The short story "Videotape," written by Don DeLillo, is about a young girl innocently recording a man as he is murdered while driving. A man watching the news footage from his living room narrates it. The second person point of view reflects the reader in the obsessions of the young girl, the narrator and the murderer. The obsession created in modern society to record and replay is seen through the cycled effects of videotapes and is better understood with phrase repetition, sentence structure, and contrasting images of perception.  

Obsession is an eerie power that will find a vulnerable mind to control as its own. A young girl in the back seat of her family car accidentally captures a murder on video. Up until the point of the gunshot, the girl records this man in the car behind them out of pure curiosity. "He is shot, headshot, and the camera reacts, the child reacts there is a jolting movement but she keeps on taping, there is a sympathetic response, a nerve response, her heart is beating faster but she keeps the camera trained on the subject as he slides into the door" (DeLillo 62). The contrasting images of violence and innocence depicted in this quote are disturbing, yet tender. Repetition is used in the sentence structure starting with a general idea, "he is shot and the camera reacts", followed by the same idea, "headshot and the child reacts", only more specific. The reader feels grief, as the young girl's innocence essentially dies with the man. The quote states, "she kept the camera trained", as if there was some sort of prior preparation, and the reader wonders why a person would keep watching another human being die. There must be a compulsion because to think "at some level she has to be present, the girl is seeing the murder cold and you have to marvel at the fact that she keeps the tape rolling"; it is the ability to record and replay (DeLillo 62). The young girls obsession is apparent when she continues to tape, now that this video exists it has also become the source of others obsession. 

     The narrator has become an image of himself within this obsession of recording and replaying. He describes the video clip; "it shows a man in a sport shirt at the wheel of his car. There is nothing else to see. The car approaches briefly, then falls back" (DeLillo 59). Based on the line "there is nothing else to see", the clip first seems to be very dull, slow, and boring to the reader. As the story proceeds, the narrators' description of the video becomes more vivid; "it shows a man in his forties wearing a pale shirt open at the throat, the image washed by reflections and sunglint, with many jostled moments"(DeLillo 60). The narrator becomes more familiar with the order of events that seemed nonexistent in the beginning; he has memorized them. 

"If you've seen the tape many times you know from the hand wave exactly when he will be hit Now here is where he gets it. You see him jolted, sort of wireshocked then he seizes up and falls toward the door or maybe leans or slides into the door is the proper way to put it. The car stays in the slow lane. It approaches briefly, then falls back."(DeLillo 61) 

The use of "if" in the beginning of this quote seems to create a hypothetical situation, however, it is also the narrator relating that it is not. The narrator conveys a sense of enthusiasm when he knowingly is at the pinpoint right before the climax of the video, right before the man is shot.  He is aware of his obsession and confesses it as normal, "It is something, naturally, that you wait for" (DeLillo 61). He has himself, his obsession, on replay.   

The murder is an effect of a mind ruled by obsession. Obsession intercepted a mind, which then crossed paths with the man driving his car. The junction is, "Random energies that approach a common point, lines of intersection that cut through history and logic and every reasonable layer of human expectation," it is a pool of victimization (62). The murderer in the story can be viewed as an innocent victim to the ruthless power of obsession. However, in society, the person behind the murder is to blame. The murder of the man driving his car is one of many that occurred on the same highway. The murderer "commits the crimes as if they were a form of taped-and-played event" (62), on the same road span. With the same background and method, it is as if the serial killer is replaying the same murder. The perpetrator is obsessed with reviewing murder. 

The young girl, narrator, and murderer's obsessions are a reflection of the reader as an individual and modern society as a whole. The newfound familiarity of video cameras and their ability to essentially see things twice has created a new way to experience reality. Video cameras were originally created to capture memorable moments such as family gatherings, a father's message from overseas, or possibly a child's first steps. The purpose was solely to capture the moment, as video is "a persistence that lives outside the subject matter"(60). The word persistence implicates the continuous effect a video has once it exists. The effect of reviewing and reliving a moment has changed the way people live in a moment and experience reality. In a way, another dimension seems to exist, "The world is lurking in the camera, already framed, waiting for the boy or girl who will come along and take up the device, and learn the instrument"(60), within this inanimate object. The word lurking creates a creepy feeling, similar to that of obsession, and gives the video footage a sort of power, or intention other than to just be. The repeated images of camcorders throughout the story are a reflection of society's obsession. 

Video camera's ability to see things twice has altered the way in which reality is experienced. This cycle has created an obsession in the modern culture and is better understood with the use of repetition, sentence structure, and imagery. The short story, "Videotape," has three scenarios of this obsession of record and replay occurring at the same time. The young girl does not stop recording the murder, the narrator himself repeatedly replays the young girls video, and the murderer acts out the crime as if it were to be recorded and replayed. The use of second person point of view turns the characters of the story into a reflection of individuals in society today.  

