VA Tech Shootings...The Discussion Thread- Page 6

[RadiGal2]

Posted: 4/20/07 at 7:17pm

*** I personally have been known write some vicious stuff when I attempt to write fiction, which is not often, I find that am too cemented in real world problems to focus on it for a reasonable length of time. But, since I plan to do some substitute teaching I wondered this week how would a teacher be able to tell? So I thought this was an interesting evaluation by Steven King and definitely something to consider**


By Stephen King

EDITORS' NOTE: In the wake of the Virginia Tech murders and subsequent reports that Cho Seung-Hui had raised alarms in the English department with his writing, we asked novelist and Entertainment Weekly contributing editor Stephen King for his thoughts on the links between the creative process and violence. Where, exactly, does one draw the line between imagination and disturbing expression that should raise red flags?

I've thought about it, of course. Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing — including a short story called 'Cain Rose Up' and the novel RAGE — would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them, even though I interacted in class, never took pictures of girls' legs with my cell phone (in 1970, WHAT cell phones?), and never signed my work with a ?.

As a teacher, I had one student — I will call him George — who raised red flags galore in my own mind: stories about flaying women alive, dismemberment, and, the capper, 'getting back at THEM.' George was very quiet, and verbally inarticulate. It was only in his written work that he spewed these relentless scenes of gore and torture. His job was in the University Bookstore, and when I inquired about him once, I was told he was a good worker, but 'quiet.' I thought, 'Whoa, if some kid is ever gonna blow, it'll be this one.' He never did. But that was in the days before a gun-totin' serial killer could get top billing on the Nightly News and possibly the covers of national magazines.

For most creative people, the imagination serves as an excretory channel for violence: We visualize what we will never actually do (James Patterson, for instance, a nice man who has all too often worked the street that my old friend George used to work). Cho doesn't strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy. Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, 'just mean.' Essentially there's no story here, except for a paranoid a--hole who went DEFCON-1. He may have been inspired by Columbine, but only because he was too dim to think up such a scenario on his own.

On the whole, I don't think you can pick these guys out based on their work, unless you look for violence unenlivened by any real talent.

Link to Article

[Anakela]

Posted: 4/21/07 at 10:28am

I read that piece by Stephen King last night, and I really thought this part was rather brill:

Cho doesn't strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy. Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, 'just mean.' Essentially there's no story here, except for a paranoid a--hole who went DEFCON-1. He may have been inspired by Columbine, but only because he was too dim to think up such a scenario on his own.

I started reading Stephen King when I was about 7/8 years old, I completely went through my death metal and/or wearing all black periods as a teen, and I absolutely hated high school- where I was teased, where all the other kids were teased, where everyone was mocking or being mocked for something- and I totally wrote 'revenge' stories about it. (I like to say that those who *loved* high school don't really remember high school.) And so apparently according to some so-called experts I was a hot mess of 'warning signs' back in the day, and yet I never would've even thought to commit so much violence upon others.

And so I just get very...bristled(?)...when there's a school shooting and then we get weeks of 'they would wear all black,' 'he listened to ____,' 'he read _____,' and then round up Stephen King, because 'the shooter wrote violence' and sometimes you just want someone to say: Cho doesn't strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy. Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, 'just mean.'

[Rose_MacShane]

Posted: 4/21/07 at 11:05am

What struck me as kind of funny was, in the wake of the Columbine shooting, the media was all up its own ass with "They worshipped Marilyn Manson" when in fact they hated him. If they had bothered to do a little research, they would have known that.