The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Creepy Little Weirdo’s Murder Rant Becomes Cultural ‘Rashomon’

Posted on | May 27, 2014 | 59 Comments

Isla Vista mass murderer Elliot Rodger’s 7-minute video and 141-page manifesto have become a Rashomon — a story whose meaning is different to everyone. The Washington Post has Style section writer Ann Hornaday telling us how Rodger’s video rant reflects “misogynist” themes promoted by Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the shooter’s mention of Monette Moio — she shows up on Page 41 of Rodger’s manifesto as “a pretty blonde girl” he said teased him when he was in 8th grade and she was in 7th grade — drew an angry reaction from the girl’s father:

The woman’s father said it was Saturday morning when his 20-year-old daughter realized Rodger had made her part of his sick story.
“She’s devastated by this,” the dad said in a phone interview. “She doesn’t even remember this guy. . . . She’s always been the most delicate kid you’d ever want to meet. For him to call her a bully, this kid was really disillusioned.
“She was 10 years old,” the dad added. “He was two years older than her. He was in my son’s class. She was in the seventh grade and he was in eighth grade. . . . Can you imagine a 10-year-old kid bullying a 12-year-old? This little, petite girl bullying him?”
In his screed, Rodger called his crush an “evil bitch” who “teased and ridiculed” him and “wounded me deeply.”

The reality — this was just a girl he had a crush on in 8th grade, a girl who never even noticed him — became something completely different inside the twisted mind of the Creepy Little Weirdo. Speaking of twisted minds, Amana Marcotte’s got a long rant headlined, “How ‘Pick-Up Artist’ Philosophy and Its More Misogynist Backlash Shaped Mind of Alleged Killer Elliot Rodger.”

PJ Media’s Dr. Helen Smith fires back: “The Elliot Rodger Case: If Pick-Up Artists Are Guilty, Then So Are the Feminists.” Dr. Helen is a psychologist who has specialized in studying male violence and is also the author of Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters. If anybody is an actual expert in this area, she is.

The focus on “pickup artist” (PUA) culture as an influence on Roger is probably misguided. As his manifesto makes clear, the Creepy Little Weirdo had been overwhelmed by resentment and a sense of failure since he was in middle school, and he didn’t start ranting on PUA forums until after he had already decided on his “Day of Retribution.” So he acquired from PUA culture a jargon (“Alpha males,” etc.) but this was not the source of his anger, nor did it exercise a determining influence on his actions. As for the PUA culture itself, they are denouncing Elliot Rodger as “effeminate.”

 

 

Comments

59 Responses to “Creepy Little Weirdo’s Murder Rant Becomes Cultural ‘Rashomon’”

  1. zj sky
    May 28th, 2014 @ 8:53 am

    He also killed more men than women – no one is bringing this up when they race to show how progressively feminist they are

  2. ThePaganTemple
    May 28th, 2014 @ 8:58 am

    But he never had the makings of a varsity athlete.

  3. ThePaganTemple
    May 28th, 2014 @ 8:59 am

    Maybe he’s having a hard time accepting the probable fact that his precious little princess might not have been Little Miss Goody Gooderson after all.

  4. ThePaganTemple
    May 28th, 2014 @ 9:00 am

    Oh, andd we only have his take as to how devastated she supposedly is, by the way.

  5. ThePaganTemple
    May 28th, 2014 @ 9:08 am

    I think Ive seen enough to know that this guy was just so miserable he didn’t want to live and decided to take as many peope with him as possible. The manifesto was nothing but an act of self-justification in which he seems to have named various random episodes in his sorry life as rationales for his behavior, and as a way to achieve a modicum of immortality, without which he would otherwise have passed into eternity unknown, unloved, and unmourned. Better to be remembered through the ages and universally despised. And maybe as a hero to other such misanthropes.

  6. Katiescarlet2
    May 28th, 2014 @ 10:28 am

    Creepy Little Weirdo’s Murder Rant Becomes Cultural ‘Rashomon’ http://t.co/CyeokyqYQQ

  7. Moneyrunner
    May 29th, 2014 @ 7:28 am

    So a 22-year-old son of Hollywood privilege goes on a murder spree, killing 6 and then himself. People who write for a living mount their favorite hobby horses and tell us “what it all means.”

    Since we are all critics now, I want to get in on the action. What do we know? Quite a lot, actually. The killer wrote a “manifesto:” apparently a must-do for people who want to go out with a bang, and who have the time and leisure to chronicle their lives. I read the whole thing and it’s fascinating because it reads like a movie script for a really bad film.

    It seems that his hang-up is that he couldn’t get girls. Living in Hollywood, rich, and couldn’t get to first base. Which is strange, but also quite revealing. He lived in the epicenter of getting girls. Hollywood is all about getting girls. It is Jannah, the Islamic Paradise of girl getting. Men go there to find sexual objects – both female and male. Women go there to be gotten, advertising their attributes, real and enhanced. They are not shy or demure about it. Miley Cyrus rides an inflatable phallus and gets rich and famous for doing so. Some of the town’s hottest starlets made their debuts starring in their own home-made porno-flicks.

    Closer to home, the killer’s father was not only in the movie industry, but sold “art” pictures of naked women. So what’s a 22 year old virgin to do when the thing that’s at the center of his entire culture is denied to him? When his sexual pressure-cooker gets overheated? He blows up. And takes six people with him. His victims were the victims of a nut, made crazy by a culture where sex is literally everything: money, power, validation, gratification and identity. At one point he concludes that the route to sex is more money, lots of it, so he buys lottery tickets. He urges his mother to marry one of the wealthy men she knows so that he can be part of a uber-rich family and blames her for his sexual failure.

    In other times and other places, people like Elliot Rodger may have become a hermit, a priest or found another objective. But he was living in a place and time where sex was the center of everything. In a strange and inverted way, Elliott Rodger, insane killer, was made by Hollywood.

  8. Ed Driscoll » A Clockwork Killer
    May 29th, 2014 @ 5:26 pm

    […] meaning in an insane individual act. The headline on Stacy McCain’s take on Rodger — “Creepy Little Weirdo’s Murder Rant Becomes Cultural ‘Rashomon’” — is a perennial that could have been written numerous times over the past half […]

  9. Dana
    May 31st, 2014 @ 5:04 am

    Chris Muir explains Elliot Rodger’s problems:

    http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/053114.jpg