After reading the articles from the Washington Post on connections between horrorcore rap and the Virginia slayings, I can't help but feel that this is playing into traditions of hysteria regarding music - whether trying to connect Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne to suicide, blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine school shooting, suggesting "backmasking" is inculcating our children to the will of Satan or, in the latest case, trying to draw a path from infantile rap to a horrendous crime.
The post refers to horrorcore as "an obscure hip-hop genre obsessed with mutilation, murder and satanism." They quote liberally from his violent (and poorly written) lyrics. It also says "Farmville police Capt. Wade Stimpson says authorities are looking into McCroskey's 'disturbing' songs. But it's clear horrorcore had arrived in Farmville long before McCroskey came to town."
They talk about one of the victims, the girlfriend of the killer:
But a darker Wells emerges from the pages of her MySpace page.
On the site, she lists her religion as LaVeyan Satanism, in which there is no deity but one's self. She posted violent poems in which she details torturing and killing boyfriends who have been unfaithful, and photos show her cavorting in cemeteries and lying atop gravestones.
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Under interests, Wells listed, among other things, "cigarettes, alcohol, partying, sex, drugs, metal, SKR (Serial Killin Records), lust, restorative arts, blood and gore, open graves, dead people, animals."
Her musical tastes ran from the Backstreet Boys and bubble-gum pop star Aaron Carter to Marilyn Manson and groups such as Bullet For My Valentine and Cradle of Filth. Her favorite movies include "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" but also "Pretty In Pink."
Time and time again, this creates the sort of ideas that have little connection to reality. Whatever happened, it boils down to the individual who perpetrated this, not the things they entertained themselves with. It's as if there's the suggestion that the goons in Insane Clown Posse told the suspect in question to go and do this. It's the same posit that, because Harry Potter incorporates magic, suddenly everyone is going to try it. And when someone falls off a roof trying to fly on a broom stick, J.K. Rowling is no more responsible than anyone else. It's as if, because of the misdeeds of a handful of black metal artists burning churches in Norway, the whole of the genre is therefore depraved and evil.
And god, who could forget the long string of portrayals of punk in the media, implying that they were violence prone thugs looking to kill anyone who stands in their nihilistic way. But most of the ones I've known have been doing diabolical things like setting up a Food Not Bombs kitchen or trying to (horror of horrors!) bring an up-and-coming band through their town.
We look for the easy thing to blame in all these cases, trying to piece together clues by trying to find a precedent. But this boils down to a disturbed individual and the problems they face, internally and externally. Just because they connected to the music doesn't mean the music connects itself to the crime. If that were true, The Beatles would have served prison terms right alongside Charles Manson for the Tate-LaBianca murders.
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