Through the lens of

Elisabeth Anker and

Linda Williams

MELODRAMATIC MEDIA

“Two examples of media stories that are completely unrelated to 9/11 or

similar themes that seem to you to confirm Anker’s views”

PART I

Elisabeth Anker in her writing Villains, Victims

and Heroes: Melodrama, Media, and September 11

summarizes the way that, essentially, America

became ‘Merica.

Through persuasive and melodramatic rhetoric

and imagery, the United States assumed a new

identity, unified under the idea that the country

itself represented values like freedom and

democracy. The 9/11 attack aimed at these

values, and therefore American citizens must

protect this truth at all costs through retaliation.

ANKER AND 9/11

Scenes like this were flashed repeatedly to the nation.

President Bush in his first address claimed that “Freedom itself was attacked this morning…”

Anker concluded that “Melodrama, then, is

a discursive practice that makes truth and justice legible by demarcating a clear

boundary between right and wrong.”

The truth is, 9/11 was a time of confusion that was not discussed as a result of the melodramatic rhetoric and images fed to the American public following the attack. America was portrayed as a victim hero, charged with the natural duty of fighting the “evil-doers.” The main problem that arose was total justification for state and federal action regarding the attack, and even more detrimental an overall state of ignorance on the matter.

ANKER: MELODRAMA ABUSED

In May, 2014, police officer Brandon Mendoza was killed in a head-on collision.

Driving the car was Raul Silva-Corona, who upon autopsy showed a BAC of 0.24, three times above the legal limit.

Silva-Corona was an illegal immigrant. The mother of sgt. Mendoza, Mary Ann Mendoza, has spoken out publicly against illegal immigration as a result, even writing a letter to President Obama regarding the issue.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OUT OF

CONTEXT: THE STORY OF SGT.

BRANDON MENDOZA

As a tax paying, law abiding citizen of the United States, I WANT my voice heard on this issue. My son, Sergeant Brandon Mend oza, an officer who was with the City of Mesa, Arizona police department, was killed in a tragic head on collision on May 12, 2014 by a wrong way driver on our freeways. This man happened to be an illegal immigrant, was in this country illegally, convicted of previous crimes, no Social Security number, no valid driver's

license BUT he had purchased a vehicle and registered it to drive in Maricopa County Arizona.

I had my son's life STOLEN from me by a man who didn't value his life, was 3X the legal limit drunk, was high on Meth, drove for over 35 miles THE WRONG WAY on 4 different freeways and had NO BUSINESS BEING IN THIS COUNTRY!!!

The Federal Government knew he, Raul Silva Corona , was an illegal immigrant when he was convicted on crimes in 1994 in Color ado. The prosecutors were "lenient" on him and several charges were dismissed. When he was convicted of these crimes and 1994 and the government k new he was in the

country illegally, why wasn't he deported? Why are any of these illegal criminals in this country ??

I am furious that the Federal Government allowed this criminal to stay in this country and KILL my son! I have attached sever al articles for you to PERSONALLY read about my son. He was an Icon with the City of Mesa Police Department. He was instrumental in making life bett er for people of

all walks of life in the park project he took on. He was humble, selfless, worked many hours off the clock helping disadvanta ged children and often used his own money to do things for the community, including "adopting" children at Christmas to provide them with gifts….out of his own money!!

I have attached numerous articles for you to read about my son. This was not a life that should have been taken so early. The good he was doing in our community is remarkable, the difference he made in people's lives is amazing and the comfort he brought people in friendship was unmeasurable.

All you have to do is Google " Sgt/Officer Brandon Mendoza" and you will have plenty of reading material about my wonderful son who had just passed his Sergeant's exam to become a Sgt. The Chief of Police posthumously promoted him during the week of his funeral but that highlight of his life was stolen from him!!! He was officer of the year last year. Officer of the quarter for the first quarter of 2014. He wa s only 32 years old and had

done more in his life than most of us have done in a lifetime!

I am going to have my voice heard and I want to you to know what my personal feeling is on whether CRIMINAL ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT S should be allowed in this country. I have been DIRECTLY affected by this. I am sure if your life had been affected like mine has bee n, you would have a

different view of this situation. I have lived in Arizona most of my life. My son, Brandon Mendoza, was half Hispanic. It's n ot the color of skin that my son or I see, it's the person and how they conduct their lives. If you can't enter this country legally then you shouldn't be here. If you commit crimes,

you should pay the time any of us as US Citizens would have to serve. Letting these illegal criminals out of our jails before their time is served and turning them loose on the streets to commit further crimes and KILL our loved ones is NOT ACCEPTABLE TO ME!! AND it shouldn't be acceptable to any US Citizen. Mr. President, you don't have the right to make this decision yourself......I have a say, even if it is fo r one moment. Maybe that one moment will light a spark with another citizen who can then light a candle, who can then light a bonfire, who can then light a city up and so on. My

light has just been lit and I am not going to back down when so many of these illegal immigrants have more rights than we do. My son's death will not be ignored as another statistic.

I want laws to change that would not allow illegal immigrants to purchase vehicles in our country and register them to drive them in our states WITHOUT having driver's licenses to drive them legally. How is this happening??? I want laws changed that will force the remo val of illegal

immigrants who break our laws. This man, this repeated law breaker, was allowed to be released and he continued breaking the laws in our country until what???? UNTIL HE WAS STOPPED BY MY SON IN A HEAD ON COLLISION THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED!!!! HE KILLED AN OFFICER OF THE LAW AS HIS LAST ACT!!! When are you going to see the flip side to this issue? When will you realize the hur t and pain and destruction these illegal immigrants who break the law will continue to cause???? Until you live in a state that deals with t his on a daily basis, you will

not understand it.

I want answers that make sense. I want answers from you personally as to why this criminal was allowed to stay in our country until he took my son's life.

Sincerely,

Mary Ann Mendoza

HER LETTER:

In her letter, Mendora shows herself and her son as a victim of the “criminal immigrants” illegally residing in the United States. Rhetoric like improper use of capitalization and punctuation, and addressing her letter as a metaphorical spark, a moment that “will light a spark with another citizen who can then light a candle, who can then light a bonfire, who can then light a city up and so on,” are all melodramatic tools to try to polarize the issue and induce sympathy from others. Like other melodramatic instances like this, it is a call to action.

The problem with this use of melodrama, as Anker would agree, is the fact that Mrs. Mendoza is simplifying the subject too much, turning a complicated topic about drunk-driving, the legal system, unfortunate coincidence, the complexities involved with alcoholism and alcoholics in general, and illegal immigration into a campaign to demonize illegal immigration. The fact that she writes a letter to president Obama is dramatic within itself and compounds her own slightly hysteric, albeit natural, response.

The truth is there are so many other factors to consider in this case, which Mendoza is subtly regarding and looking past to try to fulfil an alternate agenda, preying on the sympathies of others through her rhetoric, a similar theme shown in Anker’s claim to misused melodrama regarding 9/11.

HOW THIS RELATES TO ANKER

KONY 2012 was an advertisement made

by Invisible Children, Inc. to try to combat

the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), of

which Joseph Kony was the leader.

The Lord’s Resistance Army has been

active from 1987 till the present. Invisible

Children, Inc. was started in 2004 to

combat the use of children in what became

a quasi-Christian cult army.

MELODRAMA IN KONY 2012

In this real life situation, the children being used by the LRA are clearly the victims. As

children, they are pure and innocent, whereas Kony’s abuse of them labels him as the

antichrist. As is customary in melodramatic writing, a person’s actions define them, and

his actions are of the most heinous kind.

On the Invisible Children website tab for Kony 2012, one can see the results of the

campaign. It raised over 16 million dollars in support for Invisible Children, Inc., and

outlines its use of these funds, claiming an “epic victory toward impacting the lives of

those affected by the LRA conflict.” The problem with this campaign, and similar ones of

the day, as Anker might agree, would be that it falls under the common misconception

that throwing money at a social cause like this can actually solve the root issue. One of

the goals of the campaign was to make Kony “a household name,” and it was fairly

successful in this attempt, going viral over Facebook and the video itself getting over 100

million views in less than a week. In reality, the campaign was constructed such that

people had no choice but to take the side of Invisible Children without even watching the

video, but knowing just a few key words about the campaign, being “Kony,” “child

abuse/child soldiers,” “has to stop.” I just summarized the facts that most people heard

and took away from the entire campaign.

HOW THIS RELATES TO ANKER

Two years later, however, no one talks about Kony anymore and probably know next

to nothing about the real results, being that Kony was never brought to justice and the

LRA is still in operation. Sure, strides were made to help make this real issue more

aware, and a beneficial program called the Early Warning Network came out of the

campaign. However, an organization like this can fundamentally only do so much to

tackle any international problem. The Early Warning Network put radios in remote

villages in the Congo and the Central African Republic so that these villages can

voluntarily report LRA activity with other villages. But what are they supposed to do to

actually combat this activity, given they actually report the incidences? They are still

helpless, just helplessly connected. The Kony campaign, with all its hype, resulted in

prevention methods as a solution to a problem that needs more to culminate a

solution. There is nothing wrong with installing methods like this, but the fallacy ends

up being that all the people who heard about the campaign and know the name Kony

think that the problem has been solved completely and appropriately and will most

likely never do anything for it again, either from this misconception or the reality that

another campaign will be met with surprise and cynicism to the fact that the problem

was never really solved.

CONT.

“Two stories that Williams helps you to analyze”

PART II

Rodney King pol ice br uta l i ty v ideo

O.J. S impson and The Glove

WILLIAMS: MELODRAMA AND

THE RACE CARD

Linda Williams observes the benefits to and consequences of not using the

race card. It is important to note however that both of these cases were in the

90s, the O.J. Simpson case just celebrating its 20-year anniversary this summer.

In both cases, the verdict that was given was unjust, a common theme in the

melodrama that Williams analyzes. The disparity lays in how Simpson, who

was actually guilty, used the race card and was acquitted, while Rodney King’s

offenders were guilty and were acquitted because of King’s attorney’s lack of

using the race card. The question: should it be used? Is it unfair at times or

necessary? Is the race card just or unjust, or can it even be simplified to that

extent? Let’s look at some similar cases to try and make a determination.

THE “RACE CARD”

Early on New Year’s Day, 2009, Oscar Grant, black, was shot in the back by police officer Johannes Mehserleoutside the “Bay Area Rapid Transport” train in San Francisco.

Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, a two-year sentence that lasted only 220 days.

Two years later, the movie Fruitvale Station was released based on the events.

BART POLICE SHOOTING:

OSCAR GRANT

The official statement of the investigation was that there was no “nexus to race that provoked this to happen.” There are many disturbing facts surrounding the incident: police officers at the scene tried to confiscate the cell phones of those that taped the incident; Grant was heard, by numerous witnesses, telling his girlfriend over the phone right before the shooting that “they’re beating us up for no reason, I’ll call you back,” a clear fallacy to the claim that he resisted arrest; Mehserle’s famous defense lawyer Michael Rains, who previously defended an Oakland Raider football player, was paid for by a statewide fund for police; Rains telling Mehserle to “save those f***ing tears” when he cried on stand at what Rains apparently thought was an inopportune time to express emotion; and finally, not one African-American was present on the jury.

The state representative for the NAACP declared that there “was no doubt that the shooting was criminal.”

Although he was convicted, the controversy, outright scandalous nature of, and pervasive covering-up of made this case national news.

SOME DISTURBING FACTS

The problem with this situation, as Williams might not have assumed, is that

the race card can only work to a certain extent. The District Attorney in the

case had no chance because in real life melodrama, aka the American court

system, sometimes the victim hero is not brought to real justice. The system

itself in this case was too corrupt, not able to be bested by a “superhero”

because in reality, superheroes do not exist. Therefore I would like to claim

that the race card, when it has to be used, only aids the case when the person

the card is representing already has something more powerful to their name,

like in O.J. Simpson’s case the “superstar” card. The defendant, officer

Mehserle, was able to use his “boys in blue” card, the ultimate card in the

courts, to trump the race card in this case, the law itself pulling strings for one

of its own, just like in the Rodney King case.

WHEN THE RACE CARD FAILS

You probably already know about this one.

On February 26, 2012, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, unarmed, was shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman.

George Zimmerman was acquitted.

“If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon” – President Obama

TRAYVON MARTIN

The only piece of substantial evidence in this case was a 9/11 call just before the shooting, where a voice is heard begging for help. To whose voice it was is still inconclusive, and is the crux of the ambiguity of this story. With only one voice to be heard, Trayvon Martin did not get the justice he deserved.

The clear fallacy in Zimmerman’s story is surrounded by a few key facts. For one, he was not even on duty that night, just riding in his car to the store, and when he communicated via radio that Martin was running away, they told him to not pursue Martin and did anyways, armed. Zimmerman however claims that he had no intentions of a confrontation. The shear ridiculousness of the fact that an unarmed, African-American kid was shot and murdered, that for some reason none of the partial witness testimony agreed, and that at the end of the day Trayvon Martin was killed for no reason, makes this case a doozy. It doesn’t help that Zimmerman was in school in the hopes of becoming a judge, took the law into his own hands, and exudes typical “God-complex” narcissism.

My favorite response, pictured on the previous slide, is of a statement that the University of Maryland satirically sent to their entire listserv, saying that “this year, we learned that it is legal to hunt down and kill American children in Florida.”

THIS ONE’S A LITTLE SLOPPY.

Ironically, with so much disputable evidence, there became two distinct support groups, either for Zimmerman or Martin. The race card was played in this scene, and as a result, most people chose to side with Martin because it seemed like the right thing (not racist) thing to do, as well as the fact that Zimmerman’s story changed frequently and his behavior that night did not match up with his testimony. Does Zimmerman seem guilty, everything considered? Absolutely. Is he beyond a reasonable doubt? Not even close. The reason this became such a hot issue was that Trayvon Martin was a clean-cut, innocent looking, unarmed African American who represented the stereotypical black person that race-equality-progressive minds are trying to label as the new stereotype in hopes that it erases the old stereotypical “thug” look. In essence, to not support Trayvon Martin, right or wrong, would be to support racist ideas that society is trying to squash out. The victim hero represented in this case then is this accepted stereotype, the villain being “good-ol” Southern racism (to be clear I am not racist, I write that last little bit satirically, being born and raised in the Bible-Belt)… The Zimmerman case deserved the objective trial that it got, and despite popular belief, as the facts stand, there is no clear evidence as to whether or not Zimmerman maliciously committed this crime. Just like real research, stay objective my friends and look at the facts with an open mind.

RACE-A POLARIZING ISSUE

“Two stories or issues where you think a melodramatic approach to journalism

might be justified (again, avoiding 9/11 related themes)”

PART III

On the night of July 5, 2011, outside the Slidebar (a bar) in Fullerton, CA, Mr. Kelly Thomas, a local schizophrenic homeless man, was beaten nearly to death by three police officers.

He was comatose upon being admitted to the hospital and was taken off of life-support six days later.

All three officers were acquitted.

Thomas’s father, a former police officer, has filed a lawsuit with unspecified damages, a symbolic gesture to recognize the humanity of his son.

MR. KELLY THOMAS

This was a booking photo from one of the 92 encounters the “fixtured” homeless Thomas had, released by the Fullerton Police Department following the incident.

This is a blatant attack on the character of Mr. Kelly Thomas. Obviously they declined to release his hospital photos because that would be wrong in this outright “CYOA” strategy (Feel free to look up the photos, but I chose not to post because they are that graphic).

Following the officers’ acquittal in January 2014, Internet Activist group “Anonymous” released all of the officers’ home addresses, as well as the identity of all of the jurors. They also hacked and took down multiple FPD websites and databases in retaliation.

SMH.

Usually I would argue that life is not as simple as melodrama makes it, but in

this case I would be dead wrong. Mr. Kelly Thomas was beaten to death by

three narcissistic officers who do mock the blue uniform they put on everyday

(yes they are still officers of the law, just not in Fullerton due to necessary

relocation). The true victim in this case is what Thomas represents, which is a

mentally ill man who not only lost his sanity but his recognition of civil rights,

and by extension his entire humanity. This scenario can be likened to Michael

Myers brutally killing his own pets in Rob Zombie’s remake of the classic

horror film Halloween. The hero is people like Thomas’s father who continues

to fight for recognition of those with a mental illness, trying to change the

stigma first through dialogue and second through real social change.

MELODRAMA: A NECESSITY

According to the legend, Ken McElroy,

local thug to the small town of

Skidmore, Missouri, was shot to death

in broad daylight on July 10, 1981.

It is estimated that there were between

30-40 witnesses and atleast two

gunman.

An ambulance was never called.

The DA declined to press any charges,

and a Federal investigation went cold.

To this day, no one has been convicted

of the crime, and the town remains

silent.

KEN MCELROY

Rumor has it that the townspeople were already having a town hall meeting about McElroy, seriously contemplating forming a Neighborhood Watch Program.

Upon learning that McElroy was back in town the sheriff strongly urged that the townspeople seriously consider forming the watch, and then loudly announced that he was leaving town for a few hours for official police business.

Long-story short, the towns people never made a Neighborhood Watch Program.

YES, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

There’s no question as to whether or not Ken McElroy was a terrible guy (21 indictments, one conviction that was thrown out due to a technicality), plaguing the poor town of Skidmore with assault, child molestation (of whom he got pregnant and forced to live with him), statutory rape, arson, hog and cattle theft (a very serious thing down here), attempted murder of a 70-year-old store clerk, and various other forms of burglary. No doubt about it, the guy was a menace. To state clearly, vigilante justice is a serious crime, and those taking the law into their own hands should be punished. Vigilante justice is the epitaph of narcissistic, apathetic hypocrites who lack any imagination or faith in the system. All of the people involved in this murder, including the witnesses, should have been punished. But to use melodramatic rhetoric, one could say that in this instance, real justice was served and the “culprits” did not get away with anything because morally they were in the right. That same person could also argue that they would be sinning if they hadn’t killed the man.

THE DRAGON SLAYED?

So I guess this is where society’s headed.

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CONCERNS?

THEY

HAVE CROSSED

THE RIVER

AND REST

UNDER THE SHADE

OF THE

TREES.

END.