RAT Columbine (Artaud)

[RICKMITCH@aol.com]

     like most "death" we experience--in blood-filled video games, the 
movies, TV, even theater--the Littleton massacre is, for most of us, another 
simulation.  in many ways, it's not unlike the war in Kosovo, operation 
desert storm.  the murdered this time, however, are not "Others," they're 
part of OUR comm'y (to a large degree), so this tragedy seems much worse, to 
most of us, than the multinational deaths sponsored and carried out by the 
("legal," media-supported) war machine, with its friendly, medaled 
commentators proudly showing the world videos (simulations) of direct hits.   
 
     by breaking through the simulation (if that's even possible), could 
Artaud's theater help to explode the spell of a world enveloped in simulacra 
by breaking through to the spectator's humanness,  thus helping him/her to 
finally experience it?  (could it even compete with a daily, six hour dose of 
super nintendo?)  could the Theater of Cruelty show the horror of the 
simulacra for what it is?  but if there's absolutely nothing behind the 
simulacra, if we take a peek behind the mask and it proves to be empty...