Rampage Violence Narratives

What Fictional Accounts of School Shootings Say about the Future of Americas Youth

By (author) Kathryn E. Linder

Publication date:

24 April 2014

Length of book:

168 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739187500

Springfield. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Each school shooting in the United States is followed by a series of questions. Why does this happen? Who are the shooters? How can this be prevented? Along with parents, school officials, media outlets, and scholars, popular culture has also attempted to respond to these questions through a variety of fictional portrayals of rampage violence. Rampage Violence Narratives: What Fictional Accounts of Rampage Violence Say about the Future of America’s Youth offers a detailed look at the state of youth identity in American cultural representations of youth violence through an extended analysis of over forty primary sources of fictional narratives of urban and suburban/rural school violence. Representations of suburban and rural school shootings that are modeled after real-life events serve to shape popular understandings of the relationship between education and American identity, the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and the centrality of white heterosexual masculinity to definitions of social and political success in the United States. Through a series of "case studies" that offer in-depth examinations of fictional depictions of school shootings in film and literature, it becomes clear that these stories are representative of a larger social narrative regarding the future of the United States. The continuing struggle to understand youth violence is part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to raise future citizens within a cultural moment that views youth through a lens of anxiety rather than optimism.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction. The Fictionalization of School Shootings
Chapter 1. Becoming Monstrous: Representations of Race in Fictional Narratives of School Violence
Case Study 1. Kevin Reynold’s 187 and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant
Chapter 2. Heteronormativity and the Queer School Shooter
Case Study 2. Uwe Boll’s Heart of America
Chapter 3. Violence, Pregnancy, Agency: The Birth of the Female Shooter
Case Study 3. Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes
Chapter 4. Fictionalizing Youth Violence for Youth Consumption
Case Study 4. Sharon Draper’s Just Another Hero
Chapter 5. Youth, Sex, and Violence: A Final Case Study
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Linder presents a very balanced and thoughtful argument that highlights the underlying causes of what appears to be a growing trend of rampage violence in America.... this book is extremely well written in its argument and well versed in the misunderstanding between different communities and the government. The application of such a book could end up being part of efforts to end the state’s hold over conformist education and allow for the incorporation of everyone into a new American hegemonic society.