Humans are Animals That Rely on Animal Instincts

Humans are Animals That Rely on Animal Instincts

Nick XXXXXXXXXXXXX
A Film Class
12/14/2007

Humans are Animals That Rely on Animal Instincts

In the wake of the Columbine massacre, many fingers were pointed as to the “reasoning” behind the motives of the shooters came to question. Cliques in the social spectrum of the school had been one proposal, as the shooters were considered outcasts. Another was the music that they listened to, mainly hardcore bands such as Rammstein and The Prodigy. There will never truly be a revelation as to the actual reason behind the massacre since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed suicide shortly thereafter, but one piece of the giant puzzle that lay in the wake of this tragedy was the film connection with Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Eric had written in his journal before the attack that the whole killing spree would be the “holy April morning of NBK” (“NBK” was a codename the killers had used for the attack in their journals). Although Natural Born Killers was released almost five years before the tragedy, the film nonetheless became a source of controversy, as did Marilyn Manson, the Doom computer game, and other violent related media. It wasn’t until well after the shootings occurred that the focus of the massacre shifted towards the warning signs of the students, and what their peers and classmates could have done to help prevent this tragedy. Clearly these kids had built up enough aggression that it required taking lives in order to vent their anger, yet no one, not the media, the faculty, their classmates or the parents of the victims thought of looking (at least not for a great while) at the other end of the spectrum: their emotions.
The graphic violence that one sees on television can seem all too real, and often enough it actually is. The local news stations generally broadcasts the homicides, car wrecks, and drug busts all within the first few minutes of broadcast. It would seem that modern culture, especially Western culture, has a thirst for graphic...