"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche*
This is possibly the most overused quote from Friederich Nietzsche, German Philosopher Extraordinaire. There's no debating the latent awesomeness of debating the darker side of the human condition (sic), even more so to think and philosophize about it. But it's not that deep and complex, it's only two lines and Nietzsche wrote much deeper stuff. Just browse thinkexist.com and see for yourself. The abyss part is usually what people debate over. In Montreal, we had the abyss gazing into us for about a week or two and it's been quite an interesting time in the media. It's not over and nobody's safe. Luka Rocco Magnotta, Vladimir Romanov or Eric Clinton Newman or whoever he really is, isn't done haunting us. At all.
You might have not heard about him. Here's a little timeline for you to understand the case in a nutshell. On May 29th, a human torso was found by a janitor in a bag, in Montreal. The same day, the Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa received a foot by the mail and a hand was found in a Post Canada triage center, destined to the Liberal Party. The torso, the foot and the hand all came from the same body. The victim is Jun Lin, a Chinese student who came from his country to study software engineering in Concordia University and presumably to come out of the closet too. A video popped up on a web site called Best Gore, of Lin being murdered and dismembered in a small room and having his remains desecrated in the worst possible ways **. I am usually a shock monkey, a sucker for extreme, but I didn't find the courage to see this "1 lunatic, 1 ice pick" video.
The perpetrator is named Luka Rocco Magnotta and from what I understand, this is now his legal name. Without any intent to glorify the dude, I can say he's quite the interesting guy. Gay porn actor, he auditioned for various reality shows, gave interviews about being a stripper and an escort to Naked News (a gay lifestyle channel). On his darker side, he was investigated by animal defense group for murdering kittens with a plastic bag and a vacuum cleaner and putting it on the internet. He had several blogs and Facebook pages where he claimed to have love for dead men, that he wasn't ashamed to be a necrophile and a cannibal. He loved attention more than anything else. He only existed through the camera lens and constantly looked for ways to become a superstar. Well, he found it.
Magnotta has brought to existence the creepiest urban legend there is, snuff films. As blogger Ed Hardcore put it, he is the first official actor and director of snuff. Beyond the horror of having to deal with a real snuff film, there is something even more terrifying. He won. Magnotta carved his place in history with the blood of Jun Lin. His trial will be highly publicized and he will be featured in book and true crime shows until the day he dies and beyond. French columnist Nathalie Petrowski wrote an infuriating column tying the Magnotta case to her reading of Dave Cullen's COLUMBINE, saying there's nothing to understand from horror, that we should just walk away, forget about it and go on with our lives.
Until what?
Until another crazed killer, fed on reality television and cheap celebrity strikes again? The Columbine Massacre and the Magnotta case couldn't be more different. Hell, the worlds in which both crimes happened are very different places. In both cases, there are things to learn by gazing into the abyss. Horrible things, maybe but whether or not you want to accept the truth will tell something about you too. Being on television used to mean something. It used to mean you were exceptional, that you had a talent other people didn't. But it changed. In the 21st century, celebrity became a commodity. Self-branded superstar that were famous for the fact of being famous started to appear. Celebrity became a gold rush and a very democratic one. Crazy people like Luka Rocco Magnotta tried their luck and in his case, he won. He got what he wanted. He is forever famous, whether you like it or not. He latched on to an unstoppable train.
I don't think Luka Rocco Magnotta is going to prison. He's probably demented enough to go to Pinel Institute, our psychiatric ward for the criminally insane. With luck, he'll meet child killer Guy Turcotte and they'll both kill each other. Because only death can deprive Magnotta from what he has now. Ignoring him isn't going to solve the problem. It's going to create another atrocity a few years down the road and now that the Pandora's Box of snuff is opened, it could get very ugly. What we could do is stop watching Jersey Shore, put Paris Hilton and the Kardashian Family in bankruptcy via boycott. Not renounce to your consumerism instinct, but use them more wisely. The entertainment industry will not die anytime soon, but there are ways to keep it honest and keep monsters like Magnotta to spawn all that often.
As usual, the solution requires a sacrifice we're not ready to make.
* There is about eight different translations of this quote on The Internets. My apologies if I quoted an inaccurate one. I'm sure you get the jist of it anyway.
** Yes, wayS. Plural form. Let that soak in for a minute and try to imagine.