ABSTRACT
Whereas victim stories hold in their centre some notion of the particularized and psychologized ‘character’, helpless and entangled in occurrences not of their own making, this story-type builds its narrative primarily from a concern with the communal and the social rather the personal. Included here once again is coverage of accidents, disasters and chance events, and conditions of helplessness are still crucial to the story, but in these instances it is likely to be more collectively based, spreading to engulf entire institutions, districts, suburbs, and regions. The preoccupation of these news items is misadventure on a grander scale – the community at risk. What these stories provide, and use as a base from which to offer description and explanation of events, is a view of community analogous to an assumed living entity. This is characterized primarily by the capacity of its various parts and instrumentalities, under normal circumstances, to work in a kind of integrated harmony, without discord, conflict or interference. Periodically, however, the communal ‘organism’ encounters unanticipated and destabilizing occurrences, unwanted and unpalatable intrusions which disrupt the tranquility and balance of the overall design. A tangible crisis ensues, which may adversely affect various sections of the collective ‘body’, placing the community’s smooth operation in danger. The crisis must be dealt with. Characteristically, this is accomplished by those ‘reactive’ components of the organism which function explicitly as its guardians and protectors, reflexively deployed to contain and expel the disturbance, after which time stability and cohesion once more return, all traces of disruption gone from view and recalled only as a memory fragment which serves to enhance a restored present.
