Elephant
Last Saturday, the older members of our family watched Gus van Sant's film, Elephant. Monica (my sister) is in a play about a school shooting, and her director suggested that she see Elephant, as it deals with the same touchy subject.
The movie was, in a word, disturbing.
I don't just mean gory-images-that-keep-you-up-at-night disturbing. I mean disturbing. It really rattled me. Of course, now, a week later, I've sort of lost that sense, but it was there.
The amazing thing about Elephant is that it's so real. It takes place at a high school, and we watch various characters, students within the school, going about their daily business. But as I was watching it, I realized that what I was watching (which, by the way, was totally without plot, like a regular day) was real. The students walked, talked, acted, spoke, and swore like real high school students. And their experiences throughout much of the day, while mundane (for a few hours) were still fascinating. For example:
A student ducks into a lounge of some sort and cries some brief tears of frustration after having been given detention again after being driven to school late by a drunken father.
Another student wanders about campus, snapping photos of fellow students he comes across, and later moseys into a darkroom to develop them.
Three girls go to lunch together, chatting and gossiping. They get into an argument, but quickly recover. After having had perhaps three bites of salad apiece, they leave the cafeteria, and head for the bathrooms. Still chatting, as if they were all just going to get their hair done together, they step into the stalls and make themselves throw up.
So go the first few hours of the day (van Sant messes with time on us, showing us this day as well as the end of the previous one, from varying perspectives), perfectly normally. Then, Eric and Alex arrive.
After they arrive, the mood of quiet fascination with which you've been watching this totally normal and inoffensive day changes, descending into vague panic. Because you've seen these two guys before, this morning and in the previous evening, and you know what's "going down", as one of them says.
You're still panicky as you watch them gearing up in a hallway, which is totally empty except for a seemingly oblivious janitor at the end of it. They then proceed into the library, and the first shot is fired, and the first victim slumps at the foot of the bookcase. From there, all normalcy of the day (and the movie) is lost, and it descends further into the unreal, dreamlike horror of a nightmare. Eric and Alex proceed up and down the halls, literally shooting anything that moves, their faces totally expressionless. They kill without reason, discrimination, or mercy. No one makes a move to stop them, and soon, the halls are littered with bodies.
It is really strange, though, as van Sant doesn't show us much reason for Eric and Alex to behave as they do. We see one of them get splattered, deliberately, by another student with some substance during science class. We see one of them playing a violent video game. We see that they are a gay couple, something they've probably endured some abuse about. But nothing concrete, nothing so terrible that it would have pushed them over the edge.
As my mom asked, how is it possible for people to become such hardened sociopaths at such a young age? They show absolutely no hint of remorse as they shoot anybody, not just people who abused them. And from what I've heard, that was what Columbine was like.
Some frightening factoids go with this subject:
Why?
For our sakes, and for teen's sakes, let's answer that question. For this sort of thing can happen anywhere, at any time. In fact, it did happen in a town not to far from my own, a small one, at that, and that's what scares me. Evil does not care; it will consume whoever's handy. Let's put up them rods, before the lightning strikes again.
The movie was, in a word, disturbing.
I don't just mean gory-images-that-keep-you-up-at-night disturbing. I mean disturbing. It really rattled me. Of course, now, a week later, I've sort of lost that sense, but it was there.
The amazing thing about Elephant is that it's so real. It takes place at a high school, and we watch various characters, students within the school, going about their daily business. But as I was watching it, I realized that what I was watching (which, by the way, was totally without plot, like a regular day) was real. The students walked, talked, acted, spoke, and swore like real high school students. And their experiences throughout much of the day, while mundane (for a few hours) were still fascinating. For example:
A student ducks into a lounge of some sort and cries some brief tears of frustration after having been given detention again after being driven to school late by a drunken father.
Another student wanders about campus, snapping photos of fellow students he comes across, and later moseys into a darkroom to develop them.
Three girls go to lunch together, chatting and gossiping. They get into an argument, but quickly recover. After having had perhaps three bites of salad apiece, they leave the cafeteria, and head for the bathrooms. Still chatting, as if they were all just going to get their hair done together, they step into the stalls and make themselves throw up.
So go the first few hours of the day (van Sant messes with time on us, showing us this day as well as the end of the previous one, from varying perspectives), perfectly normally. Then, Eric and Alex arrive.
After they arrive, the mood of quiet fascination with which you've been watching this totally normal and inoffensive day changes, descending into vague panic. Because you've seen these two guys before, this morning and in the previous evening, and you know what's "going down", as one of them says.
You're still panicky as you watch them gearing up in a hallway, which is totally empty except for a seemingly oblivious janitor at the end of it. They then proceed into the library, and the first shot is fired, and the first victim slumps at the foot of the bookcase. From there, all normalcy of the day (and the movie) is lost, and it descends further into the unreal, dreamlike horror of a nightmare. Eric and Alex proceed up and down the halls, literally shooting anything that moves, their faces totally expressionless. They kill without reason, discrimination, or mercy. No one makes a move to stop them, and soon, the halls are littered with bodies.
It is really strange, though, as van Sant doesn't show us much reason for Eric and Alex to behave as they do. We see one of them get splattered, deliberately, by another student with some substance during science class. We see one of them playing a violent video game. We see that they are a gay couple, something they've probably endured some abuse about. But nothing concrete, nothing so terrible that it would have pushed them over the edge.
As my mom asked, how is it possible for people to become such hardened sociopaths at such a young age? They show absolutely no hint of remorse as they shoot anybody, not just people who abused them. And from what I've heard, that was what Columbine was like.
Some frightening factoids go with this subject:
- Violent video games, such as Doom, use the same sorts of tactics as used in the Army to desensitize soldiers to killing real people.
- Michael Carneal (a shooter in a real school shooting) was said to have been an Atheist, or to have at least associated with them (in the play my sister's in, Give a Boy a Gun, one of the shooters, Brendan, vehemently denies the existence of God).
- Every two hours, a teenager commits suicide in the U.S.
Elephant shows high school life as a complex landscape where the vitality and incandescent beauty of young lives can shift from light to darkness with surreal speed.It is, truly, surreal. And it does beg the question, why? Why is it that seemingly (or not) normal young men and women suddenly take the plunge, for no apparent reason, into pure evil? For that is what the shooting in Elephant is. Sheer, cold, unloving, unthinking, uncaring evil.
Why?
For our sakes, and for teen's sakes, let's answer that question. For this sort of thing can happen anywhere, at any time. In fact, it did happen in a town not to far from my own, a small one, at that, and that's what scares me. Evil does not care; it will consume whoever's handy. Let's put up them rods, before the lightning strikes again.
posted by James at
6:46 PM
