My take on the Oscar Pistorius trial - lets consider the trial as a long, protracted play and measure Pistorius against his own claim that the killing was tragic. For one, there was nothing heroic in his performance. The shooting of Steenkamp, whether it resulted from fear or from anger, was a cowardly, hysterical act. During the trial Pistorius failed to salvage either innocence, dignity or manhood as he gave different accounts of why he fired those four shots through the locked bathroom door. His failure to take responsibility for the bullets he fired at such close range, his failure to take responsibility for Steenkamps death - even if it was an accident - meant that he lost the opportunity for heroism in the tragic sense. The great heroes of literature - Othello, Macbeth, Oedipus, Medea - became heroic in their final moments of insight into their own actions, into the jealousy or ambition or rage that drove them to act, and kill, in the way they did. The states case of pre-meditated murder presented Pistorius as a latter-day Othello. A man driven by jealousy - a wounded narcissism - to kill his beloved Desdemona. Pistorius represents no hero, instead his appearance in the dock was the antithesis of heroism - he cried, he prevaricated, he threw up in a bucket. There was no manning-up which would have provided that cathartic moment of insight and responsibility and closure. If this final moment of understanding had come, we would have had our tragedy, and Pistorius might have been able to be heroic: culpable and punished, but heroic. And we would have felt pity and compassion for him. Instead we are left only angry, confused without the closure of any well-written ending. But life isnt a work of art. Or perhaps this is not the final chapter for South Africas fallen hero.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 17:59:02 +0000
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