In 2005, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! hit the web, inviting players to step into the pixelated shoes of real-life mass shooting perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The video game, which depicts a playable version of the events of the 1999 Columbine massacre, expectedly received heaps of discourse and criticism. The “enemies” of the game happen to be modeled off of students who died in the massacre. Roger Kovacs, a web developer and friend of victim Rachel Scott, found it especially infuriating that “anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again.”
We think of death as permanent, yet within the framework of Bazinian theory, an on-screen death is no longer a singular event. This is because the act of death in visual media can be repeated to no bounds. An act that we know is coming, and unlike reality, is not a moment of conclusion for the viewer. Knowing this, I often question what it means to present fictionalized depictions of real tragedies on screen. Does it immortalize victims, allowing their existence to transcend the demise of their physical being? Or, does it make those victims’ deaths into a spectacle that viewers can embody the thrill of in the safety of their unsullied bodies?
I find that the majority of depictions of gun violence in cinema involve the latter, emphasizing the carnage of the situation, and drawing attention to the killers rather than the victims. Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, released two years before Super Columbine Massacre RPG! and only four years after the event it fictionalizes, is one of the few depictions that does the opposite. It is presented in a realist, non-linear style. The sound is diegetic. The performances suggest most of the actors have limited experience. And the camerawork, while awe-inducing in motion, is quite representative of modern, suburban architecture in both its beauty and utter dullness.
We are shown an event ingrained in the very fabric of American culture in its barest form. Dramatic music cues and shadowy, expressive lighting are unnecessary, because tension emerges from quietness. From watching a character walk through the hallways from behind. From seeing a library or cafeteria, and knowing what is bound to happen in those spaces. These quiet, unpolished, and unembellished choices emotionally anchor the film, rather than the actual events of the shooting itself.
When “resurrecting” a tragedy and adapting it to a cinematic form, the filmmaker must be aware that they are making it infinite. Elephant is unique because we can relive the attacks, but we can also relive the lives of the victims preceding these attacks, all of whom are named with title cards. We can relive petty arguments between Nicole (Nicole George), Brittany (Brittany Mountain), and Jordan (Jordan Taylor), or moments of self-consciousness in the locker room with Michelle (Kristen Hicks). Many of these moments may be unattractive or juvenile, but they are also based in realism. Characters speak in colloquialisms and move through the narrative as humans rather than devices. In a way, Elephant remembers Columbine for the right reasons.
The film would be blamed in 2005 for the Red Lake Shootings, as portions of it were viewed by the perpetrator prior to his attacks. Realities like these stir debates pertaining to how influential media really is in contributing to violent acts, and if violent acts of history even have a place in the filmic medium. I remember leaving Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique, a depiction of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, disturbed and irritated. I was irritated that it felt like the film existed to aesthetically dramatize the horrors, without a clear angle. To watch these deaths felt as senseless as the events themselves.
Elephant’s angle is found in its objectivity. Its existence is justified because it is not made to target a particular feeling. Instead, it represents Columbine, and any other school where a shooting has taken place, as it is – a space of young people with relationships, ambitions, grievances, vices, and plans for the future. When the film ended, and I was left to stare at the dark, cloud-coated sky on screen, I felt beckoned to try and make sense of their fate, and make sense of why evil like this exists. Answers weren’t provided, and that is the truth of life.
Elephant reminds me why stories about tragedy are necessary when done right. Since Columbine, the expectation of gun violence is one entrenched in our bodies. We engage in active shooter drills because we know things like this have happened, could happen, and are destined to keep happening. None of the characters in the film hold the expectation that something bad will happen to them. Meanwhile, the viewer knows exactly what will happen. Elephant captures this dichotomy in a way few films do. We can casually go about our days under the belief that nothing will happen, but something could happen. That may always be in the back of our minds, like a camera following us. And that feeling makes us wonder, why is this so normalized?