Mindless Stars and the Glamour of the Gun

The children of the sixties learned about the danger of guns before we learned the alphabet. My first indelible memory was the assassination of JFK, then Malcolm X, the University of Texas massacre, Dr. King, RFK, Kent State, Gerald Ford, and even the Manson murders. Throughout the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite counted the dead as never-seen-before live images of men and women dying or broken frightened my childhood innocence away. I was born into a world of exploding bombs, terrified Vietnamese, and lots and lots of bullets, bombs, and guns.

Several years ago while walking from home to my car, a man rushed me sticking a revolver my face. Even though I sparked a thought to bargain, I quickly handed him my cash. Weeks later the police telephoned. A suspect had been caught. He was charged with assault over a victim who wasn't as quick on the draw as I had been with my cash. This guy had actually fired upon a young woman, irreparably injuring her spinal cord with a single shot.

The echo of a bullet and my abhorrence of violence convinced me long ago that there was nothing romantic or fashionable about a gun. Then came children caught in gang-war crossfire, school shootings, terrorism at the point of a rifle, and more and more war. Even after Columbine -- and scores of other high profile rampages -- film, music, television and video games still market gun violence as an accepted and expected part of the American experience. The counter-intuitiveness of romanticizing violence is too repugnant for me to dwell on -- much less promote, but that's just what LA based clothing company Future Heretics is doing with its threatening, vile and violent fashions.

Since 1977 the ubiquitous "I Love (heart) NY" campaign has spoken for up optimism and pride by every community who has adapted it for their own use. Like the smiley face before it, the slogan nourishes good cheer along with a strong sense of community dignity. But now Future Heretics has replaced the heart with an Uzi sub-machine gun and the "NY" with "LA."

Across the pages of People, US, and leading fashion magazines mindless stars with thin careers are being showcased wearing these t-shirts. Hayden Panettiere, Khloe Kardashian, Sarai Givati, Fergie and Lindsay Lohan are among the stars whose candid photographs the company is using to market their wares. But Future Heretics hasn't stopped with Los Angeles, they have waved the automatic weapon at Santa Barbara in a special-issue "I (UZI) SB".

Everyone is frightened of everyone; no one can be trusted. Arm and aim or be a victim. It's the idiocy of war, terrorism, and violence in everyone's bedside drawer. Even as it's been reported that gun and bullet sales are at unimaginable levels, we cannot allow violence and threats to be fashion. Maybe these starlets aren't callous, perhaps they are just not aware that guns kill, maim, and cause unbearable pain to thousands of people across America every year. Future Heretics and these young women are just incredibly overrated and unwittingly they are co-opting a violence that may someday, as it did to me, turn a real gun on them.

Oh, what I would do for a peace sign these days.

www.ShowBizTom.com

Comments

[SewaneeLeftist]

I missed this when it first came out, but it's an excellent article about the gun glamour problem -- yet another complication in trying to lower the violence, especially gun violence, in our country.

I particularly get tired of this being offered as an outgrowth of our history as an armed country, which back in the '90's Roger Rosenblatt showed to be the myth it is.

The people who love this myth,

"tend to cite America's enduring love affair with guns, BUT THERE NEVER WAS ONE. The image of shoot-'em-up America was mainly the invention of gunmaker Samuel Colt, who managed to convince a malleable 19th century public that no household was complete without a firearm -- "an armed society is a peaceful society." This ludicrous aphorism, says historian Michael Bellesiles of Emory University, turned 200 years of Western tradition on its ear. Until 1850, FEWER than 10% of U.S. citizens had guns. Only 15% of violent deaths between 1800 and 1845 were caused by guns. Reputedly wide-open Western towns, such as Dodge City and Tombstone, had strict gun-control laws; guns were confiscated at the Dodge City limits." (emphasis mine)

"Get Rid of the Damned Things," Time, 8/9/1999

[mike102]

Tom, I remember everything you remember, plus the Cuban Missile Crisis (and a little bit further back than that).

While walking home with my friends that 'last' Friday, I remember our discussing whether or not we should bother doing our homework. WWIII was scheduled for Sunday.................all of it. We were in 3rd grade, so we had the blind faith of children. We just knew the grown-ups wouldn't destroy the whole world over a few rockets in Cuba, so we did our homework. Good thing.

I remember JFK's assassionation. I remember that sick, empty feeling that the whole country had, like it was yesterday. I was 9. Then Oswald was shot on live TV, and the whole incident passed into the surreal.

I remember the shock when MLK was assassinated, and the utter disbelief when Bobby Kennedy was shot. I was 14 by then. Then came the race riots. Viet Nam was escelating at that time. '68 was the worst. Then, in '69, Kent State happened.

But then Man landed on the Moon, and they started selling tickets for Woodstock. There was hope.

Tom, through it all, we managed to hang on to our childhoods.

I think you are being overly dramatic. Let's try to keep stiff upper lip, shall we?

[molonlabe]

Sorry, Tom.

GREGORY.

I'm still being haunted by Tom Gordon's ineffective pitching for the YaNKS A FEW YEARS BACK.

[molonlabe]

Tom Gordon demonstrates exactly why we will never win the "war on crime" in the US by focusing on what vacuous Hollywood stars consider fashion in the same manner politicians focus on on the guns themselves.

Somewhere along the way, they've forgotten that it is career criminals committing the majority of our violent crime. Criminals which our judicial system can't keep behind bars.

It's a t-shirt, Tom. A t-shirt.

[averygard]

Odd that no one but me seems to notice that liberal darling Tarantino's films are nothing if not glorification of endless, graphic violence, and liberal darling Angelina Jolie's films are almost exclusively her hanging around half-naked and toting guns. It ain't just t-shirts. People don't think anymore.

[djcrsn]

Which just reemphasizes how hypocritical the antigun hysteria of many big name film stars is--they make millions of dollars portraying gun use and yet the people who watch the movies (and paying their paychecks) are entitled to own not a single firearm in the view of many actors.

[liberalsrheros]

i don't know what makes you think jolie is a liberal darling. last october she wasn't even sure she'd vote for obama.

[mackbolan]

so the far left hates capitalism....nothing new in that.....

[OdinsEye]

"perhaps they are just not aware that guns kill, maim, and cause unbearable pain to thousands of people across America every year."

So do cars, and their likeness and images are flashed everywhere. (BTW, technically, guns do nothing -- they incapable of independent action)

Firearms are not the problem. Our culture glorifies violence of all types. That is a problem.

[djcrsn]

Even simpler--criminals are the problem--every single example cited was either related to an ongoing war or to a crime

[averygard]

Look what's playing at your cinema most of the time and frequently gets good reviews, even here. Nonstop violence.

[BlackJAC]

Hayden's shirt is derived from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoU39Rpp4FI . And I once saw a bumper sticker that said "I [skull] Texas."