MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
advantage, then they can go o n for
decades. If war takes root in a
society s lowly, or by stealth, it can
come to seem the ordinary state
of affairs.
And if you can’t see it, if every
image seems to be a dissonant, a
one-time-only disruption of a
generic landscape, then it can go
on forever.
In 1945, the German photogra-
pher Richard Peter climbed the
tower of Dresden’s city hall and
photographed the ruins of a once
magnificent city. In the fore-
ground of this decimated land-
scape, he placed one of the tower’s
sandstone statues that had, some-
how, miraculously survived the
Allied fire bombing. It is August
Schreitmueller’s “A llegory of
Goodness,” one of 16 figures rep-
resenting the essential virtues
carved in the early 20th century,
though in a style that suggests it
had stood there for centuries. The
statue seems to look down help-
lessly, with arms outstretched, at
an endless sea of destruction be-
low.
The destruction of Dresden
would not have happened but for
an ideology of hate that demon-
ized the Other. The deaths in El
Paso would not have happened
but for an ideology of hate that
demonized the Other. It i s strange
that it would be the Hooters owl
that symbolizes the tragic absur-
dity of our society, unwilling to
confront either the motives or the
means of our now everyday mass
murder.
The bird may not be an allegory
of goodness, or mercy, love or
prudence, but owls are wise, and
this one has its eyes open.
[email protected]The gunman who took at least
20 lives in El Paso apparently
wrote a statement of his thinking
and intent, and it appears that he
went to a shopping center be-
cause it was a soft target. While
his screed is full of rage against
heartless corporations and Amer-
ican consumerism, it is, above all,
a Malthusian panic about the ar-
rival and incorporation of immi-
grants into American life. His
rage played out among the signs
of the corporate menace he
feared, in a landscape of consum-
erism. He explicitly decried the
use of too many paper towels, and
there in a shopping cart pushed
by a woman fleeing the violence,
is a plastic-wrapped, jumbo-size
pack of Bounty Essentials.
This convergence of our com-
mercial landscape with violence
is what the 21st century,
slow-motion but persistent
American war looks like. It also
looks like the underside of a
child’s school desk, people hiding
in closets and wailing into cell-
phones, SWAT teams in parking
lots, nightclubs with overturned
bar stools and tables, piles of
shoes abandoned outside a bar,
and movie theaters soaked in
gore. If we have the courage to do
what we must do and look at the
facts, we will also see that in one
essential way, the American war
looks like every other war every-
where on the planet, full of bodies
riddled with bullets, bloodied,
broken and dead.
Some wars are over in a day, or
a week, and others go o n for years.
If there are opportunists and
profiteers and cynical actors who
are willing to fuel the mayhem for
a tiny bit of personal or politicalnary, making the extraordinary
just a little bit more accessible.
In 2004, photographer Anja
Niedringhaus photographed an
American marine in Fullujah,
Iraq. Strapped to his back was a
G.I. Joe doll, with a military buzz
cut and giant, plastic forearms.
The doll, a common American
plaything, stands in for the sol-
dier himself, whose back is turned
as he works his way through a
landscape of pockmarked shops,
rubble-strewn streets and thick-
ets of electrical and telephone
wires.blood and death, but the mind
emerged with that strange, dehu-
manizing consolation: This all
happened far away.
War photographers often seek
to overcome the otherworldliness
of war by focusing on the banal
and familiar. The cigarette is a
recurring motif of war photogra-
phy not just because soldiers of-
ten smoke, but for the same rea-
son that theater directors use cig-
arettes onstage: to make things
more believable. Familiar props
such as cigarettes and water bot-
tles introduce a sense of the ordi-killing more than 60 civilians and
wounding hundreds of others, the
landscape felt first familiar — an
upscale shopping complex — and
then increasingly foreign. Moti-
vated by fear, the mind found
things to place the tragedy at a
remove: The telephones poles
were different, the stores and
shops had strange names, the cars
were smaller and splattered with
a foreign hue of mud, and vines
and greenery clung to the cinder
block walls in a way that wasn’t
quite like home.
The eyes entered a landscape ofideologies and they took place on
foreign soil. When we saw images
of the war dead from Iraq or
Afghanistan, they were surround-
ed by an architecture that seemed
odd, often low-rise buildings
made of dun-colored concrete.
When a bomb blast tore a hole in
the facade of a distant city, we
stared into the gaping vacuity at
disorderly domestic spaces that
were strange and unrecognizable,
full of clothes, appliances and
shattered dishware that wasn’t
like the stuff you find at Walmart.
Now the war has come to Wal-
mart. And Hooters. And Sam’s
Club and McDonald’s, and an un-
named but homey looking restau-
rant that has a $7.99 Lunch Spe-
cial. If this doesn’t look like war,
that’s only because we so reflex-
ively resist the idea of a war on
American soil that we refuse to
see the obvious.
Are these scattered and occa-
sional attacks? Two of them, in El
Paso and Dayton, have happened
in less than 24 hours. Are they
meaningless acts of criminal
rage? In fact, many massacres,
carried out with weapons of war,
are motivated by a well-devel-
oped if incoherent ideology, with
its own literature of interconnect-
ed manifestos, its own philosophy
of politics and history, its own
iconography of symbols, and an
emerging pantheon for its mur-
derous heroes and martyrs.
We tend to look at images of
war and disaster with some part
of the eye attuned as a tourist is
attuned to small details of place.
When terrorists took over a shop-
ping mall in Nairobi in 2013,
KENNICOTT FROM C1
In this war, a familiar commercial landscape is another backdrop for violence
harming oneself is a far more
likely outcome of mental illness.”
Can the news media really go
on a righteous crusade about
gun laws — or about identifying
white supremacy — while
maintaning their roles as truth-
tellers?
In some cases, they must do
so, said Tim O’Brien, executive
editor of Bloomberg Opinion and
a biographer of President Trump.
Hard-news reporters must
report aggressively, of course,
but the other branch of the
media — those who do analysis
or commentary — must become
more probing and sophisticated
about pattern recognition: what
often ties these kinds of events
together.
“I think the media has soft-
pedaled Trump and the GOP’s
racism,” he told me. “Trump has
opened the door to tragedies like
this and I think we can expect
more. Nobody in the GOP has
the political courage to come out
strongly against him — and, in
fact, many are happy to be
complicit.
(Investigators have examined
a manifesto posted online that
included screeds against
immigrants and believe the
Te xas shooting suspect posted
the document. Little is known
about the Dayton shooter’s
motivation at this point.)
There are, though, legitimate
concerns about reaching these
kinds of conclusions too quickly
— and there is no need to do so.
More important is diligent
follow-through in the days, week
and months after the attacks.
“We often want to leap too
quickly to meaning, to some
larger truth about events way
before we are capable of that,”
said To m Rosenstiel, executive
director of the American Press
Institute. He faults cable news,
in particular, for “enabling
partisans to try to politicize
events” before we really know
much — “a form of exploiting
news, not covering it.”
It’s tricky, no doubt: caution in
the early hours; relentless
accountability and no-
euphemism truth-telling in the
days ahead.
Can the news media manage
to become part of the solution to
this mind-numbing curse?
Albert Einstein is credited
with saying “the definition of
insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again, but
expecting different results.”
Maybe we in the news media
don’t really expect to help
achieve different results. But if
journalism is to be true to its
public-service role, we must.
And so, we must stop doing
what we’ve become tragically
accomplished at: doing the same
thing. Over and over and over
again.
[email protected]Fo r more by Margaret Sullivan visit
wapo.st/sullivan.prove.
Native Ohioan Connie Schultz,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning
columnist, told me she has been
talking with many thoughtful
journalists over the past two
days.
“The only consensus: We have
to change how we report all of
these,” s aid Schultz, who is
married to Sen. Sherrod Brown
(D-Ohio).
But what, exactly, can that
amount to?
I asked a few media observers
whose views I particularly
respect to share their thoughts.
“Sometimes, journalists don’t
just report the news: They can
help a community or a country
set an agenda,” s aid Bill
Grueskin, a former Wall Street
Journal editor who is a professor
at Columbia Journalism School.
That means “shining a light on
solutions as well as problems,
and insisting on accountability
all the way.”
Sounds right, but what does
that mean in this situation? For
Grueskin, it means a coordinated
approach among large and small
news organizations; it means
much greater accountability
from officials who are in a
position to resolve the crisis
(“including ask them on, say, a
weekly basis, what they’ve done
this week to address the issue”).
But, for Grueskin and others,
one other requirement may be
the toughest to approach: “It
also means, alas, taking sides.”
Just as there was in the 1950s
and 1960s while covering civil
rights, or today in covering the
climate crisis, there actually is a
right or wrong side on the
matter of controlling rampant
gun violence.
Journalists need to be on the
right side of that, and not afraid
to own it.
Although he was talking about
citizens, not the media, this is
the same change that Wired
magazine editor in chief
Nicholas Thompson pointed to
in a Sunday tweet: “Citizens
should demand that politicians
in America, on the right and on
the left, present a specific plan to
counter the epidemic of mass
shootings in the country.”
The news media can certainly
play a central role in making that
happen.
Part of that is giving shorter
shrift to the rote “thoughts and
prayers” reactions of politicans
and, as Schultz suggested,
bringing a skeptical eye to the
now customary, largely
Republican calls for better
mental health care.
For her, that’s painfully
personal: “Last month, after
years of struggle with depression
and mental illness, my brother
gave up. He didn’t load up and
go after innocent people. He
found a quiet spot and killed
himself. As the experts insist,
SULLIVAN FROM C1
MARGARET SULLIVAN
A formulaic approach
to shootings doesn’t cut it
JOEL ANGEL JUAREZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Law enforcement responds to a mass shooting Saturday at an El Paso shopping center, another scene of
tragedy and violence that can be jarring with ubiquitous restaurants and stores surrounding the area.BY TRAVIS M. ANDREWSIn “Fast & Furious Presents:
Hobbs & Shaw,” Dwayne John-
son’s Luke Hobbs needs to keep a
hovering helicopter from escap-
ing, so he throws a chain around it
from the back of a moving car.
While he holds said chain with
one hand, with the other he holds
on to the car driven by Jason
Statham’s Deckard Shaw. Hobbs,
of course, manages to keep the
chopper from flying off with his
sheer, brute strength.
Another scene from the movie,
which raked in $61 million do-
mestically its opening weekend,
involves a Russian scientist wield-
ing a flamethrower, while a third
includes a fight with a cyborg
named Brixton (Idris Elba) on the
side of a skyscraper.
This is a far cry from the street
races of Los Angeles that under-
ground police officer Brian
O’Conner (Paul Walker) and
family-values-espousing criminal
Dominic To retto (Vin Diesel) had
in 2001’s “The Fast and the Furi-
ous.” Yet they belong to the same
world.
How exactly did we end up
here? It’s been a strange meta-
morphosis. So strap on in, hit the
NOS and take a drive with us
through the blazing evolution of
the Fast and Furious franchise.“The Fast and the Furious”
(2001)
At this point, the first film
seems so quaint. Basically a re-
make of “Point Break,” but based
on a Vibe article about real-life
illegal street-racing gangs in Cali-
fornia, the movie seemed like
something of a one-off. It intro-
duced us to NOS, nitrous oxide
that makes the cars go fast (and
furious, we guess) that also be-
came a real-life energy drink
that’s still widely available to pur-
chase.
What really stood out, and like-
ly contributed to the franchise’seventual success, was the diversi-
ty of the movie’s cast. Paul Walker
was the only white guy in the
main billing (and a few others
filled out the crew), and the film
primarily featured black and
brown actors — an anomaly, espe-
cially at the time.
It performed well enough,
earning $40 million in its open-
ing weekend — not bad for a
middling action flick that cost
$38 million to make. But it re-
ceived mixed reviews and gener-
ally seemed like the kind of movie
that might have a nice run on TBS
before fading into obscurity. T hen
things got weird.“2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003)
The less said about the sequel,
the better. The movie wasn’t just
abjectly terrible, but it was a bi-
zarre follow-up. Much of it felt
like a remake of the first film,
without most of the main charac-
ters. Walker returned, but Diesel
was notably absent. Ty rese Gib-
son filled in as Walker’s foil, but
because so much of the first film
was built around Diesel and
Walker’s bond, it just felt lazy.
It contained hints at the fran-
chise’s future, however. The ac-
tion became more cartoonish, as
evidenced by the duo jumping a
car off a dock, flying what looks
like 50 feet through the air (at
least!) and crashing into a yacht.
At this point, it seemed like the
franchise would just follow Walk-
er’s character in a series of buddy
action movies (always with a dif-
ferent buddy). But things some-
how got weirder.“The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift” (2006)
We have no proof of this, but
there just had to be some con-
fused moviegoers who walked
into the third installment of the
series only to find that basically
no one from the earlier movies
was in it. Instead, we’re randomly
in To kyo, following a military bratwho learns about drift racing in a
movie that is suddenly recentered
on the actual racing part of the
franchise.
It would eventually become an
outlier because of its setting and
most of its cast not appearing in
the rest of the films. It was also
something of a flop — it made
$158 million worldwide, which is
nothing to sneeze at, but remains
the lowest-grossing film in the
series — but introduced director
Justin Lin and screenwriter Chris
Morgan into the Furious world.
Lin would go on to direct every
other entry (save for “Hobbs and
Shaw,” and including the upcom-
ing ninth and 10th films), while
Morgan wrote the rest of them
(including “Hobbs and Shaw,”
though no writer is currently
billed for the untitled 10th movie
in the franchise).“Fast & Furious” (2009)
Sometimes things must get
worse before they get better, as
the fourth entry proved. Sudden-
ly, we were back to Walker and
Diesel and much of the original
cast in a film set before the third
movie. Sure, why not?
“Fast & Furious” may have re-
ceived 29 percent on Rotten To -
matoes, but it was the last “rotten”
film in the series — though it
grossed $363 million worldwide.
The action was bigger than be-
fore, with people jumping be-
tween buildings and cars doing
things cars shouldn’t be able to
do. But the point of the movie was
clear: “New Model, Old Parts,”
declared the trailer. “Just like old
times,” Diesel said.
The crew was back, and things
were only going to amp up from
there.“Fast Five” (2011)
The first favorably reviewed
film in the franchise, “Fast Five,”
is when everything changed. For
one, it introduced Dwayne John-
son’s Hobbs, who provided amuch-needed, semi-comedic an-
tagonist to the gang — a role (kind
of ) played by Walker in the first
movie.
Secondly, it threw any pretext
of reality out the window and
fully embraced the ludicrousness
of it all. The movie features only
one actual race, while the rest of it
is dedicated to over-the-top ac-
tion. Vehicles drive in and out of
train cars. In the climax of the
movie, a bus-size safe being towed
behind two cars is used as a weap-
on against others during a chase,
all while ripping up the streets of
Rio de Janeiro.
The gambit worked. It grossed
$626 million worldwide, a num-
ber that would only increase with
future installments.“Fast & Furious 6” (2013),
“Furious 7” (2015), “The Fate
of the Furious” ( 20 17)
The formula of “bigger and
bigger action set pieces with cars
above all else” continued with
each successive Fast and Furious
entry. The world expanded to in-
clude actors such as Statham, Hel-
en Mirren, Kurt R ussell and Char-
lize Theron, and shrunk a bit with
Walker’s untimely death in 2013.
The action got wilder and wilder
to include cars being driven out of
planes, or between skyscrapers
(but, like, between the top floors).
The movies continued to be set in
worldwide locales such as Azer-
baijan, Abu Dhabi, To kyo, Berlin
and Athens. And they continued
to rake i n money, w ith “Furious 7”
earning $1.5 billion globally, a
record for the series.
Now, with the spinoff that just
hit theaters and two more install-
ments on the way, the Fast and
Furious series has become argu-
ably the most modern, one of the
most lucrative and certainly the
most diverse franchise we have
today — even if it seems to have
nothing to do with where it be-
gan.
[email protected]The supercharged evolution of the Fa st and Furious
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), left, and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.”