known, and their effects on her probably never will be fully understood.
Yet more eerie is the comparison between Mitchell, Kurtz, the devout father and the riddled public. The battle of the civilized being Mr. Smart, his family and the oblivious members of the town and the uncivilized being Mitchell, the mentally unsound, evil religious fanatic. Neither seems to have triumphed in this case,because practicality was tossed out the window. The father conducted news conferences and admitted to praying incessantly for his daughter’s safe return, the public indulged in the sensationalism and theatrics of it all and directly under everyone’s noses, Mitchell mentally and probably physically tortured a young innocent girl. So as Conrad may ask, which operates better: civilized or uncivilized?
Everyone was on a mission post-kidnap, but no one bothered to venture outside prior to it; had they, people would have discovered a man tortured by the demons of his mind, or more practically, a man who was mentally ill and thereby dangerous to society and himself. There in the preoccupied ‘civilized’ town was a man in desperate need of help, a man who could not lead and could not follow in society. He had no place, and so he chose to create a world where he could rule and drag an innocent child into it.
As the hysteria in Salt Lake City simmers down and global hysteria elevates pending a potential war in Iraq, millions of mentally ill travel the streets, and millions of abducted children, most of whom are now tragically dead, suffer the consequences of a nation that has built a legacy on dealing with immediate threats to civilization yet neglecting to recognize precursors to problems. Domestically and internationally America seems to be good at conquering or putting out the fire but not good at aiding or preventing it from starting. Yet like Salt Lake City’s recent bout with terror and Sept. 11, our problems seem to frequently come from outside of the fold. If we keep arrogantly ignoring the existence of the troubled and ‘uncivilized,’ how will we ever be safe?
The horror, the horror.
[ Amy Horowitz, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. ]
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