Narratives of Violence, Myths of Youth

Book excerpt: Abstract: Throughout the 1990s in the United States, a series of suburban school shootings perpetrated by young, white males disrupted contemporary perceptions of American youth, often a population configured in terms of ideal whiteness. In conjunction with sensationalized media coverage of school shootings, various fictional portrayals of suburban youth violence also emerged throughout this period as what Henry Giroux has called "public pedagogy" that served to further influence national perceptions of youth. In this body of film, television and literary narratives, school violence is often related to other national concerns surrounding American youth identity such as deviant sexuality and teen pregnancy. While a good deal of scholarly attention has focused on popular representations of education and youth generally, little has been written about these specific fictionalizations of school shootings and what they signify. This dissertation offers a feminist, discursive analysis of these fictional narratives of suburban school violence and argues that rampage violence narratives are intricately connected to national anxieties regarding youth, citizenship, threats to white masculinity, and American identity. In order to illustrate the complexities of themes present across popular culture mediums, my research delves into the purpose of the narratives and what they signify about contemporary American youth identity. Thus, my dissertation will explore representations of youth violence from a variety of angles that prioritize intertextual connections. Specifically, I offer a comparative analysis of portrayals of urban versus suburban school violence, explore the creation of gay male shooters as protagonists, and analyze fictional female shooter characters and teen pregnancy storylines. As well, my dissertation examines the genre phenomenon of young adult novels portraying school violence in order to place these novels in dialogue with other "adult" narratives. Throughout my dissertation I explicate the ways in which school shooting narratives reflect and challenge political and academic debates that situate American youth as current and future citizens in the U.S.