Media and Community Theme Analysis

The Laramie Project portrays the town of Laramie, Wyoming struggling with how the media’s portrayal of Matthew Shepard’s murder reflects or contradicts their own vision of their community. As the play opens, characters describe Laramie as a friendly, normal place. In the introduction, Sergeant Hing describes Laramie as "a good place to live," Rebecca Hilliker says that "you have the opportunity to be happy in your life here," and Jedidiah Schultz says that "Laramie is a beautiful town...[where] you can have your own identity." Since Matthew’s murder, however, media coverage has made Laramie nationally synonymous with a hate crime—as Jedidiah Schultz notes, Laramie is now "a town defined by an accident... a crime."

Many characters attribute what they see as Laramie’s excessively negative reputation to the onslaught of media coverage in the wake of Matthew's murder. Jon Peacock describes "hundreds of reporters...everywhere” and says that “the town is not used to that kind of exposure," emphasizing how unusual it is for Laramie to be put under a microscope. The presence of such intense media coverage is met with mixed and often resentful feelings on the part of the townspeople. Many believe that the coverage is invasive and interferes with the community's ability to deliver justice and heal. Tiffany Edwards, a local journalist, calls the out-of-town journalists "predators" and describes how reporters tried to talk to the judge of Matthew’s case while he was in the bathroom. Tiffany seems to imply that the journalists are harming the community, as they fail to respect the town’s privacy during a difficult time. Others in Laramie are primarily frustrated not by concerns about privacy, but by what they see as a biased portrayal of the town. Sergeant Hing calls the news stories "sensationalist" while Eileen Engen says the community was "more or less maligned" by the journalists. Sergeant Hing and Eileen Engen’s comments suggest that they are upset by the way that the journalism is focusing on Laramie’s troubles, rather than painting a more balanced picture.

Some characters, however, feel these news stories expose the discomfort they have felt in Laramie for a long time. Tiffany Edwards thinks that the media finally "made people accountable" to what happened to Matthew, forcing them to confront their own latent homophobia. Zubaida Ula remembers with frustration how, at the candlelight vigil, someone called for the citizens to show that "Laramie is not this kind of town." Zubaida sees people’s obsession with Laramie regaining a good reputation as misguided, since the community should instead focus inwardly on trying to change its culture of homophobia.

Though the characters’ opinions about the media are varied, the frequency with which they mention the media shows how much the press has affected the town, and particularly the extent to which negative news stories have forced residents of Laramie to look more closely at the cruelties and contradictions of their community. In this way, though the press can be biased, predatory, and frustrating, it also serves the purpose of not allowing Laramie residents to ignore or forget what happened. In part because of the negative news stories, The Laramie Project shows Laramie residents actively examining who they are and who they would like to be as a community.