Seeds of Hate Planted in Laramie

Michael Ufkes

Seeds of Hate Planted in Laramie

The Laramie project is a film that astutely observes a small town’s ability to capture the attention of an entire nation through a single, appalling act of violence. Matthew Shepard, a promising 21-year-old human rights activist, was a resident of this small Wyoming town. Unfortunately, he also served as the origin of the town’s abrupt infamy. Matthew Shepard was a gay man who was brutally beaten, tortured and left to die in the remote plains of Wyoming. The untimely death of Mr. Sheppard marked yet another heinous act produced by a small town, eerily reminiscent of tragedies such as the Scott Joe Weaver murder and the Lawrence King shooting. The remainder of this analysis will be dedicated to revealing some of these towns’ inherent cultural facets which aid in cultivating an atmosphere of tremendous hate and discrimination. By investigating various mindsets, beliefs and communal interactions we may be able to conclusively infer why these tragedies arise amidst similar settings. In regards to the audience towards which this analysis is primarily focused, I subscribe to the belief that the nation as a whole should have a vested interest in this matter. I make this claim as repercussions of such catastrophes span not over a single town, district or state, but have a resounding national influence. It is the responsibility of the entire nation, not just the towns or states in which these tragedies occur, to take action against such atrocities and not treat them as mere ephemeral national issues.

The first characteristic of Laramie, which could have been easily predicted as a precursor to the Matthew Shepard murder, was the unabashed, prejudiced treatment of the gay community. Throughout the film there are a plethora of examples illuminating the uncomfortable tensions between avid conservatives and their hesitant liberal counterparts. However, in one of the first Laramie interviews, the presence of a more blatant form of discrimination is established. Marge Murray, a long time Laramie resident and social worker is the first to expound upon this cruelty. “They might poke one, if they were in a bar situation, you know, they had been drinking, they might actually smack one in the mouth, but then they’d just walk away.” The detached manner in which she states this apparently accepted societal conduct is bewildering. After explaining how a gay man may very well be poked or smacked in the mouth for simply being in attendance at a local bar, she justifies these actions by categorizing them as the extent to which gay people were harassed. In other words, Ms. Murray informs the interviewer that the barometer for which gay people can be mistreated includes, but is also limited to, occasional bigotry and physical violence. What is frightening is the fact that these are views held by a relatively neutral member of the Laramie community. They represent beliefs commonly held amongst the mothers, aunts, uncles, workers, and teachers of the town. These beliefs, which were distinctly doused in racism, did not even take into account the more fanatical viewpoints of the Laramie population. It seemed as though this discrimination had permeated the very fabric of the town’s culture and had firmly established itself as a norm, never to be questioned or scrutinized. What I now call into question is how, under such insular conditions, was the travesty surrounding Matthew Shepard not expected? When analyzing the peculiar almost “twilight zone-esque” atmosphere that these people lived in, it is undeniable that Laramie was a hotbed for this type of racially charged behavior. The fact that this discriminatory treatment was widely held as a standard of the town, also speaks to a very enabling demeanor that the people had adopted. In essence, the majority of the town had an adamant interest in perpetuating the town’s inequality. Prior to the Matthew Shepard murder, those who refuted this discrimination were quieted by the deeply enrooted intolerance the town had embraced. To sum, I attribute this very deliberate and widely accepted intolerance, as one of the towns foremost reasons for the imminent hate crime. Anytime a town collectively adheres to the maltreatment of a certain demographic, they epitomize an atmosphere where tragedy is simply unavoidable.

The second characteristic of Laramie that undoubtedly contributed to the ultimate execution of Matthew Shepard revolves around the convoluted idea encapsulated by the term “live and let live.” This is a phrase that surfaces frequently among the film’s dialogue and refers to the principle that people were “free” to pursue whatever personal endeavors as long as they were not made public. Jonas Slonaker, a gay resident of Laramie, helps to exemplify how the live and let live motto was not embedded in any form of acceptance, but rather was utilized as means of passive aggressive tolerance. “Live and Let live, that is crap you know? Basically what it boils down to: If I don’t tell you I’m a fag, you wont beat the crap out of me. That’s a great philosophy?” Further, the motto was seemingly implemented to abate the evil that gay people could potentially infect the rest of the town with. The live and let live credo inherently created an invisible partition, isolating one group from the rest. It was a theory that left those minority members in quarantine, unable to truly live as they desired. It is evident, upon further analysis, that live and let live is not an expression striving for freedom, but an axiom devoted to repression and segregation. It represented an avenue for those uncomfortable with gays to do the bare minimum in both acknowledging and tolerating their presence.

A community is composed of the network of people living in a common area or land. These interactions are based on societal interactions and relational synergism. But when these components of a community are only applicable to certain “favorable” demographics, it leaves room for festering tensions and hostility among the population. Ultimately, this deeply seeded hostility manifested itself into the violent murder of Matthew Shepard. Where the live and let live doctrine spoke to a hallow sense of tolerance, what it should have been promoting is unreserved acceptance. Briefly defined, tolerance is “the capacity to endure an amount of variation or behavior that one does not agree with”. In and of itself, the definition harbors a sense of forced compliance with an unwanted factor. This was the mindset of many of the Laramie residents. They were simply enduring the presence of an unwanted people. In recognizing the meaning of tolerance it is not farfetched to conclude that those who murdered Matthew Shepard were simply tired of enduring the stigma that he represented. Live and let live did an excellent job in disguising its underlying objectives and offered a collective excuse for the societal interactions of Laramie. To reiterate my initial argument, the deconstruction of the live and let live phrase is yet another example of a widely accepted belief that led to the preordained murder of Matthew Shepard. It is useful in the sense that it serves as a warning sign, that any town which pledges a halfhearted allegiance to tolerance exhibits resistance to fully accepting the group in question. In essence, Laramie used the live and let live phrase to avoid the more difficult task of accepting divergent lifestyles.

In summation, by explicating both the blatant and implicit forms of prejudice incorporated by Laramie, it is not difficult to assume that conflicting convictions would ultimately reach a devastating climax. What is most valuable from this tragedy is that it magnified the specific environmental components that often result in malicious acts. By placing Matthew Shepard on a large, national scale, more people may have been inclined to acknowledge specific facets that their own town shared with Laramie. In doing so, some of these hate-inciting factors could be potentially avoided. Recognizing these detrimental societal factors and being proactive in their elimination is the underlying premise upon which this analysis is based.