After reading Moran's article "Challenging the Republic: Interpreting the 2005 Urban Violence in French Suburbs" one can only come to the depressing conclusion once again that media can easily manipulate certain events and people with no other resources to see the reality may fall victim to this very easily.
Two sentences that moved me:
- "'Urban violence' become trivialized to the point of becoming almost a daily element of the various media.": The desensitization is fatal. Some critical issues come up in the media so much that over time for the people that are not immediately affected by them (for example the urbanites of France) start to ignore the importance of these subjects.
- "A specific identity is imposed upon the inhabitants of the suburbs - the identity of a population apart that constitutes a willing obstacle to the positive development of French society as a whole. This in turn reinforces social prejudices regarding the suburbs and its inhabitants, feeding into the divide that ensures the perpetuation of the suburbs as zones of exclusion and relegation": We always come back to the importance of forced identity, how it changes the view of others around someone about him/her is one thing but it is also important to consider the effects of this imposed identity whether good or bad on that someone. If no-one listens to you, your point of view about the happenings that involves you, would you still try to talk or get upset and slowly become the feared person they want you to be? How do the children turn out to be as adults that get the message of being unwanted, being a nuisance, an obstacle in the way of greater things, as they grow up in the suburbs of France?
The media are able to label such or such categories of inhabitants and to create stereotypes images that are taken for granted for they are repeated all the day long. This has series of consequences for the outsiders of the suburbs the perception of which is impacted by the main stream categorization; and for the insiders of those districts who self perceived themselves as victims the unique posture of which is or passive resignation or the outburst of violence. This is for sure linked with gender issue. Because uprooted male youth sees rebellion as an act of bravery the glory of this shall reinforce your position among the clause space of the suburbs.
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