A Day To Remember

I choose this article because I was living in Denver, CO at the time of the incident and was off work this particular day and was glued to the television as it took place. I will probably never forget this day. It is a day to remember. The article was from CNN Entertainment, "Columbine left its indelible mark on pop culture"

            After reading this article over a few times it was absolutely clear that the author was trying to convey how we as people take certain dramatic events and infuse them into our daily lives through means of entertainment with modern pop culture. The thesis in this article was the opening statement. “The massacre of students and a teacher within the seemingly safe hallways of Columbine High School reverberated so strongly that its reflection can be found in the creations of multiple artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers over the past decade”

            The author does support her evidence in each one of his categories that was stated in his opening sentence. The movie “Elephant,” which won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, dramatized a normal day at a high school that is about to become the scene of a planned mass slaughter by a pair of friends. Television shows such as “Law and Order” and “Cold Case” also delved into the lives of fictitious teens on murderous rampages. Marilyn Manson himself released an album titled “Holy Wood (in the Shadow of the Valley of Death)” that contained songs alluding to the massacre. In the single “The Nobodies,” Manson appeared to reiterate statements from his first-person piece in Rolling Stone with the lyrics “Some children died the other day, We fed machines and then we prayed, Puked up and down in morbid faith, You should have seen the ratings that day”

            Music, TV and film were not the only media that reacted to the shootings. In 2005, an independent video game developer released “Super Columbine Massacre RPG,” A role-playing game that allowed users to imagine themselves as the Columbine gunmen and act out the violence.

            Upon trying to find and research the author’s facts and evidence I did so via the internet. I used google.com and youtube.com to confirm her points of view. I found the movie “Elephant” on google.com. The Wikipedia stated that the movie was the first high-profile movie to depict a high school shooting since Columbine, the film was controversial for its subject matter and possible influence on teenage copy-cats. During my research for the television shows, Law and Order and Cold Case, I found an article titled “Columbine on TV: Thefive most convoluted school shooting episodes”. Not only did I find the two I was looking for, but they also listed the television shows Numbers, One Tree Hill, and American Horror Story for doing the same story line. I am not a big Marilyn Manson fan, so I listened to “Nobodies” on youtube that the author had stated, and yes his lyrics about Columbine were in his song. The video game about Columbine is in the Wikipedia as well.

            On a side note, I can remember after that day in Thorton,CO trench coats became very popular with high school students in the surrounding schools, due to the fact that the Columbine killers used them in the massacre. It got so bad that the Denver and surrounding school districts put a ban on all coats that went below the waist line. Now what does that tell us about pop culture? Monkey see - Monkey do?