STAY INSIDE. LOCK DOORS. -- school shootings in real life and in the movies

[hedwig]

this is a thread to discuss school shootings in real life and in the movies.

i am subscribed to text message alerts from my university's main campus in tampa, florida. usually it's a warning about a chemical spill in the science lab. no big deal. occasionally, however, my phone buzzes with EMERGENCY ALERTS about bomb threats and spotted gunmen. twenty minutes ago i received this:

"EMERGENCY: Armed intruder on campus. Stay inside. Lock doors. Emergency personnel responding."

a few minutes later: "Reports of an armed person on campus at the Library. Offices are on scene searching the area. Avoid the area and report anything suspicious."

20 more minutes have passed. no updates.

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this exhaustive account of the Columbine shooting, written by an investigative journalist who reported on the case, was published earlier in the year:



i read reviews and inferred author dave cullen's main assertion to be that the media screwed up most of the major facts on columbine and never bothered to go back and correct these inaccuracies once the event was out of people's minds. as a result pretty much everyone from journalists to artists (including gus van sant) put forth completely warped versions of eric and dylan. he concludes that every explanation we've cooked up for columbine has been a bullshit projection of our own agendas.

i love Elephant, personally. one of my favorite van sant films. i think it deals with that same idea. i never understood the resentment toward that film. i suppose audiences felt GVS ducked the obligation of attempting to explain why the shooting occurred, but i don't think that's the case it all. WHY it happened is only one way of understanding it anyway. there is more to something than the why. Elephant is more about how it happened. it brilliantly establishes every angle of this oddly placid environment before the whole thing is ruptured by carnage. hurts to watch. it's not "cold", definitely not. i feel almost unsettled by how intimate we become with these characters in such a short amount of time. the performances help a great deal in this regard. they are realer than real to us, and then we watch as they are shot to death. the scene with the photographer in the library reminds us to stop asking why this happened and instead assess ourselves and our voyeuristic need to know and see every last ghoulish detail.

what are other good insightful movies about school shootings? i remember picolas recommended something a little while ago but i don't remember the title/thread. i also remember that matt35mm once shared his plans to make a film (documentary?) about a school shooting. whatever happened with that?

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.. and still no word on the armed intruder.

[pete]

I thought elephant was trash and I'll say it again.  more succinctly this time - it offers no insight into the shooting aside from piling up everything Newsweek and Time have said into one movie, then leaves it "for the viewers to decide" which is artfully lazy and artfully cheap.

can't think of a good movie or a good anything about school shooting.  pretty over-exposed and under investigated phenomenon - and I assume each kid does it for different reasons.  they have spite, that's all they have in common that's all we know about.  though I have to say that shit happens in city schools quite a bit and nobody ever bothers even talking about it.

[MacGuffin]

i remember picolas recommended something a little while ago but i don't remember the title/thread.

Polytechnique:
http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=10828.0

[hedwig]

can't think of a good movie or a good anything about school shooting.  pretty over-exposed and under investigated phenomenon - and I assume each kid does it for different reasons.  they have spite, that's all they have in common that's all we know about.  though I have to say that shit happens in city schools quite a bit and nobody ever bothers even talking about it.

very true. only when it happens in a quiet suburban neighborhood "where you never would have expected something like this", then it gets publicity. that is part of why people scramble so desperately to piece together a solid explanation for each major school shooting. there needs to be a way to explain why this would happen HERE, to OUR children. self-delusion and cultural prejudice has made them believe that their schools are automatically safer.

i remember picolas recommended something a little while ago but i don't remember the title/thread.

Polytechnique:
http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=10828.0

thank you!



the last update i got was a separate report about another possibly armed suspect near the parking lot. "Avoid area and entire campus on alert."

and, um.. i just got this:

"White male subject seen in the Cooper Hall area in black tank top, cowboy hat, carrying black puppy and a large hunting knife. Officers en route."

i'm living in a cuckoo clock.

[I Love a Magician]

pretty much hated elephant but i read columbine over the summer and it's great

[Stefen]

White boys are fucking nuts.