A criminal uses ropes to tie the arms of a woman to the beam of an attic. She is defenceless before him. On her chest he uses a felt tip pen to draw the image of a target. Then with a mallet and chisel, he splits her sternum to extract her heart. A scene from a TV film on the national network after dinner. Horror has come into our homes. It’s an habitual guest that we have got used to, often awaited and welcomed. How many have had a shiver of pleasure in seeing the harrowing scene of Gaddafi’s body on TV?
In the street, people look at you menacingly, smiles are ever more rare. In reply to your greeting on the stairs the tenants go straight ahead without responding. The discussions, in the office, or at table with friends and relatives on Sunday, from “taking the mickey” and using irony, they have become clones of the talk shows. Between one course and another, like rabid dogs against rabid dogs of the TV studios instigated by the presenters. It’s the new way of conversing. While you’re driving your car in the morning, at each bend in the road, at every set of traffic lights, at the tiniest upset, you let out a cathartic “fuck off”. It helps you get your blood pressure down. Breathe in, breathe out, fuck off. We are immersed in the daily Styx, the infernal river of the Fifth Circle of the Divine Comedy. Irascible and unknowing. Our spaces are reduced to square metres. Overcrowded mice in cages.
Violence is a drug. Those who produce it know that. They sell it, they tout it, and they insert it into the media. Slowly, lightly, thought, cloud, caress, kiss, happiness, meadow, tree, bicycle, plane, smile, stream, friend, gentleness with words that are no longer pronounced, out of modesty. Is this overdose of violence the cause or the effect of a sick society? Why has violence become merchandise that is planned, exported, purchased? War has become good, it’s called the exportation of democracy. Missiles that hit civilians are friendly fire. Slaughters are thus democratic and take place in a spirit of friendship. It’s striking that this epidemic of submersed frenzy is not countered by anyone. In fact, that it is fed by the blood and horror that comes out of our TV screens while our children our playing on the carpet in the living room and you are desperately looking for the remote control to turn off the foul object that is the TV.