A Culture of Violence

A culture of violence may not always go noticed by people, especially those who are living within a community. The closeness of the people therein, together with a fixed mindset or opinion about the community, may prevent residents from realizing or accepting the fact that things have changed for the worse.

Moreover, there is the possibility that people might get too complacent that they would no longer bother to identify key issues, such as those involving attitudes or cultures that need to be changed.

Article Summary
The story of Reena Virk, a fourteen year old, East Indian girl, illustrates this point. In “Reena Virk’s short life and lonely death: swept away: a 14-year-    old girl beaten by the very teens she wanted as friends was left to the cold salt-water,” Cernetig tells a classic story of a girl coming from a minority group who, for this reason, desperately tries to fit in her new surroundings.
Being taken from her home, she finds herself in a new but unfriendly environment where teenagers already knew each other. It did not help Reena at all that she was overweight. Thus, she got picked on by the other teenagers in her school.
However, this classic story turned out worse than it should have. While the usual story ends happily, with the ugly duckling fitting in after sometime, this one ended, quite tragically, in Reena’s death.
Unbeknownst to the local community, small groups of teenagers in the local schools had been forming gangs that are similar to those seen in television shows featuring Los Angeles gangs (Cernetig). Moreover, these teenagers appear to have been influenced by songs and shows that abound in mainstream media, which all glorify violence and the proliferation of gangs.
Examples of these media are what Cernetig calls “gangsta-rap CDs (Cernetig).” This influence has gone to the extent of ending up with a murdered young girl, without anyone taking responsibility for it, despite the fact that several suspects have already been apprehended (Cernetig).
The story gets more notorious because of the delay with which Reena’s body was found. One week has passed before the police were able to locate her body. Moreover, their theory on the case had been built largely on speculations based on stories that had circulated about town.
Analysis
Reena’s story raises several issues for critical analysis. The first one involves the media’s portrayal of an L.A. gang. This is a crucial issue in the story because this was apparently the main reason why people at very young ages are exposed to violence. Worse, the media is shown to be primarily responsible for building a certain image of a gang as cool or fun.