Kitty Genovese

[ceebeegee]

I was reading All That Chat today and came across a thread discussing an offering the the MYMF, called The Screams of Kitty Genovese. Kitty Genovese was a young woman who was murdered in Kew Gardens in 1964 right outside her apartment complex--stabbed to death--and basically a bunch of her neighbors saw and heard at least some of it, and did little or nothing. Didn't call the police (until afterward), didn't help her after the guy had left her to die, and certainly didn't stop him (although I think one person yelled at him out the window). The incident became a famous indictment of "modern" society, post-war America and how insular and uncaring people were seen to have become.

It's a fascinating, and horrific case--one thing that occurred to me as I refreshed my memory on it was that it's one of the few cases where the victim's name (and not the killer's) is what people remember. No one remembers the piece of filth that killed her--we remember her name. Kitty Genovese. Another interesting thing is that she was a lesbian--she had a live-in girlfriend. You have to do some digging to find that out; it certainly wasn't mentioned in any of the contemporary news coverage. Also, the guy tried to rape her--while she was dying. That he tried to rape her is always left out of the coverage as well, although I don't know why. Apparently he woke up sometime late that night (the murder happened around 3:20 am--she was getting home from her job as a bar/grill manager) and...wanted to kill a woman. (Tangent here--again. It's always a woman. Always gotta be a woman. Sometimes, reading stuff like that, I just get so depressed. I certainly don't hate being a woman--I love it--but I hate that by a certain portion of the population, I'm seen as this moving bullseye. It's always a woman who gets targeted.) So he went out and found one. On one message board I found about it, someone posted "he had to have been insane." No. He knew exactly what he was doing--he doesn't get that excuse. He knew what he was doing, he knew who she was (i.e., he didn't think she was Hitler or a space alien or something) and he knew it was wrong. He just didn't care. Guys like that make an excellent case for capital punishment--some people just need to die. (The guy was later involved in the Attica uprising. Hoo boy, what a mess THAT was.)

Another interesting thing is that the case is always seen as some kind of worse-case scenario about life in the big city. But Kew Gardens is almost a town. It's really not at all an urban environment.

There's a website that tries to debunk the whole "38 eyewitnesses did nothing" meme, and I'm sure the original coverage did exaggerate--I believe the truth is probably more complicated than that. But some of the debunking, the excuses offered, is awfully self-serving. One excuse was that the neighbors were afraid the guy would target them if they ID'ed him. Really? You're up there on the 5th or 7th or 10th floor, and you're worried about being seen behind your curtains or your blinds? Another excuse is that some of them thought he was beating her, not stabbing her. Oh, then it's okay? The hell? In other words--they thought he was her boyfriend, because beating is a more intimate crime. So he could beat her to death and it would okay, because he's her boyfriend and we don't want to get involved. Morons.

What a sad, sad case. She died because someone wanted to kill a woman.

Anyway, I'm seeing the matinee of the show about this case on Sunday.

Comments

[wonderpanther.livejournal.com]

We studied that situation in law school because it gave rise to a lot of Good Samaritan legislation. Generally, you do not have any legal obligation to save another from a crime or protect other people. People were so outraged by this crime that it led to a lot of legislation that allowed the state to hold bystanders crminally liable for inaction.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

I figured you'd probably studied it. So Good Samaritan legislation mandates intervention? What's the threshold for requiring someone to act?

[wonderpanther.livejournal.com]

It sort of depends on the statute. It is not so much intervention, I think, but perhaps calling for help. I will have to find a good example.

[catseurat.livejournal.com]

It doesn't excuse the lack-of-action, but the theory that's most commonly bandied about is that of mob-action. If a single person sees a crime being committed, he's more likely to help. But if there's a group around, people are more likely to think that someone else in the group will help, so he'll do nothing. It's true all over psychology.

Doesn't excuse what happened tho.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Reading the accounts, it makes your blood boil. "We didn't want to get involved." Jesus. Another interesting point I read was that it was a weird sort of enactment of the TV-voyeur culture that was just starting to emerge.

[carasol.livejournal.com]

I saw the show on Thursday. It's very, very hard to watch. You'll need alcohol afterwards. I could barely walk or talk when I left the theatre, and I kept choking up as I walked to the subway.

*shudders* Very distressing and disturbing.

Oh, and tell me if you think they try to spin Kitty as straight in the musical. She's single in this version, and dreaming of romance, but they never specifically say that she's looking for a man. I'm intrigued by that.