ABSTRACT
In the last two weeks of April 1999 there were a number of horrendous international and national events, the accumulation of which brought into sharp focus the nature of life in contemporary industrial societies. In a school in Denver, Colorado there was the ‘Trench coat’ massacre, followed the next week by a similar shoot-out in Alberta, Canada. The very next week five young men in New York were arrested for plotting a similar fate for their school and fellow students. This was followed by the death of 45 people in tornados. In Britain there were three nail bomb attacks in the London areas of Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho, the last of which was placed in a crowded gay bar with devastating results. This followed seven days of armed sieges both in London and the north-west of England and, in London, the well-known British television presenter Jill Dando was executed on her own doorstep, creating media mass-mourning throughout the country. In the Netherlands Dutch police shot four soccer ‘hooligans’ whilst Moroccan soccer fans went on the rampage throughout the rest of the country. All of this happened in the middle of the Kosovan War, where the images and sounds of daily death and destruction became the standard fare of most of the media of the Western world, interspersed with the ‘gripping’ and ‘entertaining’ footage of people being destroyed by either human or natural disasters. The school siege in Denver was relayed to the world ‘live’ as television cameras followed the drama with a running commentary being given
by trapped students on their mobile phones. Tornado destruction was followed eagerly by both professional cameras and the amateur camcorder.
