Culture, Art and Violence

Beardless, face covered in acne, he is barely fourteen years old. He enters the BeauxArts bookshop on Didouche Mourad Street right in the heart of the city of Algiers. His hand does not even tremble as he takes his weapon from the inside pocket of his jacket and coolly fires four bullets into the chest of the man facing him. Mr. Vincent Gros collapses onto the counter while the child assassin calmly returns to his young partner-in-crime who is acting as lookout. And thus, Algiers loses its last Mohican for the promotion of arts and literature. Equally symptomatic and symbolic is the murder of Mr. Asselah, the Director of Algiers National High School of Fine Arts, by youths whom all the witnesses confused with students of the establishment. All the data supports this fact: in Algeria the killers of Alloula (playwright), Hasni (singer) and other victims less illustrious or more anonymous seem to be recruited from the 14-25 year old age group. How can one explain this increase in violence, the cold-bloodedness of the crime, this sense of ease with the horrific that young people, who often come from a comfortable background, seem to have? To be sure, violence appears in some sense to be an aesthetic of our times. Film and other media have made guns and bloodshed the basis for a flourishing industry. The blossoming of satellite dishes in the Algerian skies is proof enough that the country, in common with many other places, cannot guard against that which is a fact of civilization. The development of trans-border media has nothing but advantages, this is widely recognized and the argument needs no defense. However, in developing countries where there is a powerful cultural and artistic tradition the exacerbation of violence remains, with some exceptions, in the demographic sector that is strongly marginalized by poverty, unemployment and other social ills. In his film Betes, sales et mechants, (Beastly, Dirty and Nasty) the Italian producer Etore Scola has taken an unflinching look at the degeneration of the excluded. The correlation between extreme violence, loss of culture and exclusion that more and more often forms part of the everyday life in advanced countries such as France sets us at the crux of an argument that we would quickly like to defend. Isolated for decades from the normal, ongoing development of universal culture, newly independent countries have seen their spiritual fabric shrivel and their indigenous culture suffocate during the struggle for survival. In consequence, now that their sovereignty is restored these young states wish to focus on rebuilding their culture according to the acquired characteristics in the field. And yet, no serious progress was made in this direction, except hollow slogans praising a half-made "cultural revolution." In this respect, Algeria is a prime example. Shaken apart by a tragedy that brought joy only to undertakers, this country found itself confronted by a formidable crisis of spiritual identity, which unleashed a whirlwind of violence that observers attempted to rationalize as being solely a product of socio-economic shortcuts. But, be that as it may, social evils, and a low general standard of living do not explain why young people from privileged backgrounds would similarly demonstrate a death wish or show an equal talent for destruction. The problem continues well beyond any generalization of violence, it almost seems to be an integral part of the feelings of young people themselves, who can become lethal grenades scattering their lethal shrapnel at the slightest provocation. Street lamps smashed with stones, women threatened in the street, knife fights . . . gratuitous vandalism runs through the streets like water, like a flood. This behavior of the "marginalized" constitutes, to our way of thinking, a set of indicators, that demonstrate a character totally out of synch with the world that surrounds it. Casual discussion with an assortment of individuals in the street, the school or the workplace confirms that there is a splintering of personality to be found amongst young people who apparently, are well cared for, and otherwise enjoy professional ambitions. …