Thirteen Birds vs. The Record Desk

Recently I read Dave Cullen’s myth-busting, level-headed Columbine. I was in college when the event itself transpired. I recall being particularly interested in it, mostly because the coverage linked the shooting to teen angst and suburban rage and pop culture. Actually, I remember some cockamamie scheme that I was going to drive out to Colorado and poke around and write a book about Columbine. Of course, I never did anything of the sort – because I’m not actually the kind of person who seriously indulges his cockamamie schemes. Still, I was taken with high-concept teenage violence and the (erroneous) jocks v. weenies narrative and the (equally erroneous) rock and roll scapegoat business. I came of age in maudlin teenage times, after all – and self-aware ones at that. Columbine seemed a natural outgrowth of all that Heathers-Kurt Cobain-S.F.W.-style crap with some Tarantinoesque campy stock ultraviolence swirled in for good measure.

Of course Columbine was horrifically “real world.” But for most people it was a mediated event that existed in the realm of cable news (on endless repeat). September 11th has almost wholly supplanted Columbine as the big faraway unpredictable instant terror – likely because the footage was more horrifying, the socio-political impact greater, and the destruction much worse. Yet both incidents are similar in that they were planned for maximum shock value and achieved this impact through repetitious media coverage. The reality of the individuals killed and injured was soon overshadowed by the search for a “meaning” behind the events and by worrying about when and where the next, similar horror would come from.

Any big media shock generates mountains of noxious bullshit and speculation. In the fallout from 9/11, we have been visited by the “Truthers,” dubious justifications for pre-emptive warfare, cave-dwelling Bond villain terrorists, Anthrax scares, shoe bombers, and all other manner of unbelievable fright. It’s twelve minutes to midnight on the Wackadoodle Clock. It’s little wonder that zombies now plague internet prank culture. They’re no less ridiculous than people who unironically believe Zeitgeist – or the people who bought into the US Government as blameless victim of a Saddam/Osama Wonder Twins team-up. On a smaller scale, in the wake of Columbine, all manner of batshit nonsense washed ashore. The “Trench Coat Mafia.” All the handwringing about the myriad ways American culture had “failed” boys. The convenient “be nice to the freaks lest they snap” anti-bullying mandates. The public stoning of Marilyn Manson. The imaginary evangelical martyr who was shot because she said “yes” when asked if she believed in God. And of course, Bowling for Columbine.

These big happenings feed our fears back to us, recontextualizing them as “lessons” we can understand. September 11th confirmed the “presence of evil” in the world and the need for “action.” Columbine confirmed that teenagers are to be feared because they are shallow, cruel, and inscrutable. We “learned” that pervasive public surveillance or stricter gun control measures were needed to protect us. And then the next big thing happens and we forget about the details of whatever the last tragedy was. The only thing that remains of the previous horror is the broadest impression – devoid of nuance or real understanding.

I’ve been wrangling with this post for a while (see the previous entry), so it was odd to me that this post and my failure to finish it was one of the first things I thought of when I heard that John Hughes (Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, etc.) had died. When I was still a kid, John Hughes formed my ideas of what it meant to be a teenager. Sixteen Candles in particular provided a whole host of images and notions that I’m sure influenced how I acted out my own teenhood – the weird longing, the lurking about on the semi-popular rung of the food chain, the junior class warrior chip on my shoulder, the need to experience any emotional rawness as a personal crisis. And of course my tongue-in-cheek, half-joking “my parents ignored my sixteenth birthday” stories. In Hughes’ movies, teen-ness was a state of being, a performance (literally) that operated in a world where to be adult was to live with misplaced priorities or your head crammed squarely up your ass. This whole worldview is best summed up in Hughes’ teenaged Bugs Bunny Ferris Bueler who knew the score and could get away with just about anything while anyone who actually seemed to *CARE* about anything (working hard, delivering Ferris his comeuppance, living up to parental expectations) was upended, mocked, or forced to confront an unpleasant reality. Hughes certainly knew how teenagers like to imagine themselves – perpetually embarrassed by clueless adults, just an itsy bit on the outside but still mostly accepted, and in possession of the REAL knowledge of what matters in life.

John Hughes’ vision of perfect only slightly awkward teenhood is mostly a crock – as is the post-Columbine understanding of teens as scary, violent monsters ready to “go off” should adults fail to remove every possible trigger or trauma from their paths. In a popular culture that fetishizes adolescence as a source of both vibrant authenticity and uncontrollable power, it’s easy to forget that teenagers are first and foremost people. They’re not a collection of inscrutable buzzwords. Nor are they a great horde who need civilization imposed upon them. They’re people who are (by societal convention) given a sort of liminal period to “find themselves” and make choices about who they’re going to be. The advertising-driving mass culture in America is simply one source of potential identities available to these people whom we’ve told should be experimenting with masks and self-presentation.

During my last few teenage years, I became very interested in Kurt Cobain – not simply as the driving force in Nirvana as a band but also as a post-mortem famous person and icon. I remember the days after his suicide and the seemingly-endless footage of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. The warm, yet somber lighting, the lilies, the after-the-fact meaning possibly tucked away in the lyrics to originals and covers alike — “All Apologies,” “Come As You Are,” and “The Man Who Sold the World” come to mind. And of course that soul-bearing, heart-rending version of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” If one is given to the belief that Cobain knew that he would soon take his own life, it’s hard not to see this performance as final statement, one last act of self-presentation. It reminds me of my own petulant teenage thoughts, planning how I would kill myself and how what sort of note I would leave and how everyone would feel once I was gone. Part of Cobain’s enduring myth is that he, in his role as eternal teenager, he lived out this fantasy of making everyone miss him when he was gone. In the same way, Harris and Klebold lived out a teenage day-dream – making a big splash so that everyone everywhere would know who they were and how much they hated everyone’s guts. Just like Ferris, they were smarter than everyone and they got away with it all.