The missing (now dead) ingenue and the charming (but deadly) cad are sincerely tragic tropes regardless of their 19th Century melodramatic overtones. But there other aspects of this story far more worrying to me than the plight of two starred-crossed lovers.
In an opinion piece penned by Jack Shafer and published in Politico magazine on 29 SEP 2021 entitled - What’s Driving the Media’s Gabby Petito Addiction Mr. Shafer adroitly navigates the long psychological corridors of why human beings spend countless hours consumed by cases such as Gabby Petito's. With this said, let me say, this essay is not about Gabby Petito.
Nor is it about her missing and seemingly mystically fiance/boyfriend/assailant/soul-mate/would-be/maybe killer and dubious bank fraudster. There is plenty of pen to ink on those two and why bother to add more; at least in the sense of adding more wild speculation to a bundle of theories wrapped in a bag of supposition and tied with a bow of pure conjecture. Considering that the very nature of Ms. Petito's death is conjecture itself pending a cause of death, and even her nature of death waivers from "homicide" to "possible homicide" to "probably homicide" depending on the paper reporting it, what can any reasonable person conclusively add?
What Jack Shafer got especially correct in his essay was that damsels in distress (especially pretty, somewhat vapid ones) sell ads - or at lease the ratings reporting on them does, and as such, they make a lot of money for the media reporting it. Stories like Petito-Laundrie, where both parties look so mediocre it's no wonder the boyfriend has vanished into thin air, especially so. A wiry 23 year old with facial hair, random tattoos and a diffident air in the 21st Century, plowing along in board shorts, a ball cap, and a tee shirt? How could you possibly overlook him? Put aside the fact that on any given day on any given beach there are 200 Brian Laundries walking down any given boardwalk, and unless he had no presence of mind to throw a razor in his backpack, he could look like nearly anyone in less than five minutes time.
The very mediocrity of these two is my first worrying aspect. When I see Petito-Laundrie I see first and foremost two young people raised on a steady diet of Reality TV with a gooey confection of parental exceptionalism for dessert. Had this been some sort of run-of-the-mill coming-of-age odyssey gone tragically wrong, that would have been sad but far less ratings worthy. I think the press in general got a break in that these two were the pretty face of youthful angst in the 21st century. The sadly tortured environmentalist driven mad to save a dying planet; his fair maiden in arms whipping up her camp-side breakfast of $7.99 a pint blueberries as she bemoans (and he patronizingly soothes) her disappointment that all the organically grown, fair-trade chocolate, has melted into a blob in the Moab dessert. Sigh. Where is the real tragedy here? Death, spoiled yogurt, or melted chocolate? We report - you decide.
I am not intentionally making light of a tragic death; the death of any young person is horrific, and if it turns out to be murder, even more so - but I cannot help but feel that these two former store clerks cum "artist" and "influencer," were more a product of our own obsessive cult of celebrity than anything else. Since their chosen lives were centered on sanitized and carefully crafted exhibitionism, it's only logical that our snake-bird fascination would be couched as gnawing concern and perpetual outrage, since it's a genteel cover for our own otherwise blatant voyeurism. If there is an overarching silver lining to this grim, malevolent cloud, it's that setting off on a journey to achieve notoriety, Petito-Laundrie accomplished just that.
My next worrying aspect are the parental units. On one hand we have the Helicopter Parents Side I, who despite not hearing from their daughter or their potential son-in-law for days on end, decide to stay in Long Island making unanswered calls and fretting over unopened e-mails. Call me crazy, but I would have hopped on one of the 20 daily flights between La Guardia and Tampa International Airport and been knocking on some doors. Then there are Helicopter Parents Side II, who when their son comes home sans future daughter-in-law, decide a trek to black fly and mosquito infested Fort De Soto is just the thing the whole family needs for a happy reunion. If I had been in the back of a van for two months, the last place I would have been going was on a camping trip with my parents to Fort De Soto park, in a camper smaller than some tents.
The behavior after this trip ended is only slightly stranger than the behavior before it even started. Whereas the Petitos no doubt loved their daughter, was it wise not to protest more vociferously when she went off to live with her on again/off again boyfriend at his parents' home in Florida? Considering the young couple's peers saw a consistent pattern of irregularity and toxicity in their relationship, how did the parents miss it?
Chances are they didn't. Chances are they were consumed with a reoccurring concept in modern parenting where good counsel, advice, and the use of guilt as leverage over recalcitrant and know-it-all adult children is eschewed as "judging" and "shaming." We certainly wouldn't want the parents to hear those dreaded words "okay boomer!" Much better to let the kids go and follow their own path to perdition. Of all my worrying aspects this one galls me most. I certainly don't want children coddled by their parents, but on the other hand, a certain degree of 1970's style parenting could have done no harm, especially when long trips under confinement only exacerbate stresses under the happiest of circumstances. A strongly worded protest (and an absence of ALL financial support) might have gone a long way to mitigating the length and/or advisability of this ill-fated trip. Here it is worth noting, I am not blaming the parents directly; they are only following the current concepts in parenting. If there is any blame to be had it's held by society in general who has become obsessed with parent-child friendships in lieu of critical parenting. The idea that to do otherwise might undermine confidence and/or erode ego presupposes that confidence does not morph into arrogance and that ego is a good thing. Ego is never a good thing by the way, since it invariably trails off into hubris.
Perhaps my most worrying aspect of all however, is the ubiquity of our current surveillance state. Since Mr. Laundrie vanished without a trace into the ether, the shear abundance of images (or potential images) is astounding. And these are only the ones publicly acknowledged. Whether we fully realize it or not, a web of cameras active and passive swirl and snap around us constantly.
We can watch in minute detail (and roundly criticize) local police in a summer resort town for not "running in" two kids for fighting in public; preferring to not encumber their young lives with police records and assault charges which (by the way) neither party filed, but instead suggesting (and providing through established social services protocols) a cool-off period between the two, perhaps sensing the deep stresses involved in coping with spoiled yogurt and melted chocolate. For those who want to de-fund the police please take note - this is exactly what I saw when I watched the Moab police in action; a carefully constructed woke approach to policing complete with a social worker in uniform and a motel stay on the Utah taxpayers' dime to allow "breathing space." It's also worth noting that if anyone was going to jail on that day, it was the eventual victim, Ms. Petito. But facts like these are as inconvenient as they are stubborn when you want to spin a tale of victim-hood suitable for the whole human condition. This in itself is its own worrying aspect, and a tragedy of its own self-perpetrating orders of magnitude.
However, departing from the official photos which we can assume by the one warrant issued for the arrest of Mr. Laundrie for bank fraud, includes an ATM snap when he used his fiance's ATM card and pin, we have untold others from deer cams, trail cams, photo bombs, clandestine snaps, and who knows what else. Where once all the world was a stage and everyone was an actor, now all the world's a TV set and everyone a director, producer, and/or cameraman. The unnerving fact that at any moment of the day we could be snapped doing anything innocent or not is troubling enough, but when governments and law enforcers turn the reigns over to the public and call for a virtual posse, well, all bet are off.
So, tempting as it may be to view this case as merely one more example of "Missing White Woman" syndrome it's really much more. The sad tragedy of Ms. Petito and other young people who die young is unquestionable. To imbue her death after a life of relative ease and moderate privileged does not increase its tragedy; it mitigates it. Think of all the many run-ways, for example, who die entrapped in the life of a sex-worker. Aren't those young deaths a bit more tragic than Ms. Petito's? If you think otherwise, I can only surmise that Ms. Petito's death rings more tragic to you for its aspirational qualities. Could it be that on some macabre level the "Missing White Woman" phenomenon resonates with us because somehow these mediocre, middle-class, mall hopping victims smack us right in the eye of our collective conscientiousness, versus the runaways and other disenfranchised who somehow "brought it on themselves?" It's a valid question.
It's also a valid question that in a country falling apart at the seams, we would consume any time or resources on such a folly as chasing a 23 year-old wannabe anarchist around in a swamp. Have our priorities really gone this terribly awry? And for what? Will interrogating Brian Laundrie make "the lambs stop screaming?" Because that's what this is all beginning to look like to me. A vast snipe hunt to find and capture our own ids running amok in a festering swamp. If you want to see the true tragedy of the Petito-Laundrie True Crime Travelogue, look no further than your own mind's eye because chances are, that's where it's been hiding all along.
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