Myth-Information Movies (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

[guruilla]

Humans, like other mammals, are capable of learning by imitation. But they're obviously not compelled to imitate every single piece of behavior to which they're exposed.

You have to add water to make the plant grow, but isn't a seed still a seed?

[guruilla]

Holy shit... brazen glorification of sociopathic murder sprees involving children?

IMO these kinds of movies (like Natural Born Killers) are decoys. They get skapegoated and used as "straw movies" to divert attention from other areas.

I don't personally believe that movies directly inspire action, but that they can create memes that then seed future events.

When a movie supposedly directly inspires a violent act, like Taxi Driver (serious and accurate study of sociopathic behavior) or NBK (sophisticated satire of the same), it's probably a psy-op.

Satire is an attempt at meme-busting, though I suppose it could backfire, since potential sociopaths might tend to miss the irony? My OP argument was that it's the "serious" movies that get their facts wrong that are the ones to watch out for.

[barracuda]

Is there really some evidence that your target demographic of potential seed-tweeners is shelling out their allowance to sit through a Tilda Swinton dramafest in the first place in order to eventually be lovingly nurtured into the committing of a teenage murder spree?

Also, this thread is...

[JackRiddler]

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I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post, which hardly suggested that media depictions of behaviors drive others to commit the same behaviors in any kind of mechanistic causality. Also, guruilla's comments have nothing remotely to do with censorship (the Comics Code Authority? really?) and the suggestion is incredibly unfair.

After watching the movie, I had to admit that maybe they are - only with less and less need for black budget government interventions. Since humans, like the other mammals, are imitative creatures, where once upon a time alienated teenagers (the non-MK-ULTRA kind) only fantasized about mowing down their classmates, there's more and more "space" - social license - for disenchanted and disenfranchised youths to make their morbid fantasies come true. It's a bit like a kind of dreamspace is being created and then slowly filled by actual events. The assumption is always that "works of art" are only reflecting a reality, but never that they are helping to create it, because if movies are ever accused of inciting acts of violence, it's never the "socially conscientious" kind like Kevin or Elephant.

The more precedents that are created for forms of behavior, the more acceptable it becomes. (Trend-setting.) So if the modern "myth" (or myth-information) about teenage shooters (perpetuated by books and movies like Kevin) is slowly creating a reality, the better these works are, the more real the myth becomes. I would assume that these products are made by well-intended, sensitive, creative people and not just shills, since shills aren't known for their creativity or sensitivity. That means a lot of artists are now doing the work for the intelligence community without knowing it. They would genuinely believe they are addressing a social problem, but since they're ignoring, or just plain missing, essential facts (which of course are dismissed as mere "theories"), they are propagating lies under guise of (socially conscious) "art." This means more and more intelligent, sensitive people are being suckered.

In the above the bold is where I say, right on. That is how media influence works: not by direct causation or simple "programming," but by "expanding dreamspaces" (especially assuming pervasive repetition), within which given options then seem more plausible than they would have otherwise.

The bit I marked in red is where I disbelieve what g implies (and writers like MacGowan have come out and said) that there are intel programs devoted to creating mass murderer sprees on civilians. We can see that many cases were related to intel or military programs to create killers, who then used the skills in a not-exactly surprising fashion. Recruitment hardly screens out people for being aggressive types, then from basic training forward the military seeks to create obedient killers, then it puts them in extreme situations where they are either commanded to kill or see a lot of killing, or they are traumatized...

Anyway, I did a related polemic right after the Virginia Tech massacre of April 2007, and NBC's release and banner treatment of the materials sent to them by the killer, Cho.

NBC as an element in the production of mass murderers

The Murder-Entertainment Complex


In the first "Scream" flick, the teenagers who are about to be hunted down and killed by the murderer talk about whether the horror movies they love to watch create serial killers. No, one of them answers: Horror movies just make the killers smarter.

The mass media do not create human timebombs. No doubt some people are born with a high predilection for fits of psychotic, murderous rage, a drive to kill beyond the usual violent urges shared by all humans (at any rate by almost all men). No doubt such tendencies develop or are inhibited through environmental factors: upbringing, trauma, the stations of one's experience, as well the surrounding culture and what opportunities societies provide to commit given acts.

The culture-at-large can affect how a timebomb personality is likely to blow. As a violent psychosis arises, its carrier might do nothing until he crashes a car, jumps off a bridge, or lashes out suddenly and fatally within familiar surroundings, at people close to him. He might sign up with the military, or become a mercenary. Sociopaths with good social skills have been known to make careers in politics and organized crime. (Am I being redundant?)

Why is it that in recent decades, in the United States and elsewhere, so many timebomb personalities have exploded into mass-murder rampages of the type exemplified by Columbine and now Virginia Tech? The easy availability of guns only explains the choice of weapon and the often-high number of casualties. If we assume that the range of human nature has not changed, then something else has changed in the culture or environmental factors surrounding such cases.

I submit that the corporate mass media have played a willing, lucrative and immoral role in the cultural chain of production that creates mass murderers of this type. I sumbit that they became conscious of this role long ago, and that while they don't intend to encourage mass murders of this type, they don't care if they do and they have easy rationalizations to assure themselves that they don't.

The corporate mass media have created an industry of mass-murder consumption, glorifying real perpetrators in direct proportion to the number of victims killed and the amount of spectacle generated. (A group of Amish girls in a one-room school is not as impressive as 32 college-age victims in two locations several hours apart, is it? So you don't even remember the name of that murderer, who committed his crime just a few months ago, whereas Cho will be with us for many years.)

Fictional treatments generally do without need of piety or pomposity: The most prolific and profitable of all Hollywood genres are the ones dealing with serial killers, some of them supernatural, some of them seen mostly as shadows pursued by a heroic cop. In the case of real-life killers, the celebration of their exploits is camouflaged by the exploitation of grief, rituals of moral approbation, and "the public's right to know." Mass murderers are stars. It's possible more movies are made about them than about all scientists and do-gooders and athletes combined. Manson and Ted Bundy and Son of Sam are brand-names alongside their fictional, supernatural counterparts, Freddy and Jason and Hannibal Lecter. (Yes, this is just as much a commentary on the market as on the media who serve it. So?)

On receiving from Cho the package of statements and photos of him posing as "Ismail Ax" (his supervillain identity), NBC could have taken one typical picture, broadcast it at low resolution, and described the other contents of the package factually. That would have fulfilled the requirements of "delivering the news." They could have devoted a few minutes to the package as the second or third story of their program, which is what it actually merits as a news story in a country of 300 million people on planet of seven billion. They could have kept a copy of the material to protect themselves, and left the rest to the cops.

Instead, NBC gave the Cho package full coverage as a top-plus story. They showed the text of his "manifesto" so that anyone taping it could read it, released all of the stills in full resolution and broadcast much of the video. They used Cho's choice of imagery as icons to sell their program. And every single other corporate media outlet followed suit. Today, the front page of every tabloid in New York features the same shot of Cho with two guns, and I'm sure that's true in almost every other US city and town.

The broadcast of the material is a glorification. Yes, they call him "evil," which is exactly what he wanted. The lonely, frustrated psychotic is now a comic-book character, a myth, an immortal. He's joined the killers' pantheon alongside his inspirations, Dylan and Eric, whose celebrity requires no last name. Reality once again meets the standard of satire, for this is exactly like the scene in "Natural Born Killers" wherein the imprisoned Woody Harrelson discusses with Robert Downey the impact of his media persona, compared to that of other famous mass murderers.

Without a doubt, this encourages future timebombs to choose the same path, not deterministically, but as a tendency. That is what Cho predicts in his own bloody-minded images and words. This is obvious to everyone with minimal sense, and no talk on NBC's part about how they agonized over the decision to broadcast this material (yeah, right) can mitigate the reality. At least the tabloids don't bother with the bogus moral justifications.

Here's a little mental exercise that illuminates my point: Imagine Cho had killed 33 people meeting in a corporate boardroom, or the head of state's cabinet, or a group of generals discussing next year's biowarfare and nuclear weapons acquisitions. Imagine the manifesto justifying his murders actually had a comprehensible political basis, and was not psychotic, even if still wrong and morally odious. On receiving such a package, what would NBC do? I submit they would never dare to broadcast it, even though it would actually be relevant, it would undeniably constitute "news." Because that would reward and encourage the murder of power-brokers, of owners, of elites. Meanwhile, no one would be wondering whether Cho's act qualified as "terrorism," as has been debated since the shootings. (No need to point out that an Arab Muslim commiting the same acts as Cho would have been called a terrorist and linked to foreign states and movements in no time.)

Because Cho killed students and teachers at quasi-random, it is safe for NBC and the corporate media to publicize the material he provided. His victims are expendable, an acceptable and fully externalized cost in the chain of production for a de facto, organically-arising murder-entertainment complex. NBC and the corporate mass media who followed its lead are free to maximize their Cho windfall. For the mass murderers of the future, they may not provide the encouragement but they are providing the ideas, the model, the how-to, the fashion tips, the incentive, and the promise of dark glory.

[barracuda]

I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post, which hardly suggested that media depictions of behaviors drive others to commit the same behaviors in any kind of mechanistic causality.

Guruilla is explicitly asserting not only an imitative sequence but the opening of some kind of psychological, socially approving space in which the more films there are about mass-murdering teens, the more mass-murdering teens we will have in society. "The more precedents that are created for forms of behavior, the more acceptable it becomes." Sounds fairly mechanistic to me.

Plenty of people blamed Charles Starkweather on the social licence created by Rebel Without A Cause, too. Mental illness combined with childhood bullying is the more likely culprit, and Colombine, like most such incidents, contains a set of extremely complex behavior/motivational lineages.

Essentially I believe we probably have more spree killings these days than we did in the 1950's because we have more people here than we did in the 1950's. But I'm not even sure we really have any more than we used to. I'd have to see that demonstrated in some way.

His point that non-agency aligned filmmakers wind up doing the dirty work for the agencies is more interesting, in that the actual, pure mechanics of mind control techniques may be unwittingly duplicated within the ninety minute format of a feature film, and leave some type of psychic residue in the viewer. But the behaviorism implied probably doesn't work that way.

Also, guruilla's comments have nothing remotely to do with censorship (the Comics Code Authority? really?) and the suggestion is incredibly unfair.

Presumably, if you follow his line of reasoning, less of these types of films would result in less of these types of incidents, a sort of revocation of the social licence.

[JackRiddler]

I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post, which hardly suggested that media depictions of behaviors drive others to commit the same behaviors in any kind of mechanistic causality.

Guruilla is explicitly asserting not only an imitative sequence but the opening of some kind of psychological, socially approving space in which the more films there are about mass-murdering teens, the more mass-murdering teens we will have in society. "The more precedents that are created for forms of behavior, the more acceptable it becomes." Sounds fairly mechanistic to me.

Not at all on the individual level. See what I wrote on this above in the Cho piece and also,

That is how media influence works: not by direct causation or simple "programming," but by "expanding dreamspaces" (especially assuming pervasive repetition), within which given options then seem more plausible than they would have otherwise.

Plenty of people blamed Charles Starkweather on the social lisence created by Rebel Without A Cause, too.

How very wrong if they did. Others may blame Teletubbies for advancing the gay atheist agenda. "Plenty of people" say stupid things all the time, and it's on you to take separate statements for their own value. If I said something stupid or that you merely think false, go ahead and deconstruct what I said.

Mental illness combined with childhood bullying is the more likely culprit, and Colombine, like most such incidents, contains a set of extremely complex behavior/motivational lineages.

There is unlikely to be one culprit. The incidence of one-act spree killings is much greater today than it was in Starkweather's time (he was a pioneer). Doubtful that the rates of mental illness let alone childhood bullying are higher today. Many of these sprees follow a certain model exemplified by the Columbine case. One learns from prior cases. Read again what I wrote and re-consider the meaning Guruilla's best line (on "expanding dreamspaces").

Essentially I believe we probably have more spree killings these days than we did in the 1950's because we have more people here than we did in the 1950's. But I'm not even sure we really have any more than we used to. I'd have to see that demonstrated in some way.

The question has been asked, and the research is not fully conclusive. Other kinds of violence were more prevalent (there was a rash of students setting each other on fire at the turn of the century).

However, you can be certain that the Cho of 1921 was not writing statements in praise of the "Dylan and Eric" of 1901.

His point that non-agency aligned filmmakers wind up doing the dirty work for the agencies is more interesting, in that the actual, pure mechanics of mind control techniques may be unwittingly duplicated within the ninety minute format of a feature film, and leave some type of psychic residue in the viewer. But the behaviorism implied probably doesn't work that way.

Also, guruilla's comments have nothing remotely to do with censorship (the Comics Code Authority? really?) and the suggestion is incredibly unfair.

Presumably, if you follow his line of reasoning, less of these types of films would result in less of these types of incidents, a sort of revocation of the social licence.

Argument against a thesis from adverse consequence: in this case, one you suggest. Don't buy it, G hasn't said it so far.

Causality not so linear that we can assign blame and call for censorship.

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[compared2what?]

Humans, like other mammals, are capable of learning by imitation. But they're obviously not compelled to imitate every single piece of behavior to which they're exposed.

You have to add water to make the plant grow, but isn't a seed still a seed?

Absolutely. I'm sure not saying that if it were planted in hospitable soil and got all the sunlight and nutrients it needed in order to thrive, it mightn't happen. And if I was being bloody-minded about it, I apologize. I think I may have misunderstood you.

[barracuda]

That is how media influence works: not by direct causation or simple "programming," but by "expanding dreamspaces" (especially assuming pervasive repetition), within which given options then seem more plausible than they would have otherwise.

You seem to be positing individual action occurring on the basis of some kind of expanding sympathy of the societal leviathan to these actions, whereas just the opposite may just as easily be the case. Pervasive media displays of the horrors of spree-killing have heightened awareness of the factors involved - bullying, for instance - and that resulting awareness should affect the disposition of subsequent individuals at risk, to the degree that we now have laws against it. Are we creating a glorification or a stigmata here?

Unless, of course, as I suspect, sane people don't commit spree killings. Attempting to fathom the motivations of the insane, while fascinating, is usually unproductive.

The incidence of one-act spree killings is much greater today than it was in Starkweather's time (he was a pioneer).

The question has been asked, and the research is not fully conclusive.

These two statements are contradictory. Again, some statistics would be helpful here: the historical prevalence of spree killings as a percent of population for starters. I realise that's kinda boring, though. There's a bit more frisson in discussing "expanding dreamspaces". It's my contention that dreams are, at least partly, the minds way of preparing the psyche for unexpected contingencies in order to allow the conscious person to cope with them more effectively. If film is the dreamspace of the society expressed as drama, the same process could be at hand.

Argument against a thesis from adverse consequence: in this case, one you suggest. Don't buy it, G hasn't said it so far.

Causality not so linear that we can assign blame and call for censorship.

We both know that even amorphous causality has summoned the call for censorship before. What is guruilla saying here, but that he disapproves of the process he outlines? Is he saying we are helpless in the face of the feedback loop he claims to identify?

[compared2what?]

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I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post, which hardly suggested that media depictions of behaviors drive others to commit the same behaviors in any kind of mechanistic causality.

That you say so is what makes me think I may have misunderstood the OP. So:

Help me, JackRiddler! I understood these sentences...

Since humans, like the other mammals, are imitative creatures, where once upon a time alienated teenagers (the non-MK-ULTRA kind) only fantasized about mowing down their classmates, there's more and more "space" - social license - for disenchanted and disenfranchised youths to make their morbid fantasies come true. It's a bit like a kind of dreamspace is being created and then slowly filled by actual events.

...to be saying that the reason fictional depictions of murder by alienated teenagers create more socially licensed figurative space for the nurturance of real sociopathic teen killers is that humans are imitative. Because....I guess that since it's not clear to me by what process or whose agency a dreamspace is created and then slowly filled by actual events, I just don't see another reason given, really.

What am I missing?

[norton ash]

It's my contention that dreams are, at least partly, the minds way of preparing the psyche for unexpected contingencies in order to allow the conscious person to cope with them more effectively.

Which is why, when I finally DID show up naked at work, I could manage the situation.

[compared2what?]

Mental illness combined with childhood bullying is the more likely culprit, and Colombine, like most such incidents, contains a set of extremely complex behavior/motivational lineages.

There is unlikely to be one culprit. The incidence of one-act spree killings is much greater today than it was in Starkweather's time (he was a pioneer). Doubtful that the rates of mental illness let alone childhood bullying are higher today. Many of these sprees follow a certain model exemplified by the Columbine case. One learns from prior cases. Read again what I wrote and re-consider the meaning Guruilla's best line (on "expanding dreamspaces").

Modern firearms make spree killing easier than it used to be. But are you sure the incidence is really significantly greater today than it was in the Starkweather's time? IIRC, it was the concept of spree-killing that was pioneered then, but I don't know whether spree-killings-by-some-other-name occurred before then, and if so, at what rate.

[guruilla]

Is there really some evidence that your target demographic of potential seed-tweeners is shelling out their allowance to sit through a Tilda Swinton dramafest in the first place in order to eventually be lovingly nurtured into the committing of a teenage murder spree?

I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post

I may be partly responsible for barra's confusion at least, if not C2W's, with my last post comment:

Satire is an attempt at meme-busting, though I suppose it could backfire, since potential sociopaths might tend to miss the irony?

Afterward, I realized this phrase implies the same cause-and-effect dynamic between violent movies and violent real-world acts that the rest of my post was busy refuting. This only underscores how blurry this whole subject is, in my mind at least. A more on-point point might be that the so-called "moral majority" (if the phrase isn't too passe) aren't especially good at recognizing satire, or more specifically, the difference (in both intention and effect) between satire and non-satire. The phrase "potential sociopaths" is also a bit meaningless as a term, and what's worse, it reinforces the idea that society has to watch out for certain types, while movies provide false clues to (mis)identify them. My bad, but perhaps a handy example of how deep the meme-deception goes? That we're all potential sociopaths is important point to remember.

OK, now that I've set my head straight about that....

The bit I marked in red is where I disbelieve what g implies (and writers like MacGowan have come out and said) that there are intel programs devoted to creating mass murderer sprees on civilians.

Ironically this was a point of view I assumed was more or less de rigeur at RI. I read McGowan's book and found it persuasive, if not conclusive. To my mind, there's enough smoke to indicate some kind of fire, but not how large or how it's being used. I don't want to get lured into a discussion about intel-created killers, however, so I'll just keep to the facts, the ones I consider relevant, anyway:

1) School shootings have occurred repeatedly over the past 15 years, beginning in 1996, and seem to be on the rise. [I've corrected the error of year in original edit - '96 was the famous Dunblane shooting]

2) At the very least, the "meme" of "teenagers-senselessly-kill-classmates" has taken root in our culture over the past 10 years.

3) The proof is the increased popularity of the subject in movies, not just as a primary narrative but also as a peripheral plot element, to the point that it no longer needs much "establishing" or explaining for audiences. It has become a stereotype.

4) The characteristics of the stereotypical "school shooter," besides male and teenage, include alienation, introversion, nonverbal, hostile to parents and to general social values, underachiever ("slacker"), weird often "Goth" style clothing, unusually high intelligence, possibly sexual inhibition or dysfunction. (These guys aren't "jocks," A-students, or party-goers.)

5) These characteristics overlap with those of autistics, Aspergerians, geeks, high school drop-outs, artistic-types, and generally sensitive (even "psychic") individuals: in others words, probably the lowest demographic for homicidal behaviors. This raises the question: where does the stereotype come from, if not statistics?

6) Neither news reports nor movies faithfully represent the facts but instead keep to the accepted stereotypical narrative, by deliberately or unwittingly omitting details that could open up the "meme" to reevaluation: such as for example, how much proscribed medications or TV commercials (to cite just two factors) might have to do with a teenager who "snaps" and goes ballistic. (Kevin does mention that Kevin was on Prozac, but only as part of his cunning defense.)

7) Present company notwithstanding, the majority of intelligent people in today's society, based on my experience at least, are not questioning this stereotypical narrative, particularly when the "psychology" is seemingly well-presented, as in Kevin. Instead, like barracuda, they lay blame at the door of "mental illness combined with childhood bullying" (and does "mental illness" explain anything?!) or, as in Kevin, attribute it to maternal neglect/mistreatment. Put bluntly, these intelligent people (not you, barracuda!) aren't ever talking about faulty press coverage, fact distortion, psy-ops, social-engineering, or mind control, which at the very least ought to be allowed on the table when it comes to such a "hot" topic.

Barracuda's reading of my posts is far from accurate - at least to my intentions - and what seems to be happening is what so often happens in a conversation between differing points of view: my words are being misheard and/or misinterpreted in order to make them better fit with the listener's previous convictions. That's not to blame barracuda, because I may be arguing poorly. I'll try and lay it out more flatly (hopefully this will help C2W also, who posted while I was writing this).

I certainly don't think blaming movies for people's acts is anything but simplistic, nor would I ever argue that less of any particular kind of movie would make for less of a particular kind of social behavior. (I'm sure this could be argued in plenty of superficial cases, however, such as when the sale of undershirts allegedly plummeted after It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable was seen to not wear one; snopes might challenge even this meme). That was never meant to be part of my argument, even if it was apparently inferred by it.

Guruilla is explicitly asserting not only an imitative sequence but the opening of some kind of psychological, socially approving space in which the more films there are about mass-murdering teens, the more mass-murdering teens we will have in society. "The more precedents that are created for forms of behavior, the more acceptable it becomes." Sounds fairly mechanistic to me.

Taken out of context I'd agree, that does sound overly mechanistic. But what about the context? What I was trying to describe was subtler and more nuanced.

First off, I did not mean socially acceptable, but acceptable to/for the perpetrator: i.e., this must be an appropriate way to express my rage, because so many others are doing it.

If events and/or reports are manipulated to create a more or less standardized narrative (in this case, alienated schoolboy(s) shoot classmates for no good reason); and if intelligent writers and filmmakers, et al., swallow this narrative whole and incorporate it into their own works, adding extra nuance and depth with an awareness of psychology, and so forth; this then further establishes the narrative - now a meme - in the collective awareness.

The next step of my argument is harder to establish, but it has to do with the "expanded dreamspace" which Jack R (!) likes so much. I'll use a personal example: as a boy and teenager, I had a propensity to steal. By and large, I stole only from businesses, and never from people (i.e., never personal items, though my parents were not protected by this 'code'). However, if I noticed, for whatever reason, that someone suspected that I might steal from them, even though it had never crossed my mind, and based on no actual evidence, there was suddenly a much higher possibility that I would do so. Their fear/suspicion created an environment that reinforced the tendency in myself. To a degree, their reaction to me provoked the very behavior in me which I was being subtly accused of. (Suspicion is a kind of accusation.)

If alienated and/or "weird" teenagers are being regarded more and more by their parents and teachers, and even their peers, as "potential sociopaths," time-bombs just waiting to go off, this creates a psychic atmosphere - dreamspace in which, even against their will, those kids may find themselves picking up the (spoken or unspoken) fears of those around them, and acting them out. That seems to be the nature of the beast - of transference, projection, and all the rest.

So then: the school shooter stereotype I described above happens to coincide with a certain real type, the autist/artist/introvert/dreamer type - in a word, the social misfit or outcast. This type is already feared and distrusted by society, simply because it's unlike it. Consequently (though it's a chicken or egg thing), the misfit does feel hostility towards his or her parents, authority figures and peers. The dreamspace in question widens the gulf between "outcast" and "society" and slowly reinforces the specific roles set: that of "self" and "other" and the necessity of competition, and finally war, between the two "poles." The strangeness, alienation, fear, distrust, and all the rest, instead of being reduced through understanding and communication, becomes intensified and magnified through misunderstanding and miscommunication, and eventually what is unjustly feared becomes real (thereby justifying the fear).

In a word, it's fucked up, dude.

A movie like Kevin attempts to address this psychic situation (which is the real time bomb), but my sense is that it only compounds it because it's not playing with a full deck. The mother's incomprehension and fear of her (autist-outcast) child is shared by the filmmakers and so it is transferred to the audience. Kevin isn't blamed for his behavior (it's not a reactionary film), but at the same time, he's not human (understandable) enough for audiences to empathize or identify with him either. He's the "other."

The reason "we need to talk about Kevin" is simple: because no one is talking to Kevin. He is "beyond the pale."

[JackRiddler]

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I think my friends barracuda and c2w? are making strawmen out of guruilla's post, which hardly suggested that media depictions of behaviors drive others to commit the same behaviors in any kind of mechanistic causality.

That you say so is what makes me think I may have misunderstood the OP. So:

Help me, JackRiddler! I understood these sentences...

Since humans, like the other mammals, are imitative creatures, where once upon a time alienated teenagers (the non-MK-ULTRA kind) only fantasized about mowing down their classmates, there's more and more "space" - social license - for disenchanted and disenfranchised youths to make their morbid fantasies come true. It's a bit like a kind of dreamspace is being created and then slowly filled by actual events.

...to be saying that the reason fictional depictions of murder by alienated teenagers create more socially licensed figurative space for the nurturance of real sociopathic teen killers is that humans are imitative.

SNIP

What am I missing?

Nothing. You're just making it seem more exotic than it is to me. It's not mechanistic in that seeing it once does not compel imitation. Seeing it many times doesn't compel, either, but makes it seem normal and might provide ideas. I think media coverage and effective glorification of mass murders is more important than movies in this.

But now let g speak for himself. Henceforth I'd prefer you'd read my own take on it (above) and respond to that.

The snipped part was this:

Because....I guess that since it's not clear to me by what process or whose agency a dreamspace is created and then slowly filled by actual events, I just don't see another reason given, really.

No agency need be involved, nor does the "filling" have to be complete or occur with the predictability of filling a glass of water. Anyway, those are g's words, so respond to mine if you will.

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[barracuda]

If alienated and/or "weird" teenagers are being regarded more and more by their parents and teachers, and even their peers, as "potential sociopaths," time-bombs just waiting to go off, this creates a psychic atmosphere - dreamspace in which, even against their will, those kids may find themselves picking up the (spoken or unspoken) fears of those around them, and acting them out. That seems to be the nature of the beast - of transference, projection, and all the rest.

Guruilla, you seem to be saying that wrongly stereotyped characterisations of groups in a society can actually cause enough reinforcement of the stereotypes to make them come true. For example, if enough people within a society think negro men all want to rape white women, eventually this will create a dreamspace in which the fears of those around them will be acted out.

Okay, that's an extreme example, but you see what I mean.

[JackRiddler]

If alienated and/or "weird" teenagers are being regarded more and more by their parents and teachers, and even their peers, as "potential sociopaths," time-bombs just waiting to go off, this creates a psychic atmosphere - dreamspace in which, even against their will, those kids may find themselves picking up the (spoken or unspoken) fears of those around them, and acting them out. That seems to be the nature of the beast - of transference, projection, and all the rest.

Guruilla, you seem to be saying that wrongly stereotyped characterisations of groups in a society can actually cause enough reinforcement of the stereotypes to make them come true. For example, if enough people within a society think negro men all want to rape white women, eventually this will create a dreamspace in which the fears of those around them will be acted out.

Okay, that's an extreme example, but you see what I mean.

If I didn't know better I'd think your extreme example seems calculated to make further discussion impossible.

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