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Chidanand Rajghatta
Is it the gun or is it the culture? Or the point where the two meet? As America struggled to understand and explain the painful tragedy involving the execution-style slaying of 15 highschoolers and teachers by a couple of crazed students, the spotlight fell on the spread of a dark, nihilistic, sub-culture that has infected many teenagers across the country and the nation's controversial gun control laws which many blame for the spread of violence in school communities.
Till 72 hours ago, the word `Gothic' was associated mainly with architecture. In the hours after the shooting, investigators and commentators have discovered a whole world of teenage misfits celebrating their anger, resentment, and frustration through youthful excesses.
Depressive and anarchic, the world of `Goths' is dominated by dark and often violent images involving death and destruction. Their heroes, or anti-heroes, are violent figures. The two suspected teenage killers are, for instance, thought to have hero-worshipped Hitler. Infact, the massacre itself took place on Hitler's birthday.
Goth culture emerged from the punk rock bands of Britain and America in the late 1970s led by such execrable figures as Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Sid Vicious. Vile and offensive, they achieved cult status among the disaffected youth by their excesses on stage -- Cooper is once said to have bitten off the head of a live chicken on stage and Ozbourne is said to have eaten a bat and angry, violent lyrics that tapped the frustration of underachieving and unfocused youth. The movement almost died out in the 1980s but reinvented itself in the United States in the 1990s, almost as a counter to the hip-hop and rap genre of the blacks. Mostly white, often racist, the Goth had their own musical maestros -- Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails and Twisted Sister among them. Their music, described variously as ``death metal'' ``gothic'' or ``industrial rock'' is a stew of violence, obscenity, scatology, and anger.
Goth groupies usually dress all black,with black leather jackets decorated with chains and medallions, heavy boots (usually black with red laces) multi-coloured hair and black nail polish. They often hold racist, neo-Nazi views, and listen to the trashy heavy metal music groups which speak of violence and depredation. One of the suspected killer teenagers is said to have been a fan of a German industrial band called KMFDM which stands for (Kein Mehrheit fur die Mitleid -- No pity for the majority).Goth defenders say the sub-culture is just a harmless expression of teenage frustration and fantasy. ``It gives you a creative way of getting rid of anger and other feelings without having to take anything out physically,'' one Goth groupie told a local paper in Washington where they can be seen hanging around watering holes like (the appropriately named) Crow Bar.
But many commentators now say that even if the image of gothic malevolence is exaggerated, the onset of the new video and computer age, combined with the easy access in the US toinstruments of violence, is what is shattering the quiet of the classrooms across the country.
In recent years, American youth have taken increasingly to video games, many of them violent and scary. Games like Doom and Death which involve onscreen mayhem and massacre are feeding the disaffected youth's appetite for violence. When they emerge from their fantasy world of violent games, they sometimes find that the same ``games'' can be just as well be played in the real world with real weapons.
America prides itself on its gun culture, which, the pro-gun lobby will point out is distinct from the culture of violence. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the American constitution. For decades, Americans have fought to preserve that right in the face of an onslaught from anti-gun activists who feel that easy access to weapons is make violence endemic.
In as much as the gun is a weapon of violence and terror to most urban Americans on either coast, in much of middle America, the gun is a weapon for sports,hunting, and some times for self-protection. According to one estimate, more than 50 per cent of households in the American Midwest own weapons.
Although gun control laws have been tightened considerably in recent times, it is still relatively easy to procure weapons in the United States. In some states, guns are sold in departmental chain stores like Wal-Mart.
In the Colorado shooting, the two teenagers had enough weapons and ammunition for a terrorist-style attack which in fact is what it was. The kids also seemed to have learnt through the Internet how to put together crude bombs.
Experts now surmise that it is the meeting of several such factors -- the disaffection of youth, the new violent sub-culture and easy access to weapons and information -- is what is causing a rash of school shootings across the United States.
The solution: a range of suggestions from tighter gun control laws to curtailing drugs, movie and TV violence, to train teachers and parents to spot potentially violent kids. But fewhave doubts that the 21st century will bring even more trauma.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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