The Satanic Verses

advance of the water cannons; and, obeying an irresistible primal reflex, turned tail and ran, not knowing that he was going the wrong way, running full speed in the direction of the Shaandaar.

    Television cameras arrive just in time for the raid on Club Hot Wax.
    This is what a television camera sees: less gifted than the human eye, its night vision is limited to what klieg lights will show. A helicopter hovers over the nightclub, urinating light in long golden streams; the camera understands this image. The machine of state bearing down upon its enemies. – And now there’s a camera in the sky; a news editor somewhere has sanctioned the cost of, aerial photography, and from another helicopter a news team is
shooting down
. No attempt is made to chase this helicopter away. The noise of rotor blades drowns the noise of the crowd. In this respect, again, video recording equipment is less sensitive than, in this case, the human ear.
    – Cut. – A man lit by a sun-gun speaks rapidly into a microphone. Behind them there is a disorderment of shadows. Butbetween the reporter and the disordered shadow-lands there stands a wall: men in riot helmets, carrying shields. The reporter speaks gravely; petrolbombs plasticbullets policeinjuries water-cannon looting, confining himself, of course, to facts. But the camera sees what he does not say. A camera is a thing easily broken or purloined; its fragility makes it fastidious. A camera requires law, order, the thin blue line. Seeking to preserve itself, it remains behind the shielding wall, observing the shadow-lands from afar, and of course from above: that is, it chooses sides.
    – Cut. – Sun-guns illuminate a new face, saggy-jowled, flushed. This face is named: sub-titled words appear across his tunic.
Inspector Stephen Kinch
. The camera sees him for what he is: a good man in an impossible job. A father, a man who likes his pint. He speaks: cannot-tolerate-no-go-areas better-protection-required-for-policemen see-the-plastic-riot-shields-catching-fire. He refers to organized crime, political agitators, bomb-factories, drugs. ‘We understand some of these kids may feel they have grievances but we will not and cannot be the whipping boys of society.’ Emboldened by the lights and the patient, silent lenses, he goes further. These kids don’t know how lucky they are, he suggests. They should consult their kith and kin. Africa, Asia, the Caribbean: now those are places with real problems. Those are places where people might have grievances worth respecting. Things aren’t so bad here, not by a long chalk; no slaughters here, no torture, no military coups. People should value what they’ve got before they lose it. Ours always was a peaceful land, he says. Our industrious island race. – Behind him, the camera sees stretchers, ambulances, pain. – It sees strange humanoid shapes being hauled up from the bowels of the Club Hot Wax, and recognizes the effigies of the mighty. Inspector Kinch explains. They cook them in an oven down there, they call it fun, I wouldn’t call it that myself. – The camera observes the wax models with distaste. – Is there not something
witchy
about them, something cannibalistic, an unwholesome smell? Have
black arts
been practised here? – The camera sees broken windows. It sees something burning in the middle distance: a car, a shop. It cannot understand, or demonstrate,what any of this achieves. These people are burning their own streets.
    – Cut. – Here is a brightly lit video store. Several sets have been left on in the windows; the camera, most delirious of narcissists, watches TV, creating, for an instant, an infinite recession of television sets, diminishing to a point. – Cut. – Here is a serious head bathed in light: a studio discussion. The head is talking about
outlaws
. Billy the Kid, Ned Kelly: these were men who stood
for
as well as
against
. Modern mass-murderers, lacking this heroic dimension, are no more than sick, damaged beings, utterly blank as personalities, their crimes distinguished by an attention to procedure, to methodology – let’s say
ritual –
driven, perhaps, by the nonentity’s longing to be noticed, to rise out of the ruck and become, for a moment, a star. – Or by a kind of transposed death-wish: to kill the beloved and so destroy the self. –
Which is the Granny Ripper
? a questioner asks.
And what about Jack? –
The true outlaw, the head insists, is a dark mirror-image of the hero.