Random school shootings, teen culture and the representation of violence

To discuss as fully as possible those tensions over identity which school shootings pivot, this chapter will move from an analysis of actual school shootings – ‘real events’ – to the analysis of mediation/representation of these rare events: from the attempts of individual teen killer to style their killings (prior to, during or after the act) to the representation of such killings in film, popular culture and literature. The dynamic relationship between both these mechanisms of representation will also be stressed. The chapter only lightly explores the pathological character of school shooters – a subject well canvassed elsewhere, and one of negligible value beyond the realm of the forensic. The ‘implications for practice’ section at the end of this chapter accordingly stresses the need for careful attention from educators and professionals to the local and particular context to school shootings. An understanding of the discrete cultural content of such rare events – a Foucaldian husbandry of local knowledge – will help practitioners self-reflexively shape the institutional cultures of the schools and communities they best know, and are most responsible for