The Kitty Genovese Myth and the Popular Imagination

On Mon­day, April 18th a 22-year old woman named Chris­sy Lee Polis was severe­ly beat­en by two teenagers at a McDon­ald’s in Bal­ti­more, while sev­er­al bystanders watched and a McDon­ald’s employ­ee video­taped the whole inci­dent. Late last week, the video went viral, and now the employ­ee has been fired, the two girls (one of whom is only 14) are in cus­tody, and Polis is con­sid­er­ing a civ­il suit. The vic­tim, who is trans­gen­dered, told the Bal­ti­more Sun this week­end that she con­sid­ers the beat­ing a hate crime.

Mean­while, the inci­dent has elicit­ed sev­er­al com­par­isons to the famous 1964 case of Kit­ty Gen­ovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death in the court­yard of her New York City apart­ment build­ing while 38 neigh­bors watched and did noth­ing to help her. The wide­spread cov­er­age of her case had a huge impact on both pol­i­cy and the field of psy­chol­o­gy: The NYPD reformed its tele­phone report­ing sys­tem; researchers began study­ing the bystander effect and dif­fu­sion of respon­si­bil­i­ty; and the dead woman became a sym­bol of the dire con­se­quences of inac­tion.

One of the most ele­gant uses of that sym­bol­ism is the chap­ter (above) from the online motion com­ic based on the graph­ic nov­el Watch­men. Gen­ovese fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the ori­gin sto­ry of the superhero/antihero Wal­ter Joseph Kovacs, aka “Rorschach.” Rorschach con­structs both his iden­ti­ty and his cos­tume as a direct response to the pas­siv­i­ty and even cyn­i­cal voyeurism embod­ied by the neigh­bors who heard and watched her die.

But the actu­al reac­tions of the wit­ness­es to Kit­ty Gen­ovese’s mur­der were more com­pli­cat­ed than orig­i­nal­ly report­ed. It’s unlike­ly, for exam­ple, that any of the infa­mous 38 bystanders heard the entire crime, or real­ized its sever­i­ty in the moment. For a fas­ci­nat­ing account of the dis­crep­an­cies between the facts and myths of the case, you can lis­ten to this 2009 sto­ry on NPR, or read this 2007 arti­cle from Amer­i­can Psy­chol­o­gist (the link is to a PDF from the author’s web­site).

The Kit­ty Gen­ovese para­ble is no less moral­ly instruc­tive for being not quite accu­rate. The bystander effect is still real, the McDon­ald’s work­er’s deci­sion to tape the beat­ing last week rather than stop it is still rep­re­hen­si­ble. And of course, Rorschach is still one of the most right­eous dark avengers in pop­u­lar cul­ture. But it’s worth remem­ber­ing that we’re more like­ly to learn from our mis­takes when we dig for the truth, even — and per­haps espe­cial­ly — when the truth isn’t so sim­ple.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly


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Comments (4)
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  • Harrison H says:

    If the bystander effect is real, was film­ing the beat­ing a deci­sion that was made, and if so can the action then be rep­re­hen­si­ble?

    There were oth­er peo­ple watch­ing too, why sin­gle the per­son who filmed it out? From a util­i­tar­i­an point of view, the fact that it has been doc­u­ment­ed (and wide­ly pub­li­cised) means this could have a greater good.
    That’s some­thing you sug­gest­ed while talk­ing about the Kit­ty Gen­ovese case by say­ing

    “The wide­spread cov­er­age of her case had a huge impact on both pol­i­cy and the field of psy­chol­o­gy: The NYPD reformed its tele­phone report­ing sys­tem; researchers began study­ing the bystander effect and dif­fu­sion of respon­si­bil­i­ty; and the dead woman became a sym­bol of the dire con­se­quences of inac­tion.”

    I think it is easy to for­get the video and what hap­pened are two dif­fer­ent things, both won’t have the same impact or pow­er as each oth­er. We should be thank­ful a video was made at all.

  • I’d just like to point out that the youtube video in your post is not from the Watch­men Motion Com­ic at all, it’s just some fan-made video using scans from the Watch­men GN. The Motion Com­ic is much bet­ter.

  • James says:

    I can’t access the PDF, but on the Gen­ovese case, it’s worth not­ing that the police did not find any­where near 38 wit­ness­es. That num­ber seems to have been pulled out of thin air. They actu­al­ly found about ten, only a cou­ple of whom actu­al­ly saw any­thing, and one of them actu­al­ly did scream out “Leave that girl alone!”

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