After much resistance, I finally saw the video Elliot Rodger made. I wasn’t interested in giving him any more “eyeballs” to contribute making his manifesto a viral hit, and I was also terrified. The idea of watching him felt creepy. I was afraid to get inside the head of a killer.
As I watched the video, I couldn’t help but notice the composition. Elliot had set up the shot so the sunset was cascading a luminous glow on his face, as if he was taking advantage of the “twilight hour” from a filming perspective – a strange mix of vanity and appreciation for natural light. Then there was his maniacal laugh that seemed to be inserted more for affect, rather than an authentic impulse. Directors cue – play part of evil villain here, accent with demented chuckle, and cut. Seems pretty obvious his daddy’s work had a profound influence on Elliot’s identity.
So here was the son of a famous Hollywood player, sitting in his BMW, and hating the world for his loneliness. He had a charmed life, loving parents, an idyllic upbringing in the English country-side picking berries with his Grandma, yet was drowning in self pity. I didn’t get it. My reaction was, “you have money, a successful dad, a nice car, you are not ugly…. what is the issue?” Seems like the perfect recipe for Elliot to have the perfect life. I was just as surprised as Elliot that at 22, he was still a virgin.
Even though it is absurd for Elliot to believe women should like him just solely because he has a nice car and money, I also had the same assumption that he should be able to get girls. As a feminist I don’t want to admit this, but there are plenty of women who sleep with men they think are powerful/rich/have a famous daddy. Elliot must have been truly alienating and energetically offensive to eliminate all chances for sex in this superficial world that worships money like a god. If wrinkled up racially-challenged Donald Sterling could pull women, why couldn’t this kid?
Everything Elliot had is everything that culture glorifies. Many boys in a comparable situation to Elliot probably do have it easy, which is EXACTLY why the law enforcement ignored all the warning signs. How could this fortunate kid be a menace to society when his silver spoon is dripping with gold? Elliot had 3 instances of police contact in the past year, and every time he persuaded them that they had nothing to be concerned about. According to the deputy officer “He was able to make a very convincing story that there was no problem, and he wasn’t going to hurt himself of anyone else… and he just didn’t meet the criteria for any further intervention at that point.”
Elliot was never deemed a threat because he was a privileged kid. But what if he was poor and white? Or poor and black? Would the police have let that person slip through the cracks? Elliot is quoted to have said, “If they (the cops) had demanded to search my room, that would have ended everything.” The police never even searched Elliot’s room despite the concerns of his own parents, because he didn’t meet the criteria. Yet every day cops search black people at random on the streets of New York because they do meet the criteria of having too much melanin?
The police weren’t the only ones who ignored the signs. There is a lot of speculation Elliot was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness, but it seems like the reason he was undiagnosed is the same as to why the cops never followed through with their investigation. Our perception of the rich white man is totally clouded by this twisted hero-worshipping where he is the top of the food chain of humanity. We don’t have stereotypes of the threatening white man in a suit. We aren’t warned to cross the street if you saw him walking towards you. But what makes a young black man in a hoodie any more suspicious?
Race plays a huge part in who we typecast as a criminal, yet the truth is, anyone has the potential to be violent. The system itself sets up poor brown people as guilty until proven innocent, where rich white men are innocent until they blatantly murder a bunch of people. There is a misguided faith society has in rich white men because they these are the same men who hold dominion over our world. They own our media, control our banks, run our companies, and rule our country. They are the archetypes of those with power, so we trust them while ignoring the irony that they are also the ones causing the vast devastation to our planet with their endless pursuit of greed. Society may not fear the white man in a suit like it does the black gang member, but it should.
When tragedy happens, we always want to know why. Although Elliot describes his motives and anger towards women in his manifesto, deconstructing the logic of a madman will never result in obvious conclusions. Misogyny was a theme in Elliot’s world, but so was his desire to be loved by women. It seems to me Elliot had equal contempt for the men he envied and whose lives he wish he could experience. Despite having every artificial advantage, he still drove people away. Elliot may have wanted to understand himself as a woman-hater because that felt more powerful than seeing himself as a woman-lover who kept getting rejected.
Although I welcome any discussion around gender inequality and violence towards women, I think this story has just as much to do with race and class. It was easy for Elliot to get guns, fool cops, and avoid being institutionalized because of the public perception that he wasn’t a threat. Our culture glorifies wealth, yet it is the entitled mentality of privilege that is much more dangerous than the desperation of poverty.
