The Fictional Dimension of the School Shooting Discourse : Approaching the Inexplicable / Silke Braselmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Braselmann, Silke, Author.

Series:

Buchreihe der Anglia ; Volume 65.

Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series ; 65

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

School shootings.

Violence in motion pictures--Social aspects.

Violence in motion pictures.

Violence in literature--Social aspects.

Violence in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages).

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Ever since the 1990s, school shootings have shocked the public in their brutality, their suddenness, and their inexplicability. While film and literature have played a role in the heated debates about so-called copycat crimes, the growing body of fictionalizations of school shootings has been neglected thus far. However, in a discourse in which the boundaries between fiction and reality are increasingly blurred, this book shows how fiction shapes and structures, challenges and disrupts cultural processes of meaning-making. Hence, for a better understanding of the school shooting phenomenon, the relevance of fiction on all levels of discourse construction requires thorough analysis. This book therefore develops a new approach to the role of fiction for contemporary forms of excessive violence. By combining narrative theory with insights from sociology and other disciplines, it provides the means for apprehending and describing the relevance of fiction for contemporary discourses. Furthermore, it provides exemplary analyses of more specific functions of literary and filmic fictionalizations of school shootings between 2000 and 2016.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgements

Contents

1. Introduction

2. We Need to Talk About Amok: Tracing the Narratives of School Shootings

3. Blurred Boundaries: The Role of Fiction in the School Shooting Discourse

4. Multimodal Representations of the School Shooting Narrative in Give a Boy a Gun (2000), Shooter (2004) and Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (2002)

5. Experiencing the 'Rashomon-Effect': Functions of Multiperspectivity in Violent Ends (2015), This is Where It Ends (2016) and Elephant (2003)

6. Unsettling Narratives: The Inexplicability of School Shootings in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) and its Film Adaptation (2011)

7. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9783110649017

3110649012

9783110647624

3110647621

OCLC:

1110710631