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Bezig met laden... "No One Helped": Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy (2015)door Marcia M. Gallo
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In "No One Helped" Marcia M. Gallo examines one of America's most infamous true-crime stories: the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens, New York. Front-page reports in the New York Times incorrectly identified thirty-eight indifferent witnesses to the crime, fueling fears of apathy and urban decay. Genovese's life, including her lesbian relationship, also was obscured in media accounts of the crime. Fifty years later, the story of Kitty Genovese continues to circulate in popular culture. Although it is now widely known that there were far fewer actual witnesses to the crime than was reported in 1964, the moral of the story continues to be urban apathy. "No One Helped" traces the Genovese story's development and resilience while challenging the myth it created."No One Helped" places the conscious creation and promotion of the Genovese story within a changing urban environment. Gallo reviews New York's shifting racial and economic demographics and explores post-World War II examinations of conscience regarding the horrors of Nazism. These were important factors in the uncritical acceptance of the story by most media, political leaders, and the public despite repeated protests from Genovese's Kew Gardens neighbors at their inaccurate portrayal. The crime led to advances in criminal justice and psychology, such as the development of the 911 emergency system and numerous studies of bystander behaviors. Gallo emphasizes that the response to the crime also led to increased community organizing as well as feminist campaigns against sexual violence. Even though the particulars of the sad story of her death were distorted, Kitty Genovese left an enduring legacy of positive changes to the urban environment. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)364.152Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Criminology Crimes and Offenses Offenses against persons HomicideLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3)
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1
Gallo takes Kitty Genovese's murder and, rather than putting it under a microscope as with a typical true crime book, instead takes a much broader look. This story does not focus on Genovese, but more uses her as a central point in which various threads connect. For the most part, this approach works well. I would have liked more information on Kitty Genovese, so I could know her as a person. The details here are scant, which I find particularly odd since one of Gallo's complaints throughout this book is that Genovese was overlooked, with all the focus being on the 37 silent witnesses. Here Genovese is not as much overlooked as she is overshadowed.
The writing is good, straightforward, and easy to follow. The content and, perhaps, lack of writing is where I stumbled. First, much of this story is told through various quotes taken from numerous sources. Gallo's voice is often lost or altogether absent within other people's words. The result feels more like a compilation of facts, rather than a cohesive book.
I also feel like Gallo occasionally lost her way, providing far too much content on unrelated issues. For instance, we learn more than I'll ever need (or want) to know about Abe Rosenthal, who at the time worked for the New York Times newspaper. While his stories certainly were a heavy influence on the type of coverage Genovese's murder received, at times I felt I was reading a biography of the man's life. We're given excessive detail on matters in his past that could have been handled with a few paragraphs. This often myopic view of Rosenthal also has the misfortune of portraying him as the central figure, a man able to twist stories to his liking, while ignoring the complicity of all those around him.
For me, this book's strength is in the attention it brings to the power and bias of media. This has not changed since Genovese's murder. If anything, the problem has grown worse. Stories the media chooses to cover, how those stories are portrayed, and what the media chooses to ignore all shape our view of the world. The media is dominated by a select few. They decide what is newsworthy. They take their own biases into each story, and their coverage is, intentionally or not, a reflection of those biases. The majority of people only have one or two main sources for their news, and so what they learn is based upon what someone else wants them to know.
This book encompasses a vast amount of sociological information surrounding the Genovese's murder, and for me the appeal came in those surrounding details. If your interest is mainly the story of Kitty Genovese's murder, this book probably won't hold the same appeal for you.
*I was provided with a free ebook copy by the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for my honest review.* (