Faggots, Fame and

Firepower: Teenage
Masculinity, School
Shootings, and the
Pursuit of Fame
Richard T. Evans

Abstract: This study of novels, films, and music dating from the late 1970s
to the new millennium examines fictional and pop-culture presentations
of school shootings, including the 1999 Columbine Massacre. The article
also investigates notions of masculinity, normative heterosexuality, fame/
infamy, homophobia, and violence within American culture. The fragility
and uncertainty of proper masculine self-expression is unpacked and reimagined across a variety of texts, demonstrating how various authors
have negotiated with the notions of teenage masculinity, belonging, isolation, and rage.
Keywords: school shootings, Columbine, masculinity and violence, homophobia, misogyny
Resume : Cette etude de romans, de films et de musique dates de la fin
des annees 1970 au debut du nouveau millenaire sinteresse aux representations fictionnelles et populaires de fusillades dans les ecoles, notamment
celles du massacre de Columbine, en 1999. Larticle etudie aussi les notions de masculinite, dheterosexualite normative, de gloire et dinfamie,
dhomophobie et de violence au sein de la culture etatsunienne. La fragilite et le caracte`re incertain dune expression de soi adequate pour le sujet
masculin sont exposes et repenses a` partir dun eventail de textes, afin de
montrer comment differents auteurs ont choisi daborder les notions
de masculinite adolescente, dappartenance, disolement et de rage.
Mots cles : fusillades en milieu scolaire, Columbine, masculinite, violence,
homophobie, misogynie

Canadian Review of American Studies / Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46, no. 1, 2016
doi:10.3138/cras.2014.018

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

In a country that doesnt discriminate between fame and infamy, the

latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin (emphasis added)

The passage just quoted from Lionel Shrivers novel We Need to

Talk about Kevin is spoken by Eva Khatchadourian, the mother of a
sociopathic teenage boy, the eponymous Kevin, who massacred
students, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker at his high school with
a crossbow. Eva writes these words in one of a series of letters to
her dead husband, Franklin, whom Kevin killed along with their
young daughter, Celia, at the family home on the morning of his
murderous rampage in his schools gymnasium. The novel is written from Evas perspective as she slowly tries to come to terms
with the crime her son has committed and understand what
responsibility she herself might bear for the crime.
This novel is only one of several works in literature and film that
have appeared in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre on 20 April 1999, in Littleton, Colorado. Aside from Shrivers
novel, a Palme dOr-winning film, Elephant by Gus Van Sant, was
released in 2003 to critical acclaim and to some controversy due to
its graphic violence and the plots strong similarity to the events at
Columbine. The film uses a near-documentary style format as a
pair of killers, Eric and Alex, mirroring the Columbine duo of Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold, plot and then act out their vicious
revenge fantasy against their classmates in the hallways, classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, and gymnasiums of their schools. But
this fear and focus on an outcast taking violent revenge on those
who have belittled or mistreated him (or rarely, her) is not something that entered literary and filmic pop culture only in the wake
of the Columbine killings. Indeed, we have only to look back to
such novels as Stephen Kings Carrie (1975) and its film adaptation
by Brian DePalma (1976), along with movies such as Heathers
(1989), Higher Learning (1995), and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) to see
that writers and filmmakers were wrestling with this notion of
teenage violence and anger acted out in a scholastic setting.
What the present article aims to undertake, however, is to focus
narrowly upon some of the underlying, and perhaps purposely
unexamined or overlooked, issues that curiously link many of
these fictional representations together with their real-life counterparts. Primary among these is the interconnection of masculinity,

heterosexuality, and homophobia that both affects and infects the

way in which the shooters and their victims perceived and interacted with each other before the massacre. Secondary, but still connected to this warped notion of proper masculinity, is the strange
yearning for fame and recognition that seems to follow in the wake
of a school shooting. This recognition is sought, not only for the
magnitude of the shooters accomplishment, but also, the present
article will argue, for the distinctly masculine sense of dominance
they temporarily wield over their classmates and their community.
It seems especially telling that the image of the school shooter has recently come to be personified (in widespread public perception)
by the lone, outcast young man; yet this is something that only entered the literary/filmic/musical realm in the 1990s. Indeed, all of
the early fictional killers, such as Kings telekinetic Carrie White
in the film adaptation Carrie (1976); Veronica Sawyer, the character
played by Winona Ryder in the satirical Heathers (1989); and Brenda
Spencer, the real-life young woman whose 1979 shooting of eleven
people at a school in San Carlos, California, inspired Bob Geldof to
write the song I Dont Like Mondays, were all women (Shriver 240). It is only once we enter the last decade of the previous millennium that the boys seem to take their turn at cocking the hammer.

The shooters in school shootings nowadaysthe visible personification of the terrifying affliction that has infested Americas
small towns and suburbsare, without exception, male (Cullen 14). As Dave Cullen writes, The perpetrator was always a
white boy, always a teenager, in a placid town few had ever heard
of . . . But it was new to middle-class white parents. Each fresh

Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

The present article does not intend to argue for any definitive reasons as to why this gender shift might have taken place, beyond the
fact that, when actual school shootings began to occur across America, they were committed exclusively by adolescent boys. It should
be noted, however, (a) that Brenda Spencer remains to this day the
lone, true-crime exception to this boys-only club of school shooters;
(b) that Heatherss Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder) has
an active male helpmate named Jason Dean (played by Christian
Slater), who physically commits the murders they plot together;
and (c) that Carrie Whites only weapon of attack is her telekinetic
mind. In effect, these murderous adolescent females are, in order,
an anomaly, an accessory, and a scientific impossibility.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

4

horror left millions shaking their heads, wondering when the next
outcast would strike (15). It is this immediate exclusion from normalcy that seems to haunt and warp the image of the school
shooter in the collective minds of the audience that witnesses the
tragedy either live or on television. The killer(s) must quickly be
made other somehow, be cast in the light of an encompassing
abnormality that sits in stark opposition to the average middleclass white boys who roam the hallways of countless American
schools, from Bellingham to Boca Raton. Seemingly, the easiest
and most comprehensive way to do this is to call into question and
to deride the masculinity and heterosexuality of the shooter(s).
In order to better understand the necessity of acceptable masculinity and compulsory heterosexuality in the towns and cities of the
foothills of the Rocky Mountains in the final years of the twentieth
century, it is valuable to turn to another violent crime that can give
us some insight into the prevailing notions of what it is to be a
proper man in the American Midwest. Less than six months before
Columbine and less than 140 miles north of Littleton, Colorado,
in the college town of Laramie, Wyoming, two part-time roofers
and high school dropouts named Aaron McKinney and Russell
Henderson kidnapped and beat to death a gay University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard. The murder shocked the
nation, and Laramie, like Columbine six months later, came to
be a recognizable catchword for violence and murder.
As Jedadiah Schultz, one of the characters in Moises Kaufmans
play The Laramie Project, comments, Now, after Matthew, I would
say that Laramie is a town defined by an accident, a crime. Weve
become Waco, weve become Jasper. Were a noun, a definition, a
sign. We may be able to get rid of that . . . but it will sure take
awhile (9). It would not be surprising, in the wake of the Littleton
shooting, if Jedadiah were to add Columbine to the list of places
now wholly defined by an act of violence. Further into the play,
another character, labelled Newsperson 4, who is reporting the
discovery of Shepards body to the viewing public on television,
makes an even more curious observation: People would like to
think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule,
but it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a
daily basis (47). This appears to be a simple statement, on the surface, about the homophobic violence regularly faced by gay and lesbian youth, but it can be argued equally that what happens on a

daily basis is a constant reaffirmation and performance of socially

acceptable masculinity in Laramiethe heterosexual killers, then,
must be examined and scrutinized just as closely as the gay victim.
In her article, A Boys Life, published in Harpers magazine
eleven months after the Shepard murder and five months after the
Columbine killing spree, JoAnn Wypijewski delves into high-plains
masculinity and homophobia and emerges with some piercing insights into both pre-millennial masculinity and insecurity among
young heterosexual men. This insight proves highly useful for unpacking the desperate quest for normal masculinity among
many young men in pre- and post-millennial Americathe task
this article has set itself. Wypijewskis description of McKinney
and Henderson, their fragile sense of their own manliness and their
aversion to homosexuals, could easily be applied either to Harris
and Klebold in Littleton or to many of the fictional killers under
examination here. She writes how Shepards killers appear to be
young men of common prejudices, far more devastatingly human
than is comfortable to consider and that their violent act may tell
more about the everyday life of hate and hurt and heterosexual
culture than about homophobia (307).
5

Wypijewski goes on to tell her readers that [i]ts just possible that
Matthew Shepard didnt die because he was gay; he died because
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson are straight (307). When
we turn to the school shootings themselves in the coming pages,
I hope to uncover and examine this shifting away from the homosexual otherness to the never-discussed compulsory heterosexuality of adolescent masculinity. As will be seen, nearly all of the
high school shooters were dismissed by their classmates, both
before and after their crime, as fag, wuss, queer, sissie, girly man,
woman, the standard straight-boy arsenal (Wypijewski 309).
While there are two openly gay victims killed in the fictional reimaginings of a school shootingZiggy Randolph, the ballet
dancer in We Need to Talk about Kevin, and an unnamed member of
the Gay Straight Alliance in Elephantthe threat and the fear

Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

It is this stepping back from mere, simplistic homophobia

something that the present article does not cast aside completely
but rather chooses to augment and expand with further insights
into heterosexism and strict male gender rolesthat illuminates
what is being gestured toward here.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

of being (or, just as damaging, of being seen to be) a homosexual

flourishes in virtually all the texts under scrutiny.

Curiously, Columbine occurred while Wypijewski was in Laramie

researching her Shepard article, so her argument about the importance of considering the impact of the lifestyle of the straight
guy or the culture of compulsory heterosexuality is now juxtaposed and reflected with yet another example of two apparently
straight boys committing violence (327). The difference in the case
of Columbine is that, while, in the case of Laramie, it was the victim, the fag, who was gay, the reverse generally occurs in school
shootingsan outsider lashes out against those who are perceived
to possess normative masculinity. Wypijewski writes,
Through [Columbine] ran a thread from every high-profile school
shooting over the past two years. Springfield, Pearl, Paducah, Jonesboro, Conyersevery one of those boy murderers or would-be murderers had been taunted as a wuss, a fag, a loser, or had been rejected
by a girl, or was lonely and withdrawn, or had written harrowing
stories of mayhem and slaying. Two of them had killed their pets. All
of it, like the meanness of the jocks they despised, was regarded as
just boy playOh, Fluffys in the trashcan? Boys will be boys . . . For
any of these boysfor any boy, for that matterwhat does it take to
pass as a man? (327; emphasis added)

This unifying thread that weaves through all these shootings is

significant and worthy of exploration, as is the needling question
that Wypijewski poses to her reader in the passage just quoted
what does it take to pass as a man? It is interesting that she does
not write be a man, but rather pass as a man, suggesting that
there is something uncertain and tremulous in their relation to
their masculinity, that it is more a performed masquerade than
any sort of inborn reality.
Indeed, the quotation which opens her article is from a dominatrix,
who states, When I think of how fragile men are, I feel so much
pity. All that fear, all that self-mutilation, just to be men (Wypijewski 305). Even in the works that preceded the Littleton massacre, we can see young men yearning for a simple map with which
both to chart their masculinity and to demarcate their path toward
manhood through a highly fraught adolescence. If one of the main
iconic images of teenage popularity for boys is the jock/athlete,
then this is a role that is simultaneously despised and envied in

equal measure by those young men who do not fit into its strictures. This is not the case, however, for teenage girls; the gym does
not function as a metaphor for cool in Carrie, when the popular
girls, taunting the outcast Carrie, pelt her with tampons in the
locker-room showers when she experiences her first period and
are made to perform a weeks worth of detention in the gym
(King 63). The female locker room does not seem to be the gendercoded enclave that it is for teenage boys, or at the very least, not
one that is so easily deployed in films or in books.
In the 1999 sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, Carrie Whites half-sister
Rachel Lang (Emily Bergl), the new protagonist, lashes out at her
tormentors during a house party after one of the jocks broadcasts a
tape of her having sex with another player at the teen gathering.
The film was released in February 1999, less than two months
before the Columbine massacre, yet its limited popularity ensured
that it had disappeared from theatres by the time that Harris and
Klebold stormed the hallways. What most sets the film apart from
its predecessor is that, unlike in the original, nearly all of the antagonists are male. To be specific, they are members of the high
school football team who compete to see who can collect the most
points by sleeping with the most girls at their school.

The film includes several locker-room scenes that are rife with intimate male interaction. There is one scene of them shaving each
others heads as a bonding exercise, and on two separate occasions, Jesse wrestles and fights shirtless with his teammates over

Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

Rachel Lang, though, is a teenage girl on the cusp of the millennium, with a rounded awareness of the variability of human sexuality. Her initial response to the jocks who pursue and question her
aversion to their advances is cuz, Im a dyke, although her later
attraction to the Jesse (Jason London) character shows this to be
false.1 It is also interesting that her best friend, Arnie, is dismissed
by the football team in the film as a fag, although neither Rachel
nor the boy himself ever denies or confirms the epithethe simply
exists as her platonic friend, who nevertheless warns her, Is hanging out with Jock Boy such a great idea? This is not to imply that
we are certain Arnie is gay, but the film allows the possibility to
linger, without confirmation or denial. And, while Rachels best
friends sexuality is left undefined, the homosocial, if not fully
homoerotic, horseplay of the football team itself is undeniable.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

8

his relationship with Rachel. The teams contempt for and suspicion of their teammates dating such an outsider may be as expected, but director Katt Shea sets all of these scenes in a locker
room filled with naked or half-dressed young men. It cannot be
coincidence, in light of the conscious inclusion of the sexually
ambiguous male friend, that she has constructed male-bonding
scenes so rife with homoerotic potential.
This juxtaposing of homophobia with homoeroticism reaches its
apex in a scene where the football coach, dissatisfied with one
players recent performance on the field, forces him to bare his buttocks to the entire team and then to bend over to ensure that his
teammates dont see a tampon string. With this heightened
focus on performative masculinity and aggressive male sexuality,
it is not surprising that, when Rachel unleashes her telekinetic
revenge at the climax of the film, one of the football players is
graphically castrated with a small harpoon. While the parents and
coaches who surround the jocks in the film seem to excuse their
sexual excesses for the sake of their on-field prowess, they are,
nevertheless, brutally punished by the female who refuses to
become their sexual conquest and are shown to be rather ridiculous in their homophobic rants, as the screenplay lets the homoerotic leak casually through the homosocial veneer of their antics.2
While the vengeance wrought in The Rage: Carrie 2 takes place
away from an actual high school, that inflicted in Heathers, by teenage killers Veronica Sawyer and Jason Dean, situates itself in the
halls, cafeteria, and playing fields of a secondary-school campus.
The primary target of the killers is a trio of popular girls all named
Heather, swatchdogs and diet cokeheads who run Westburg
High with iron fists and colour-coded hair-scrunchies. My focus
here, however, is on the second and third murder victims, two rabidly homophobic football players named Kurt Kelly and Ram
Sweeney, described by Jason as having nothing to offer this
school but date rapes and AIDS jokes now that football season is
over. The two athletes are blatant stereotypes of brainless jocks
who are never seen without either their lettermen jackets on their
backs or a homophobic slur on their lips.
Their initial interaction with Jason consists of their asking him,
What did your boyfriend say when you told him you were moving to Sherwood, Ohio? and Hey, Ram, doesnt this cafeteria

have a no fags allowed rule? It is therefore not surprising that,

when Veronica and Jason take revenge on them, they make the
murder, to quote one of their classmates, look like a repressed
homosexual suicide pact in which the two young men supposedly shoot each other in the woods behind the football field.
In addition to gathering a collection of gay artifacts to leave at
the scene, such as a copy of Studpuppy [a gay porn magazine],
a candy dish, a Joan Crawford postcard, mascara, and mineral
water, the two killers forge a suicide note that reads, Ram and I
died the day we realized we could never reveal our forbidden love
to an uncaring, un-understanding world. The joy we felt in each
others arms was greater than any touchdown, yet we were forced
to live the lie of sexist, beer-guzzling assholes. While the satire is
broad and biting throughout the film, the fact that the cruel bullies
become in death precisely the thing that they so despised in life
seems a rather sweet irony to the viewer.

Even more interesting, though, is how Ram and Kurt inhabit the
ultimate stereotype of the hateful jock that the school shooters at
Columbine, and elsewhere, came to so heartily despise. Heathers is,
thus, the lone work under examination here that sides nearly completely with the killers and encourages the audience to laugh at
their carnage. This is not to say that the 1989 film encourages or
condones school violence and mass shootings, but it does seem to
suggest, through its dark comedy, that high school is a hellish
place inhabited by hateful, cruel people. It also skilfully manages
to comment on homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality
through the funeral scene. Would the father truly have embraced a
live gay son, as Jason asks? Or does the fact that his son is now

9
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

The satire does not cease with their deaths, however, and the film
includes a scene at Ram and Kurts joint funeral in which they are
placed in side-by-side caskets, wearing their helmets and clutching
footballs. One boys father tearfully says, I dont care that you
were some pansy. My sons a homosexual and I love him; I love
my dead gay son, to which Jason whispers in reply, How do
you think hed react to a son that had a limp wrist with a pulse?
Though Heathers does not play up the homoerotic potential of the
football team and its locker room antics in the way that Carrie 2
did, there is, nevertheless, a unifying commentary on the slippage
that can exist within the team between homoeroticism and male
homosocial bonding.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

dead free the dad to state publicly his love for his dead gay son,
in some twisted, morbid version of the predictable conclusion of a
heart-warming television movie about gay teens?

10

Finally, it is interesting to note that, according to the film, Ram and

Kurts heterosexual image, or that of any high school jock, is so fragile and in need of constant reaffirmation that even their previously
unquestioned status as jock lords and pussy hounds at Westberg
High was insufficient to stop their classmates from believing the
forged suicide note immediately. Though the film is undoubtedly a
satire, this observation as to the tenuousness of a teenage boys heterosexual image is something worth remembering when considering
the other more serious novels and films being unpacked.
The wide-release film that dealt with a school shooting and its
aftermath that most closely preceded the Columbine massacre
appears to be John Singletons Higher Learning from late 1995.
Though it is set on the fictional college campus of Columbus University in southern California and deals far more with issues of
race than of masculinity or male sexuality, there is one character,
the skinhead Remy, played by Michael Rapaport, who is worth
noting. Portrayed as a lonely Idaho freshman who falls under the
spell of a neo-Nazi group on campus that preys on his isolation
and immaturity, he is eventually brainwashed into shooting random students during a unity rally on the campus quad.
His first meeting with the skinheads is fraught with homophobic
slurs: Remy fears that the shadowy stranger is hitting on him,
rather than simply trying to befriend him. What are you, some
queer or something? I should kick your ass, he says, to which the
shrouded figure replies, I aint no faggot, I just wanted to know if
you wanted to get a drink. Naturally, once their respective heterosexuality is affirmed, the two men stroll off into the night
together to continue their male bonding, for Remy apparently perceives jackbooted skinheads as far less dangerous or threatening to
his masculine identity than a potentially flirtatious gay man.
Though nearly all of Remys angry interactions during the rest of
the movie are with his Jewish roommate and the black students on
campus, his repeated refrain when he fights someone is Youre
nothing! Im a man! Im a man! as if his masculinity were somehow bound up in his white heritage and his penchant for violence.

Though he never again utters homophobic epithets in the film, the

other skinheads do frequently. Curiously, the film never shows the
skinheads with women, stranding them throughout in an entirely
male, homosocial space of weightlifting and toying with guns
thus, their professed aversion to gay men is never once visually or
verbally buffered with any sort of heterosexual actions or statements by the screenwriter or director.

Perhaps, though, upon further consideration, this fits in nicely

with what this article has been arguing throughout, that, in a gesture back to Wypijewski, the viewer can consider that the two
gay victims are assaulted, not because of their homosexuality,
but because of their assailants heterosexuality. The need for constant reaffirmation of heterosexuality and normative masculinity
that ensnares both the jocks in Carrie 2, as well as Ram and Kurt in
Heathers, is just as apparent in the skinheads from Higher Learning.
In fact, due to the lack of female encounters with the skinheads
previously noted, it is possible that this is just a heightened, conscious need to confirm their heterosexuality to themselves, and
especially to each other, through a violent, visible rejection of the
homoerotic potential of their insular homosocial spherenot to
mention of their communal bodybuilding and their gun worship,
the latter filled with phallic symbolism.

11
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

The most interesting moment in the film with regards to sexuality,

masculinity, and homophobia comes near the very end of the
movie while Remy is perched on a campus rooftop with his hunting rifle awaiting his signal to start shooting. Meanwhile, the camera pans across another part of campus, where two gay men talk
intimately while one playfully caresses the others lapel, and then
pans further to reveal three lurking skinheads watching them
from a nearby staircase, shrouded in shadow. As the rooftop
shooting begins, the campus police cruiser is shown pulling up to
the three skinheads, who are savagely beating the two gay men. In
the credits of the film, the two men are listed as Gay Victim #1
and Gay Victim #2 which, though they are very minor characters
in the movie, only reminds the viewer that, in a diverse cast that
spans race, religion, class, and includes both central lesbian and
bi-curious female characters, the representation of gay men and
the homophobia they potentially suffer are initially relegated to
two nameless characters who come across as near afterthoughts in
the plot.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

Through this lens of the constant need for heterosexual affirmation, tinged with the ever-lurking threat of gayness, it is now easier
to fully examine the playing out of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebolds attack on their high school. Cullen starts out by dismissing
the popular perception that the two boys were true outsiders
within the social hierarchy of Columbine, when he writes,

12

Eric was a brain, but an uncommon subcategory: cool brain. He

smoked, he drank, he dated. He got invited to parties . . . He broke
the rules, tagged himself with the nickname Reb, but did his homework and earned himself a slew of As . . . And he got chicks. Lots
and lots of chicks. On the ultimate high school scorecard, Eric outscored much of the football team. (6)

This is in sharp contrast to the widely reported but erroneous

story that Eric and Dylan were part of a Trenchcoat Mafia
(TCM) that was described on CNN as Goths, gays, outcasts, and
a street gang by a student who did not, in fact, know the people
that he was describing (Cullen 72).
This story was so pervasive within two hours of the first bullet
being fired at Columbine High School that [t]he TCM were portrayed as a cult of homosexual Goths in makeup, orchestrating a
bizarre death pact for the year 2000 (150). It is, perhaps, not surprising that the source of these rumours were those athletes the
two killers were alleged to utterly despise. Cullen writes that
[s]everal jocks reported having seen the killers and friends touching
in the hallways, groping each other or holding hands. A football
player captivated reporters with tales of group showering [though]
most of the students saw through them. They were disgusted at the
jocks for defaming the killers the same way in death as they had in
life. (155)

Therein appears the need to quickly and succinctly other and

isolate the perpetrator(s) of a high school shooting, and as was discussed previously, there is no better way to cut a teenage boy off
from his peers than by calling him a fag.
The jocks reaction to the killings appears at first to foster some
sympathy for the killers, since the general student body seems to
have been aware of the jocks homophobic teasing that the killers
endured in life before the rampage. The reality of how the two

boys saw themselves and how they behaved, however, was quite
different. Despite the presss obsession with bullying and misfits,
thats not how the boys presented themselves. Dylan [Klebold]
laughed about picking on the new freshmen and fags. Neither
complained about bullies picking on themthey boasted about
doing it themselves (Cullen 258). The two shooters hardly saw
themselves as victims; rather they seemed somewhat desperately
to strive for a masculine ideal rooted in an aggressive expression
of violence, heterosexuality, and misogyny.

Thus, just as all the young men previously discussed in this article
were enmeshed in a never-ending struggle to prove their own
masculinity and heterosexuality, the Columbine shooters found
themselves entangled in the need to constantly affirm their sense
of manhood through asserting what they were not on the masculinity spectrum. They were not the admired jocks, so those popular, athletic boys had to be stupid, cruel, and unworthy of their
social status at Columbine; they were equally not the freaks and
fags that they so cruelly mocked, seemingly oblivious to the fact
that it was into this lowly category that the lofty jocks had already
permanently slotted them on the hierarchical ladder of high school
popularity.
This commentary on teenage notions of proper masculinity would
not be complete, though, without a gesture toward how the adults
in Littleton reacted to the shootings at the school. Cullen writes

13
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

This anger expressed itself in the Basement Tapes they left behind
to explain themselveshours of video filled with rage and epithets
against those they perceived to be their enemies. Cullen explains
how, Eric introduced most of the ideas; Dylan riffed along. They
insulted the usual inferiors: blacks, Latinos, gays, and women
(326). Of course Eric would enjoy killing jocks, too, along with niggers, spics, fags, and every other group he railed against (Cullen,
330). It seems, therefore, thatin the midst of all the hateful language and frustrated anger directed at various groups and minoritiesEric and Dylan saw themselves as tormented by the jocks, a
hyper-masculine group they thought to be ridiculous and unworthy of both life and adulation. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly saw
themselves as superior to those niggers, spics, fags (330) and
bitches (326), who were somehow less than in the eyes of these
two scrawny little white guy[s] (326), to quote Cullen.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

14

how it was only after conferring with trauma specialists that the
principal, Frank DeAngelis, agreed that he should tell his students,
especially the young men raised in a western mentality, that
its alright to show emotion (116). He even went so far as to
open a speech with the words, Guys, trust me, now is not the
time to show your manliness. Emotion is emotion, and keeping it
inside doesnt make you strong (1167). While the gesture of affirming to the students that men need to mourn openly was superficially a good one, it is important to note that there is still the
implicit suggestion, in the words now is not the time, that a
mass murder is somehow the exception where manliness can be
temporarily set aside. This is quite different from granting permission for a more tender and emotional masculinity to appear regularly in everyday life in Coloradothe curiously inseparable
intersection between being a man and passing as a man that Wypijewski commented upon in Laramie seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, just as potent and unwavering in Littleton.
In the case of Kevin Khatchadourian, the violent teenage boy around
whom the plot of We Need to Talk about Kevin revolves, we encounter
a school shooter who survives the attack because he wishes to be
around to reap the benefits of the notoriety of his crime. As his
mother describes him to the reader, he would have me know that
he is no tinhorn delinquent, but a notorious fiend of whom his less
accomplished fellow juveniles are in awe (Shriver 41). It is this
desire for the publics recognition of the wickedness and daring of
his crime that takes us back to the quotation at the opening of this
article, which sees Kevins mother commenting on the intermingling
of fame and infamy in post-millennium America. And central to Kevins blood-drenched yearning is his certainty that the murders of
his father, his little sister, a teacher, and some classmates guarantee
him an unquestionable manhood and masculine power.
Despite Kevins own certainty, however, Eva, through the letters
that comprise the novel, casts doubt on this through her epistolary
ponderings. She writes, Now he doesnt have to worry about
whether hes a freak or a geek, a grind or a jock or a nerd. He
doesnt have to worry if hes gay. Hes a murderer. Its marvelously unambiguous (Shriver 165). By taking on the label of
murderer, Kevin has managed to escape all the other simplistic
tags that Eva lists as classifying high school students with regards
to either their popularity or their mental or athletic skills. The

inclusion of the sentence about him not having to worry if hes

gay seems oddly jarring, though, for it suggests that it is a question that perhaps Kevin, or his mother at least, once considered.
There are hints throughout the novel that Kevins performance of
his masculinity is tinged, inexorably, with elements of homoeroticism. He derides a fellow inmate by stating that his cocks the
size of a Tootsie Roll. The little ones, you know? thereby oddly
revelling in adolescent locker room competitiveness behind jailhouse bars (Shriver 42). The homosocial infused with the homoerotic also appears frequently in Kevins relationship with his
hanger-on buddy, Lenny Pugh, a relationship that, in some ways,
mirrors the leader/follower dynamic that appeared in Eric Harris
and Dylan Klebolds friendship, in which the former always dominated and the latter riffed along (Cullen 326).

It is likely that were Kevin to answer a question on the subject of

his seemingly intimate relationship with Lenny, he would probably respond coarsely with some version of the quip, [I]ts only
gay if youre giving the blowjob; or, in Lennys case, taking it up
the ass (Shriver 242). But this in itself calls into question the
notion of male intimacy and of what is, or is not, permitted during
male intimacy. This question is beyond the scope of the present
article, but it signals an interesting area of inquiry into the acceptable limits of homosocial and homoerotic male bonding.
In Kevins case, it is telling that Franklin seems less concerned and
labels Kevin and Lennys apparent backyard tryst as an

15
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

Eva comments in two separate passages in the book that there was
likely a sexually experimental relationship between Lenny and
Kevin, but she never fully decides just what it entailed. During
one conversation with her husband, Franklin, she asks, Did I ever
tell you that I caught them out back, and Lenny had his pants
down? [But] Kevin didnt have his pants down. Kevin was fully
clothed (Shriver 265). Later on in the novel, after having visited
him in prison, she says that [i]ts possible hes still a virgin; Im
only sure of one thing. That is, if he has had sex, its been grim
short, pumping; shirt on. (For that matter he could have been
sodomizing Lenny Pugh. Its uncannily easy to picture) (Shriver
3212). In both these passages, the relationship between Kevin and
Lenny is one based on power and position.3

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

16

experiment once it is ascertained that Kevin was likely the

active, penetrative partner (Shriver 265). One wonders if his
fatherly reaction would have been different had it been Kevin who
was being sexually penetrated, since Franklin is more than free
with the word fag in the novel (Shriver 92) and blithely assumed that all that lurked within Kevins sociopathic mind was
snakes and snails and puppy dogs tails up until the very
moment that his son turned the crossbow on him (116). The question must be asked whether or not this freely granted boyhood
could be a factor in the carnage inflicted by these boys upon their
classmates, and occasionally, their parents.
Again, when we consider the laissez-faire attitude that fathers
such as Franklin seemingly bring to parenting their sons, we are
brought back to the incisive words of Wypijewski: [A]ll of it, like
the meanness of the jocks they despised, was regarded as just boy
playBoys will be boys . . . For any of these boysfor any boy, for
that matterwhat does it take to pass as a man? (327; emphasis
added). It is worth considering, then, whether, if Lenny and Kevin
were transposed into Ram and Kurts funeral scene in Heathers,
and Franklins son had a left-behind suicide note or video that
proved he and his friend were actual lovers, Franklin would have
mustered a moving eulogy for his dead gay son. Or perhaps
that falls outside the sphere of simple youthful experimentation
and beyond the realm of boys will be boys into something more
real and therefore less blithely dismissible. And, returning to Evas
initial comment about Kevin being fully defined by his label as
murderer, something that fully trumps popularity or sexuality in a
hyper-masculine world of boys will be boys, is a murderous son
preferable to a gay one, dead or alive?
What can be ascertained from the novel is that the fictional Kevin,
like the real-life Eric and Dylan, sees himself as superior to both
the jocks and the fags that he corrals and kills with his crossbow.
As he tells it, [I]f you were planning a major operation like this,
wouldnt you go for the priss-pots and faggots and eyesores you
couldnt stand? (Shriver 355). Kevin holds in particular derision
one of his victims, the openly gay ballet dancer Ziggy Randolph,
whose coming-out speech to the high school received, according to
his killer, a [s]tanding ovation for taking it up the ass (Shriver 242).
It is curious to read this passage in light of the two references to
Kevins apparently sodomizing his buddy Lenny, but then, perhaps,

this merely reaffirms the point made earlier that masculinity rests, in
some part, on penetrating but never being penetrated, sexually.
Thus, even if Kevin were once sexually intimate with boys, the
intimacy was always coded entirely in power, conquest, and dominance, and never in emotion, connection, or willing erotic subjection. The ability to be innately a man remains ever elusive, while
the constantly reaffirmed task of passing as a man appears, like
fame or infamy, to be far more easily attainable. Curiously, this
division between gender expressions being inborn or socially constructed is one that Eva ponders in connection to Ziggy. She describes him as [d]ark and fine-featured, he was a striking boy
with a commanding presence, though tritely effeminate in manner;
I have never been sure if homosexuals limp-wristed gestures are
innate, or studied (Shriver 378). She does not extend this curiosity, however, to the everyday gestures of heterosexual men, leaving unexamined the assumed innateness of their performances of
manliness.

It must also be noted that Van Sant also has the two killers kiss in
the shower on the morning of the massacre, a narrative choice that

17
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

The inclusion of Ziggy Randolph as a gay victim of Kevins sociopathic rage is, as previously noted, not the only case of a gay male
character finding his way into a post-Columbine work. Gus Van
Sant goes so far as to include a scene in Elephant that takes place in
a classroom where the Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) is holding a
meeting. They discuss whether or not some people are immediately identifiable as gay and then argue the merits of wearing the
colour pink and rainbow paraphernalia. Eventually, once the
shooting spree begins, one of the students walks into the hall to
investigate the commotion and is shot and killed. The other students, including one of the lead characters, Acadia, then break a
window and flee the building. It seems as if the young man killed
is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when he exits the
classroom doorway, as other scenes show the two killers, Alex and
Eric, purposely stalking and cornering various other students in
washrooms, classrooms, and the library. Van Sant thus weaves
gay and lesbian teens into his tale as both victims and survivors
but seems to make a point of treating the gay characters just as he
treats the heterosexual onesneither spared nor singled out for
particular violence.

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

18

seems to gesture back to all the schoolyard rumours, in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine shooting, that Cullen reports in
his book. It is odd that an openly gay director, known for confronting homophobia in his other films, such as Milk (2008), would
seemingly lend visual credence to the innuendo about touching,
groping, and group showering used to attempt to other the
two shooters in the media (Cullen 155). While this may simply be
a way of addressing the rumours on-screen, it does enable audience
members to dismiss the two young men as murderous homosexuals whose sexuality is somehow the oddity responsible for their
carnage. Van Sant is likely attempting something less simplistic.
While this article does not presume to give a definitive answer to
the reason for the inclusion of the kissing scene, some possibilities
can be carefully proposed for consideration in light of some of the
other works under examination. The kiss might well be a comment
on homophobia, but since the bullying and teasing is never shown
to be specifically homophobic in nature, this does not seem to be
likely: a director such as Van Sant would almost assuredly make
this connection more clearly to his audience. Rather, it seems as if
nearly all of the male students in the film are consciously left sexually indefinite, with the exception of Nathan, who is shown to be
dating a young woman named Carrie.4
And, if all the male characters exist in a potential-laden queer
space that does not label them on a sexual spectrum, this gives the
director more leeway to comment on a sort of homoerotic potential
that runs through male/male friendships. Equally, the kiss might
also bring to mind the one between Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon at the end of Thelma & Louisea sign of an encompassing
bond that likely surpasses sexuality. As Sarandon comments in
The Celluloid Closet, [W]hen youre about to drive off a cliff, I
dont think youre making a pass at someone. It is telling that the
kiss between Eric and Alex in the shower on the cusp of their rampage was never considered in the same light as that of Thelma and
Louise on the edge of the Grand Canyon, but perhaps this reveals
something about the limits of male homosocial interaction and
bonding. Two men kissing are far more threatening to a heteronormative male identity than two women speeding toward suicide, and all the more so, when those two young men are heavily
armed and careening toward a sociopathic and emotional precipice that threatens others as well.

What Van Sant does do in his film, quite explicitly, is to make the
jocks seem downright cruel to the shooters, mirroring the treatment that Eric and Dylan railed against in their Basement Tapes,
and show at least one of them, Benny, being gunned down at
point-blank range in the hallway. What is odd about this particular
shooting scene is that it is Benny who helps the students from the
GSA out the shattered window of the classroom, before he turns
and purposely walks toward the bombed and burning lockers and
the sound of gunfire. In Columbine, Cullen makes reference to how
a tough-looking senior described [his experience] with a sense of
bravado and chivalry (867), and it seems quite possible that this
somewhat foolish bravado might be what Van Sant is gesturing
toward with the Benny characters death.

And maybe, in the end, this is what can be drawn as a conclusion

from all of these movies and booksthat a desperate pursuit of an
unattainable, proper masculinity can lead some boys to violence
and self-destruction. In a murderous explosion that they know
will be captured by a fascinated media, these young men sense an
avenue through which to display and affirm their mastery and
dominancetraits coded as highly masculineto themselves, to
their peers, and to the watching audience. Despite the simplistic
dismissal and poisonous abuse entangled within the word fag,
the questions raised ought to focus more both on the tenuousness

19
Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

Might it be possible that a false sense of masculine control and

mastery over any situation is to blame for his death, as an extension of the seeming unassailability provided by high school popularity? Indeed, during the actual unfolding of Columbine on live
television, I recall one particular young man running from network to network with his muscular torso bared, promising to (and
I paraphrase here) take care of those two guys if you just let me
back into the school. It was such a blatant case of preening before
the cameras that I recall sitting dumbfounded at the arrogance of
his boasting. But it nevertheless makes one wonder whether even
a high school massacre is deemed, by some boys, to be an appropriate place to flaunt their manliness. Maybe both this real-life
example and Bennys mannered strut toward the armed gunman
in Elephant are perfect examples of times when Principal DeAngeliss words from the Columbine memorial ceremony seem actually
to make senseGuys, trust me, now is not the time to show your
manliness (Cullen 117).

Canadian Review of American Studies 46 (2016)

of heterosexual self-representation and on the lengths that some

young men will go to in order to reach an unattainable manly
ideal.

20

They cannot immolate their high school enemies telekinetically at

the prom, but they can purchase a gun and stalk them in the school
hallways on any random day. And, perhaps, this bullet-ridden
blaze of glory is sufficient for them to convince themselves that
they are, at long last, truly manly men.
Or, at the very least, that they are, finally, passing as one.
Richard T. Evans is a doctoral candidate in the Cultural Mediations
program at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He holds
an M.A. in English Literature from Ottawa University and an M.A. in
Interdisciplinary Studies (Gender and American Literature) from New York
University. His research interests include Twentieth Century American
Literature, Masculinity Studies, Sports Studies, and Queer Theory.

Notes
1

All film quotations from the various films are transcribed to the best of
the authors ability and as concisely as possible from the soundtrack of
the film. Any errors are the authors own.

It is worth noting that, in the case of both Carrie White and Rachel
Lang, the revenge is expressed through a form of telekinesis, which
at times seems almost beyond their ability to fully control. At the risk
of denying these two female protagonists their own agency for retribution, it is a challenge to draw a direct parallel between their sudden
(re)actions and the deliberately plotted, weapon-laden revenge of the
male protagonists/antagonists in the other texts under consideration.

The 2011 film version of We Need to Talk about Kevin omits any reference to either Lenny Pugh or Ziggy Randolph, preferring to focus on
the complicated parent/child relationship between Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Kevin (Ezra Miller). Ezra Miller, however, came out as
queer in subsequent interviews and has spoken of using his sense of
feeling different in high school to connect to some elements of Kevins
inner turmoil and dislike for traditional high school hierarchies.

The choice of this name for one of the female characters is almost
certainly not merely by chance. It might be read as a knowing nod by
Van Sant to Kings heroine Carrie Whiteexcept now, in an ironic

reversal of fortunes, Carrie is the popular, pretty girl with the athletic
boyfriend, who is being stalked by the social outcasts in the halls of
her high school.

Works Cited
Carrie. Dir. Brian DePalma. Perf. Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta,
Amy Irving, and Karen Allen. United Artists, 1976. Videotape.
The Celluloid Closet. Dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Perf. Whoopi
Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks, Farley Granger, Gore Vidal. Sony
Pictures Classics, 1996. Documentary. Videotape.
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. New York: Twelve-Hachette, 2010.
Elephant. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, Carrie Finklea,
John Robinson, Elias McConnell, and Timothy Bottoms. Fine Line
Features-HBO Films, 2003. DVD.
Heathers. Dir. Michael Lehman. Perf. Winona Ryder, Christian Slater,
Shannen Doherty, Kim Walker, and Lisanne Falk. New World Pictures,
1989. Videotape.
Higher Learning. Dir. John Singleton. Perf. Jennifer Connelly, Ice Cube,
Omar Epps, Michael Rapaport, Kristy Swanson, and Laurence Fishburne.
Columbia, 1995. Videotape.
King, Stephen. Carrie. Toronto: Signet, 1988.
The Rage: Carrie 2. Dir. Katt Shea. Perf. Emily Bergl, Jason London, Dylan
Bruno, J. Smith-Cameron, Zachery Ty Brian, and Amy Irving. United
Artists, 1999. DVD.
Shriver, Lionel. We Need to Talk about Kevin. New York: Harper-Perennial,
2003.
We Need to Talk about Kevin. Dir. Lynne Ramsey. Perf. Tilda Swinton, John
C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller. Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011. DVD.
Wypijewski, JoAnn. A Boys Life. Harpers Sept. 1999. Rpt. in Come Out
Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation. Ed.
Chris Bull. New York: Thunders Mouth, 2001. 30529.

Revue canadienne dtudes amricaines 46 (2016)

Kaufman, Moises. The Laramie Project. New York: Vintage, 2001.

21

Copyright of Canadian Review of American Studies is the property of University of Toronto

Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv
without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.