Every so often, a story seizes the public’s interest. It’s usually a heart-string-tugging, human-interest one. The mass of media track it with persistence, passion and purpose. People take it up on the talk shows and at dinner tables.
The kidnapping (and, now, grimly, the murder) of Johannesburg student Leigh Matthews became this kind of story. It got countless people to pause, pay attention and feel emotionally. Two different people even sent me her picture via e-mail. There were probably few media consumers left untouched by the story.
Prima facie, it was indeed a newsworthy incident. Kidnapping for ransom seems, thankfully, relatively rare in South Africa. The phenomenon has a news novelty value in the way that crimes like hijacking no longer have.
But there are ingredients beyond this that have given the story its media power. In the first instance is a practical factor: Leigh’s father, Rob, was exceedingly media friendly (only going quiet — on ”expert” advice — after a full week of openness). He was available and accessible to dozens of journalists all hungry for updates or even just the sound of his trepidation-filled voice saying there was no new information.
Had he clammed up from the start, the coverage would likely have been a lot less and the social impact proportionately diminished.
Second, in his dealings with the media, Rob came across as a decent and sincere person. There was no alienating anger, no self-pitying or milking of others’ emotions. Instead we saw a distressed yet dignified parent, whose tone and content directly lent themselves to our empathy.
Third, that the man revealed he had paid the requisite ransom, but to no avail, set him in the mould of a tragic figure. Here was a caring father who had tried to secure his daughter’s safe release by playing the game, perhaps naively, but was unethically cheated of her fair return. Who couldn’t feel sorry for him?
Significantly, Leigh’s distraught mother stayed mostly in the background. This suggested the classic image of the female represented by the (braver) male head of the household who deals with the threats of the outside world. We can recognise and understand such a ”reassuringly” familiar, even primordial, gender pattern.
You can begin, perhaps, to see why this story resonated as strongly as it did. Reportedly, about 10 000 SMS messages about Leigh went out via the eblockwatch network. More than 300 people have written messages of support and prayer for the family on a swiftly established website, Findleighmatthews.co.za.
So many phone calls came in that a 24-hour call line had to be set up. Even the African National Congress called for the public to send in information.
What happened to Leigh and her family is certainly a terrible thing. Yet why it stands out from the many other unhappy stories carried in the media has a lot to do with deeper traits in our social psyche.
Essentially, this catastrophe struck a chord because it offered the public multiple and reinforcing points of recognition and thence of identification. The elements were in the circumstances, and it remained only for the media to underline and amplify them.
Thus, in addition to the points already mentioned above, there is, deeply embedded in this particular traumatic experience, an image of a beautiful and innocent maiden in grave danger from an unknown but wholly evil entity. Remember this prototype narrative — probably first encountered in childhood myths and fairy tales?
The point is that Leigh Matthews counts as a modern-day princess. Still preparing for her life ahead when prematurely struck by the dangers of the real world, this has real heart clout as a story. Much more, say, than a middle-aged man taken hostage and murdered while working as a professional reporter in distant Pakistan.
This analysis is not to diminish the anguish of the Leigh Matthews story, only to unpack why it has such a strong pull on people. If you think I am stretching things, consider for a moment: if Leigh had been the male child of a single parent, would our default settings have been equally responsive? Isn’t it our cultural background that conditions our emotional reactions?
What the story highlights is how we think we’re observing only the news in front of us, when the subject matter is in fact being bathed by a bright historical light pouring over our shoulders from behind. Whence we come elucidates the significances in what we see ( … and, in so doing, also elides others).
In short, the Leigh Matthews story unlocks long-banked cultural capital. That is why we can empathise with her and her family. It is an example of how we generally make sense and take moral measure of differing situations reported in the media.
In this case, we followed the archetypes of family and home, sacred symbols of security, being cruelly violated. There is also the timing. Leigh was abducted just before celebrating her 21st birthday. This fact casts additional contrast on the counterposition of normality and aberration, giving a poignant irony to her appalling experience.
All this, then, is part of the interpretative context in terms of which we register the valiant courage of her father — a reluctant hero thrust up against unseen dragons, and one who — significantly — also allowed us to vicariously share in this personal quest for righteousness and justice.
Sadly, too, this case also included ‒ up till Wednesday night – a narrative device made real — the tense uncertainty of how it would all end. This terrible tale is made the more awful because of its deeper symbolic equivalences. And the extra-narrative knowledge, now confirmed with the discovery of Leigh’s body, that not all of life has a fairy-tale ending.
Against this whole backdrop, it is not surprising that the story saw a cynical media switch to sentimental mode and appeal directly to the public to identify with the victims. Thus, the Sunday Times headlined one article: ”Hope for Leigh refuses to die”.
This motif grew, however, into a hyperbolised focus on what to do if you (yep, you!) were to be abducted. However, in effect, this tangent probably served less as a stimulus to general panic and paranoia, and more as an invitation to audiences to deepen their identification with Leigh’s plight.
At the same time, the cultural colours evoked by this story are not entirely race- and ethnicity-free. That the innocent young victim was white and wealthy helps explain why articles and pictures made so many front pages and why they echoed in so many hearts. But there is also more to it than this.
Interestingly, the Sunday Times, in an editorial comment, acknowledged another, though much less publicised, contemporary kidnap story. This was of 17-year-old Zola Mafu taken from her mother in Swaziland to be prepared as a junior wife for South Africa’s very own 55-year-old Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelethini.
The newspaper commented: ”This kind of stuff belongs in centuries long gone.” Unfortunately, Zola’s case illustrates an ethnic tradition that has not yet become the stuff of distant myth and deep legend. This historical status helps account for the lesser coverage and lower mythical resonance of her story. (Of course, Zola is also alive and her whereabouts are known ‒ while Leigh’s case, until Wednesday, was all about uncertainty.)
In contrast to Zola Mafu’s story, Leigh’s case hearkens much more clearly back to more fundamental narrative themes. The power of her story goes deep into the accepted themes of much of human culture.
Thus, she may be white, but she nonetheless had trans-race appeal. She was (despite being ignored by Sunday’s City Press) also the African folk-tale’s unspoilt maiden fetching water at the river only to end up being grabbed by crocodiles. She was the eternal virgin treated as commodity. Her father, who personally drove the streets in hope of spotting her, was the biblical every-parent seeking to bring his offspring back to shelter.
Leigh Matthews’ story is, in short, a reminder of the deep-seated ways in which most of us decode our world. It was a gruesome made-to-measure narrative for the media to score audience resonance. To recognise this is not to denigrate our very human response to this kidnap and, now, its awful outcome. Instead, it is to understand the circumstances in which we let the media move us.
Perhaps it is also to alert media audiences to be more attuned to hidden archetypal resonances in other stories. Especially stories that, like this one, have the potential to bring out the best in our species’ mutual solidarity.
E-mail Guy Berger directly if you have a question about this article.
Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and deputy chair of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). He was recently nominated for the World Technology Awards.