Tragedy, My Lai and Media

The technical and canonical notions of 'tragedy' have been functionally selective in varying applications in Western culture. The parameters of the tragic paradigm have been thrown into relief by its variant application to the crisis caused in the USA by the revelation of the My Lai massacre. This was mediated to the public as 'an American tragedy' by Time in 1969, while the 1988 British television documentary Four Hours in My Lai translated 'tragedy' into a televisual idiom. The two cases suggest that 'the tragic' remains a powerful resource available to modern media for dealing with ideological breakdown.