The Screaming People in the Burning Car

By TRB

The horrible memories some of us acquire as we pass through this life are often stolen ones, ghastly moments you went out of your way to experience. As time passes you convince yourself that you were "victimized" by these awful scenes that somehow got into your head and now you can't get them out. No, you can't get them out. Of course, that was something you didn't know when you went looking for them.

There is a healthy market for images guaranteed to scar for life. We see it often if we watch television. It seems as though they just can't sell you enough Hitler memorabilia or stock footage of piles of corpses at the Dachau concentration camp. And if Hitler is just too much material for you there's always Charles Manson. I have to insert here the fact that someone I love knew Manson's "girls," who tried to recruit her into that murderous cult. I mention it to empathize just how close all of us are to evil in our lives.

Television, by the way, will never run out of scary images. There is the First World War, the Second, Korea and Vietnam. I can't go any farther because these horrible documentaries are probably difficult to make and I imagine someone is working on all the terrible images we have created and acquired in the Middle East this past decade. There must be a warehouse full of these awful sights somewhere out in Los Angles. But with the digital age and it's penchant for the compact, maybe the entire blood-drenched mess only requires a closet.

The marketing of the macabre of course is nothing new. French artists are responsible for countless etchings of those condemned to the guillotine. The trick was to portray the head after it was chopped off but before it hit the ground. There was usually an expression of pain mixed with surprise on the head's face which was probably added later. There was also much interest taken in the crowd, where there were always little boys and girls attending with their parents.

No doubt every American reading this is familiar with the many portraits of the before and after Jim Crow Era lynchings and sometimes burnings of African American males in the U.S. Again you get the crowd, the children with their parents and a feeling that these nasty people share a certain sense of pride in what they have done and want the world to see their work. And, unlike most of the photos of public executions, you will also sometimes see members of the crowd involved in further disfiguring the body of the victim. These photos of African American men lynched by white Americans are every bit as bad, if not worse, than any violence of people against people you will ever see anywhere.

I truly believe that violence is the king of entertainment in this world. So is the degradation of other people. There still exists films where you can watch the indigenous people of this country treated very badly, even murdered. These are popular films.

The local police department always has on hand file cabinets of photos of violent and illegal acts.They don't throw them way - even those taken at the morgue during the autopsy - so perhaps some day these images too will find their market niche. Pornography and images of horrendous violent human-on-human acts are of course as close as any siblings can get. But pornography has, in recent years gained a certain normalcy.

This normalizing of porno started in Rock, specifically with the hair bands of 1980's Los Angles. Band members were always seen with porno stars. Porno stars appeared in their videos. Porno became cool. The most popular television show, "Two and a Half Men" has, or perhaps had, two male stars who often referred to enjoying porno right in the script. The rest of it just took off on the ultimate market, the internet.

Quite often, if you listened hard, you might hear or maybe read discussions about whether pornography increased violence against women by objectifying them. Duh. But porno just got bigger and bigger. Comedian, social commentator Bill Maher loves his porn. Talks about it all the time. He apparently is not intelligent enough to understand that pornography does objectify women and probably leads to more violence against women. But why should that bother him?

Lost in all of this is the variety of porn produced by the "industry." Don't they also make kiddie porn? Yes. And some of the women working for them are slaves more than workers? Yes. And violence against woman is just part of the sex industry? Yes.

People like to watch. People are voyeurs. They like to watch the two most intimate moments in other people's lives. When they die and when they are having sex, Sure, a lot of the "sex" is just acting. But it can be made to look real enough to satisfy the voyeur, whose sickness provides a healthy imagination to work. That is the "secret" of those who "entertain" us with sex and death. Voyeurism, that's all.

Now we have schools of photography fascinated with the subject. The sexual component is in direct relation to the unguardedness of the person (people ) being observed. It is that fact that keeps me away. Maybe I can explain why. (Please don't tell me to seek help.)

Once when I was a little boy I was awakened by a loud sound at the end of my street. I slept on the third floor, but almost immediately I could hear my father descending the stairway below me. Curious, I put on my slippers and tried to follow him. It was perhaps one in the morning. I was 6-years old and he would not be happy to find me out of the house. I walked maybe five houses behind my Dad who was sprinting.

As I came closer to what was apparently the source of the noise, I could see fire trucks and police cars and the place was swarming with people. Additionally, I could see flames. They were not much at first, but within minutes there was an explosion. Then I could hear screams, muffled screams. It was a car. It had hit a telephone pole.

It was filled front and back seat with teenagers. The gas tank of their car had exploded and now flames were leaping into the car with them. The doors were jammed. The firemen could only get so close to the car, but one was trying to open the doors with a crowbar. It wasn't working. By now some of the windows of the car had been smashed so the screams of pain were louder.

Then I saw her. She was in the front seat of the car and she was staring right at me. She was wearing what I later discovered was a prom dress. The dress was highly flammable and the fireman was telling her to take it off. But she wasn't paying any attention to him; she was looking at me. Almost instantly it occurred to me that I was seeing something very private happen. I took one more look up at her but by now the entire car had filled with smoke and the interior of the car was quiet.

I ran home. My Dad had seen me. His hands were burned from trying to pry the doors of the car open. He was going to the hospital in a few minutes. Now my nanny was in the room with me too, complete with patently false smile, ready to change the unavoidable subject at hand. But I asked my Dad if any of them had lived.

"No," he answered, "All dead. The Chief thinks they were just going too damn fast."

He told me that he would talk to me about it later but he never did. And I never brought it up.

The experience did something to me though. I never again went out of my way in search of bad memories. And frankly, I could care less what people do when they are alone together.