The reality of my life with my partner is that he has pretty much full control of the remote. It's not important enough to me to tussle about it and we have pretty similar taste in programming (another reason I'm a pretty lucky fella).
Last night, though, he was preoccupied surfing the web, so I held the magic wand. I landed on "An American Crime", starring Catherine Keener and Ellen Page. More on the actors later or in another entry.
If you are unaware, as I was, the movie details the sordid story of 15 year old Sylvia Likens who, in 1965, was tortured and murdered by a woman, her children and some other kids, while living with the woman in Indiana. Gertrude Banizewski, the 37 year old mother of way too may kids, apparently targeted Sylvia for minor or nonexistent infractions and what began as a few swats with a belt developed quickly into quite literally unspeakable acts of atrocity probably greater and more heinous than most committed in Nazi Germany. Sylvia was beaten, burned, scalded, starved and ultimately branded with the words "I'm a prostitute and proud of it" by way of a heated safety pin. And that, folks, are some of the "speakable" things this child endured.
Those that know me know how affected I was by The Laramie Project. The play and movie outline in a most human way, how people were affected by the death of gay college student Matt Shepard in 1998. that piece spurred me to create The Rainbow Connection Network, a non-profit dedicated to providing positive role models and images to other gay youth in Wyoming and elsewhere. Would that there was something, anything, I could do to assure there would be no more victims like Matt and now that I know about her, like Sylvia.
The story has attached itself to me, I can't shake the sadness, the incredulity I feel when I think of what happened to her so many years ago. I want, on some level, to understand...to at least be able to say "I get it, I know why"...but I can't, because I don't.
No fewer than eight young people witnessed and participated in the abuse heaped on Sylvia Likens. And those that didn't participate, get this folks, didn't tell anyone. Sylvia lingered for weeks without food, warmth and living in what must have been incomparable pain as people filed in daily and added to her burns, kicked and punched her, used her as a karate dummy...and no-one told anyone in authority. It was not until she died and one of the children, in an abject moment of clarity, called the police that anyone outside the house of torture knew anything had happened.
My response to all of this reminds me of the great American actress (note tongue-firmly-in-cheek) Sally Field in a Sybil-esque moment of rage at her daughter's funeral in Steel Magnolias. "I want to know why!" she rants. And so do I. I want to know why things like this occur. I want to know how we descend to the lowest, most base bestial behavior. What is it in our nature that allows Matthew Shepard, all 5 feet and 98 pounds of him, to be beaten with the butt of a gun, kicked and left to die tied to a buck fence. What is is about us that can watch Sylvia Likens be forced to insert a glass soda bottle into herself and do nothing, tell no-one.
These are seemingly unrelated acts, separated as they are by time, distance and apparent motive. But are they really that separated?
I don't know. I don't know if I am capable of knowing. And as much as I touted Sally and her "I want to know why!", I'm not sure I do want to know "why?". I'm not sure I can handle the truth.
