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A GenePoool.com Essay
Columbine
This is a subject that warrants special attention. It's also one of the few subjects I've chosen to write about here in which I don't have any answers, but which deserves to be discussed simply because it raises so many interesting questions.
As we all know by now, on April 20, two students in Columbine high school in Colorado went on a lengthy shooting spree, killing twelve students, a teacher, and then themselves. As genuinely disturbing and awful as an event such as this is, what makes it interesting is how we-- meaning society-- react to it. We've immersed ourselves in the gory details and come out the other side looking for who to blame. Everyone seems to have a different opinion.
So where do we begin? A lot of us begin by blaming the pervasive over-the-top violence that is the modern entertainment industry. We've heard a lot of statistics about how many acts of violence the average child witnesses before the age of ten (the figure I'd heard was 90,000) and it's a disturbingly large number until we review what's considered an "act of violence." Is it fair to consider the Coyote falling off the cliff an act of violence? When Mo slaps Curley, Curley slaps Larry, Larry slaps Mo, is that three acts or one long one? Where is the line drawn? One psychologist might tell you there's no distinction, while another might consider cartoons harmless.
A "violent" show, in my opinion, is not necessarily a "dangerous" show for my children to watch, especially when the term "violent" is so vague. What IS dangerous is the violence that is depicted as real, but only when the child is too young to cope with this concept. Let me elaborate on this point, before you attack me. When I was in seventh grade I became utterly enamored with a T.V. show called Hill Street Blues. My parents were dutifully concerned because this happened to be a fairly violent show, and they considered not allowing me to watch it any more. They consulted a family friend, who convinced them that of all the violent shows on television, this was the best one I could possibly be watching, and for one reason: it was realistic. When a gun was fired, people ducked in fear, even if they happened to be cops. Drug use wasn't funny, it was scary. Death, ANY death, was tragic. The characters were real enough for me to care about them and for me to be upset if anything happened to them. This wasn't Starsky and Hutch unashamedly gunning down the bad guys on a crowded street and it wasn't Rambo mowing down fifty faceless soldiers in a corn field. This sort of reality is something my children are absolutely not ready for right now, but it's a good example of what I DO want them to learn from in the future.
Discarding the realistic violence and slapstick/cartoon violence, we're still left with the "bad" violence. Some T.V. shows and movies do treat violence as cool. They show good guys shooting bad guys remorselessly, and more, as if it's the right thing to do, and a valid way to settle differences. Is this dangerous?
Well, sure it is. Any work of fiction that oversimplifies death to such a degree can have repercussions. And any child that comes away from repeated viewings unable to distinguish between movie violence and the real thing has serious problems. This type of entertainment taps into the Us vs. Them tribal concept that was once a survival instinct for our species, and it's the same mechanism that is the basis for war propaganda. In a movie, the bad guy and his bad henchmen have to be depicted as All Bad so that we take pleasure in seeing them lose, even though, almost without exception, there is no such thing as All Bad in the real world.
But let's not get carried away with this. Blaming a violent society on a violent entertainment industry is a chicken vs. egg argument. Violent films didn't simply appear out of the imagination of a screenwriter somewhere. They were made in response to demand, and that demand came from a society interested in seeing violent movies. It doesn't make sense to argue that a disturbed child became disturbed because he saw a gory film. He saw the film because that was what interested him. He also saw the film because someone let him see it. Parents DO have to monitor what their children are watching.
A similar argument can be made regarding rock music. I really don't care how many lyrics you quote me from how many horrible songs, the issue will remain the same. The songs were recorded because there was an audience for them. Music doesn't create listeners, listeners create a need for music.
Another target is the internet. There is a LOT of information out there. I imagine I could find out how to build a decent bomb in about ten minutes without difficulty. Certainly the Columbine shooters did. But the internet is a passive information network. It's neither good nor bad. It simply is.
Back when the results of the Manhattan Project were shown to the world there was a lot of discussion about the moral appropriateness of building such a device, a discussion that has not abated in fifty-odd years. Science has never really shaken the image of immorality-- or at least amorality-- since that day; witness the classic depiction of the mad scientist in modern film and literature, for example. But all it ever came down to was this: the scientists at Los Alamos were pursuing knowledge. You can't prevent the pursuit of knowledge; if they didn't do it, someone else would have. It's not good or bad. It simply is.
We are left with issues that are much larger and much more difficult to pin down. It begins with the word Why. Why are there teenagers out there who find Marilyn Manson's music appealing, who love horror movies, and who surf the web to build weapons of destruction? More importantly, why do some of these children subsequently lash out at their world with such horrifying consequences?
To begin with, I don't think this is anything new. There have always been, and there always will be, kids who feel estranged from their peers, unloved by their family, and unwanted by the world they live in. Are we justified in blaming the parents for this? Maybe. But of the many instances in which a child grows up feeling this way, how many actually become violent? How many grow up to become monsters? This is a slippery slope. How responsible is any parent for his or her child's actions? At what point do we no longer hold the parent accountable? Do we ever?
In the Columbine shootings we see an entire community missing the warning signs of impending violence. The police ignored death threats. Teachers shrugged when their students gave Nazi salutes during social events. Classmates didn't think anything was wrong with a film project depicting a school massacre. A web site praising Hitler ended up on the anti-defamation league's danger list and nobody ever sat down with the makers of the site to ask them what the hell was going on in their heads. At the very least the parents of these children should have been able to see this, but they weren't the only ones. But hindsight is 20-20. If nothing had ever happened, if the children hadn't acted, these warning signs would have remained unnoticed. What we don't know-- and can't know-- is how many estranged youths there are out there who are displaying similar warning signs but who do not and will never act out their fantasies. Is it fair of us to judge? How many parents, and communities, assume the best and try to ignore the worst? It's in our nature to do so. It can never happen in OUR back yard.
In a discussion not directly related to this subject, John Douglas, a retired FBI Profiler, offers advice that is useful nevertheless. The best weapon a child has against a sexual predator, he argues, is self-esteem. A lack of self-esteem makes a child an easier target for a friendly stranger, because the stranger offers what the child may feel they lack. Similarly, I would argue, an estranged teenager will be far worse off in the world if they seek self-worth from others and interpret themselves by how they believe people see them. This can turn into self-loathing, and they can be a danger to themselves. It can also be focused outward; it could be the world's fault for turning on them. Then they are a danger to others. And if they have access to guns, they are a danger to a lot of others. But is it too trite, too easy, to blame this on low self-esteem?
We keep asking ourselves, why is this happening now? Are we worse parents now than we were twenty years ago? I don't think we are. Is the media more violent? Maybe; but violent programming has always been available for those who seek it, whether it's cable T.V., Gunsmoke, a John Wayne movie, or a pulp comic book. Is it the internet? If these kids went to the library instead to figure out how to make a bomb, do you think we'd be trying to ban libraries? I think the largest difference between the estranged, potentially violent youth of today and the youth of twenty years ago is, simply, access.
We were stunned thirty-five years ago at the discovery that Oswald obtained his Mannlicher-Carcano via mail order. Well these kids in Colorado got theirs with the help of an eighteen-year-old with a gun license. In Great Britain, after eighteen kids were massacred in a Scotland schoolhouse, they banned handguns altogether. In the U.S., we ban black trenchcoats. And Amendment me no Second Amendment. Here's the exact text:
"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
First off, this is decidedly vague. Second, it's fairly obvious the point being made here is that the right to bear arms refers to protecting the freedom of the STATE, not the individual, and only in the context of a "well-organized militia." This is not to say this amendment expressly forbids private ownership of guns; it just doesn't unilaterally protect that right. It also doesn't say anything about the right of eighteen year old kids to buy semi-automatic weaponry.
And even if it did protect that right, so what? It's an AMENDMENT. That by itself should make it clear that this isn't set in stone. Why are we clutching onto this tighter than a fundamentalist to the scripture?
But access to guns isn't THE problem, any more than our violent culture is THE problem. We want to find a simple solution that doesn't exist. If it isn't the NRA's fault, it's Hollywood, or the World Wide Web, or Marilyn Manson. Or it's the fault of the parents, or the community, or the teachers. Or, it's all of the above.
All we're really certain of is that someone must be to blame, because the only other possibility is that these children, these white middle-class boys from a good town in an excellent public school, were simply evil. If this is true, this is something that will happen again and again, and we're powerless to prevent it. Of all the possible explanations, this is the most terrifying.
As I said at the outset, I don't
have any answers to these questions. But I think the questions
themselves are more important than the answers because we need
to think about how our children can end up being monsters in the
most technologically and socially advanced country in the world.
Because this WILL happen again.
© 2000, Gene Doucette
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