Trollheart

The Rest is Silence: Apathy and Antipathy

In the aftermath of the murder, and as it grew to become much more than that, a symbol, if you like, of man’s apathy, of city living, of isolationism and insulation, of, as UB40* once sang, “a reminder of a world that doesn’t care”, the usual talking heads appeared out of the woodwork, like, um, well, let’s be nice and say bees to honey, but you know what I mean. Psychiatrists, priests, talk show hosts, doctors, professors all tried to explain - as they could not - the reason that thirty-eight people had stood metaphorically with their hands in their pockets while below them in the unforgiving dark streets a woman was cruelly robbed of her life. The words “shame”, “fear” and “disbelief” were bandied about, but the real buzz-word that stuck, and which came to forever crystallise the feelings behind this incident, was apathy. Quite literally, and I have no intention of being as forgiving and understanding as Mr. Rosenthal seems to be in his book, nobody gave a ****. Deep in their hearts, somewhere in their souls, did they know a woman was being murdered? I think they did, but they convinced themselves either that it was not that bad, or that if it was, it was nothing to do with them.

I wonder how they lived with themselves? Some are likely still alive. I was born in 1963 and some of these neighbours may have been young enough, so do they think about their shared act of cowardice and inaction even now? Does it still haunt them? Have they encountered, in their lives, similar incidents, opportunities where they could speak up, intervene, make a difference, maybe save a life, and if so, have they? Or have they again turned away, having learned nothing from the past, again thinking, selfishly, cowardly, nothing to do with me, don’t want to get involved? And has society progressed any further in the intervening sixty years? Is it likely that, should some girl - or man - be murdered in plain view of witnesses, anywhere in the world, not just New York, the same apathy, irrational fear and desire to stay out of it would prevail? Most likely, the best you’d get these days is people studiously videoing it with their phones, maybe putting that footage online. Might help the police to track down the killer, but it wouldn’t do much for the victim.

It seems the answer is no, it didn’t change anything. Ten years later, in the same apartment complex - but inside this time - a woman was battered to death on Christmas morning. Again, neighbours heard the violent beating but did nothing. Sandra Zahler however would not become the Kitty Genovese for the 1970s as her predecessor had been the tragic poster girl for public apathy and cold-heartedness and selfish self-interest of the 1960s. I don’t quite know why, unless it’s the old “second-time syndrome”, that something shocking happens and everyone takes notice, but if and when it happens again, the impact is somehow lessened, maybe because it’s no longer a complete surprise. It could also be due to there being a subtle difference in her death, in that it took place in an apartment, and so the witnesses would have had more of a case by claiming they believed it to be domestic violence, which the police would be probably reluctant to get involved in. At any rate, no stories seem to have persisted about Ms. Zahler and her name has not gone down in history as has that of Kitty Genovese. That doesn’t mean it’s any less a crime, but like I say, it had happened before.

The fact that it did happen again, and in the same area, for me points a constant and unwavering finger at these residents. In some way, maybe you could say anyone might have done what they did - or in fact didn’t do - in the early* hours of* March 13 1964, but to have it happen a second time, with the same result is I think stretching their excuse a little thin. These were clearly people - possibly the same people; we’re only talking about ten years later - who simply had no intention of getting “involved”, and obviously whatever mark, if any, had been left on them by the Genovese killing had either worn off by now or had never had any real effect anyway.

The overall reaction, perhaps oddly, perhaps not, certainly among the inhabitants of Queens, to the Kitty Genovese murder was to “just forget it” and “what happened, happened.” Rather than, as you might expect, exhibiting shame or remorse or guilt, these people all seemed, if you can believe it, angry. Not angry at the murderer. Not angry that a young woman lost her life. Not angry at themselves. But angry at two selected targets: the police, whom they claimed “did nothing anyway so why bother calling” - an attitude you’d have to wonder if they would retain should they be in need of assistance themselves? - and the newspapers, who were “making things hard for them.”

Good. So they should have. It should be hard. It should always be hard. Shame and self-doubt and remorse won’t come if things like this - a crime, virtually, as far as I’m concerned, and this one perpetrated by Kitty Genovese’s neighbours in all but an attempt at cover up of her murder - are quietly swept under the rug and let fade away. It has to be hard. It should never be easy to turn away, to hear the scream in the night, the cry for help, the plea for aid and close the window, settling back gruffly as the shiver of unregarded guilt travels down the shoulders and back, trying to urge us to action, as we open our newspaper or return to the television, deploring the news stories.

Once it becomes easy, even normal, to avoid the suffering and refuse to help our fellow human beings, it’s over. We are no longer, as Dickens once put it, a single race of men, all passengers on the same journey to the grave, but are self-isolated watchers who will be happy to witness a murder and lift not a finger to help. Our humanity will be gone, and though she did not choose to die for this reason, or any reason, Kitty Genovese’s brutal and sad and shocking death will no longer have any* meaning, and will have been for nothing.

We can’t allow that to happen.

What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

That is, indeed, the question.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018