Orville Taylor | Wannabe copycat killer

It was chilling: A youth in turmoil. A voice note by a teenage student who attends one of the most prominent high schools in this country. He is contemplating an attack like the one that occurred Valentine's Day at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when 17 Americans were murdered.None of the victims were black, as in the Charlestown AME Church in 2015. But all lives matter and bullets respect no race or class.

As unusual as it seems, the voice note isn't surprising. In the recent Dying to be Beautiful conference, hosted by the University of the West Indies, the role of media and the behaviour of young people were outlined. Professor Michael Rich, a medical doctor and former Hollywood filmmaker, showed some very clear negative behavioural outcomes associated with exposure to media, including televisions, computers and cell phones.

In another paper from the conference to be published later this year, I re-emphasised the point that Jamaica's island status does not make us isolated. Antecedents from what we have been fed from 'farrin' for the last five decades have helped to fuel the already high incidence of violence transmitted infections (VTI). We are the 'baddest' population of former enslaved Africans. After all, we had the most slave uprisings per capita, fought the British to a standstill in 1739, saw the almost successful takeover of the Island by Chief Tacky in 1760, and we exported Dutty Boukman to initiate the Haitian Revolution in the early 1790s.

By the time, we had secured Independence, Sam Sharpe had led his Christmas uprising in 1831, and a spontaneous Morant Bay War in 1865 arose. In the 20th century, worker riots persisted in 1919 and 1938, and we had the literal War between Rasta and Babylon at Coral Gardens in 1963 and the Anti-Chinese Riots in 1965.

Something about the 1960s is a teaching moment. Our government recognised back then that we had a romance with the culture of American society and the television began to play a role in the socialisation of our youth. Of course, cinema had opened here since the 1920s, but it was in the 1960s that we saw a flurry of new cinematic content and cheaper movie houses located in easy access to inner-city young men.

Government banned pro-black books, black activists such as Stokely Carmichael from visiting, and Walter Rodney from returning to his job at the UWI. However, it did very little to prohibit the VTI that was spreading from our movie screens. It is no secret that in the 1940s, our notorious Rhygin aped the behaviour of on-screen characters such as Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel, who captured the imagination as benevolent criminals who taunted law enforcement with every escape.

Myriad gangsters

Yet, in the 1960s and 1970s, we were inundated with myriad gangsters and cowboys. More sociological and psychological studies are need to measure the full impact of spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation movies of that era. However, Desmond Dekker's reference to Bonnie and Clyde in his mega hit, Poor Mi Israelite, points to the influence. Our entertainers'usage of movie names and the increase in gang-related violence were also not coincidental.

Dillinger, Lee Van Cleef, Django, John Wayne, Trinity, Lone Ranger, Ringo, Dennis Al Capone, and Clint Eastwood are all monikers used by our entertainers from that era. In fact, one might just want to ask, which Cartel did young Mr Palmer get his vibes from, and which murderous Japanese martial artist epitomised by Sho Kosugi did Mr Ballentyne emulate? Art did imitate life, which imitated art, and thus gave them 'life'.

It might be also interesting to observe that the Bollywood star Kabir Bedi's heroic character translated into our notorious Sandokhan, the ruthless and fearless killer. Starkey might have been an anagram of Starsky, the television police officer played by Paul Michael Glaser. However, sometimes the essence of the message gets lost in translation.

The Godfather

Hardly anyone remembers the names of the characters played by NFL player-turned-actor Jim Brown in his many 1970s movies. However, his on-screen toughness easily found root in the notoriety of one of our most powerful area dons. One might not have noticed, but prior to our screening The Godfather in the early 1970s, we did not use the term 'don' to describe a chief gangster who presides over a coterie of killers. Indeed, they did not have the organisation, and means, because guns were in short supply until they suddenly got coloured orange and green. Even today, the term godfather is used by men of lower status in the inner-city communities to show respect to a senior rank.

Nevertheless, we ought to be scared because the mass media and Internet are providing more examples for our youth to become copycat killers. We already provided a Lee Boyd Malvo and have some stake in the shoe bomber. I shudder what would happen if Jamaican 15-year-olds could easily buy high-powered guns as they can in the USA.

And that is why I want more gun control in the USA and I am encouraged by the small concession of the president in proposing a ban on bump stocks, which make rapid fire easier.

- Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI, a radio talk-show host, and author of 'Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets'. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.