
The story of "Videotape" by Daniel DeLillo is a story about a little girl who is catching a Homicide of a highway driver on camera.  The story is told from the perspective of the narrator who is watching the video from his home.  This was not his first time however seeing the video as the narrator says " ... you know from the hand wave exactly when he will be hit" (DeLillo 60).  The author goes into a lot more detail in the story to give a very vivid picture of exactly how the murder happened.  But he also gives us a description of how the narrator feels as well giving us perspective on not only the murder of the girl filming but how a normal family would react to it.  DeLillo's use of perspective, detailed imagery, and foreshadowing in the story tells us a story of not only a homicide caught on camera, but also the changing of society due to the advancements of media and technology. 

The story has a unique feel to it when it is being read particularly because of the perspective it is being told in.  The story is told from the view of a narrator who is describing to you the murder of a man on the highway.  This man is told to be named the "Texas Highway Killer".  The story described to you with the plotline of the video being shown on the news, but with the commentary of the narrator.  This commentary adds a second storyline into the story itself.  The first one being the actual video and the second being the reaction and comments of the narrator while he is watching it from home.  

These two stories also provide us with two different meanings in the story.  The first story provides us with a theme of how unpredictable and sporadic life is.  The narrator states that there are many reasons that someone would watch the video.  Maybe because the video is suspenseful because you eventually know the innocent video with have an unexpected turn into a horror film.  Or that you could find it exciting to watch something so real.  But he also hints that you would watch it just to really see the "risk of existing".  That simply living an ordinary life can be unpredictable and you never know what the next moment will have in store for you.  

The 2nd, deeper, meaning found in the story is seen through the comments and actions of the narrator.  The narrator throughout the story is telling his wife to keep watching the video, even though he knows the gruesome events that are going to happen soon.  He comments that usually he has his own programs and that the wife has her own.  But he made sure that she watched it.  This is because of how intense the film was or because of how real it all was.  The narrator states that " ... it is real this time, not fancy movie violence ... " (DeLillo 62).  Meaning that what was being televised for everyone to see was an actual person dying, someone's murder.  With the perspective of the narrator added to the story you see that DeLillo is writing this story as commentary of what technology is exposing society to.  These exposures are overall bad in his mind and he doesn't like it.

Proof of this second message is seen in many places throughout the story.  One big piece of evidence that proves this message is the way he wrote the story at all.  The story didn't need to be told by a narrator that was watching it on his television set.  But the whole story is told through the viewing and thoughts of the narrator himself.  The narrator comments on how the video destroys the image society has molded and made over many years.  He says the video is more real than society has even made life today. He claims that "The things around you have a rehearsed and layered and cosmetic look ...  It is what lies at the scraped bottom of all the layers you have added".  This could be a comment on how media glorifies life or how people live in arrogance of their world and how unpredictable it all could be.  This theme could be interpreted, but more through the story of the shooting itself.  The reason the extra commentary was added was to show that the video playing is desynthesizing society to graphic material such as actual murder.  This proof is especially present when the narrator says "This is either the tenth or eleventh homicide committed by the Texas Highway Killer. The number is uncertain because the police believe that one of the shootings may have been a copycat crime" (DeLillo 62).  This small paragraph is not needed for you to understand the plot of the story.  And you wouldn't have missed any details if he had just said ten people have been killed by the Texas Highway Killer.  This little paragraph is an example of how society is changing, in this case for the worse, with technology in the media.  Maybe only ten people would be dead, but because of how mainstream the murder became on all types of media it may have been copied.  Had you read it in a newspaper or heard of the story the results may have been different.  But you can see exactly how the murderer does it thanks to it being recorded.  All of these points as a whole are ways that DeLillo subtlety adds his comments on how society is being manipulated thanks to technology and the media. 

This story is a very interesting one that has many different parts and perspectives inside of it.  These perspectives tells us stories that lie within the original story.  The use of a narrator gives us a deeper meaning of the story beyond just a homicide from the "Texas Highway Killer".  It tells us a story of a changing society that is being exposed to new forms of media because of many new advancements in technology.  Specific lines like the one talking about a copycat killer would prove that the author believes that these changes are bad for society as they are copying what they are simply seeing in the news on the television.  Overall the author does not like this change in the way news is portrayed but also does not offer a solution.  He also suggest from the last line that even though he does not agree with the portrayal of homicides in the news, it is being played because it is what the people want to see.  They were exposed to it and now things like this are always played because it is demanded, forever changing what and how the media plays today.  

