Columbine High School massacre in popular culture

The following is a list of cultural references to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Music

References to the shootings have appeared in popular music.

• A song called "Leave Me Alone" by goth band The Crüxshadows was remixed as the "Leave Me Alone (Shaft 20/20 Mix)" to incorporate audio clips from the anti-goth segment of the ABC news magazine show 20/20 that aired the day after the shooting.^[1]
• Columbine students Jonathan and Stephen Cohen wrote a song called Friend Of Mine (Columbine), which briefly received airplay in the US after being performed at a memorial service broadcast on nationwide television. The song was pressed to CD, with the proceeds benefiting families affected by the massacre, and over 10,000 copies were ordered. Shortly following the release of the CD single, the song was also featured on the Lullaby for Columbine CD.^[2]
• Amanda Palmer, one half of The Dresden Dolls, performed "Strength Through Music" during the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.^[3] It is a song about Columbine. She stated it was written some time earlier, though she did not clarify the time frame. Strength Through Music is on her first solo CD Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and she also did a music video version of it shot in Lexington High School, Massachusetts, her alma mater. The video has a spoken mode-setting preface.^[4]
• Rapper Tyler, the Creator made a reference to the shooting in his song "Yonkers".^[5] He also has a song entitled "Pigs" which he stated in a tweet was inspired by the two shooters.^[6]
• Rapper Violent J of the hip-hop supergroup Dark Lotus mentioned the Columbine High School massacre on the Dark Lotus' debut album, Tales From The Lotus Pod, on the 10th track of the album, "Bad Rep".^[7]
• Rapper Bones released an album about the shooting on February 25, 2014 titled TeenWitch. The songs go inside the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold leading up to and throughout the massacre.^[8]
• Rapper Eminem references the shooting multiple times throughout his discography. Most famously, "I'm Back" off of The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) contained a line about Columbine that was censored.^[9] He references this censorship in "Rap God" (The Marshall Mathers LP 2, 2013) and repeats the line, saying it won't be censored this time because he isn't as famous as when "I'm Back" was released.^[10] "Remember Me?"^[11] and "The Way I Am"^[12] (The Marshall Mathers LP) also reference the shooting, and the music video for "White America" includes a reference to school shootings during the first chorus.^[13]

Screen

Television

• In a TV Guide interview, Mike Judge told the story of a letter he received regarding the King of the Hill episode "Wings of the Dope", in which a protagonist's deceased boyfriend visits her in the form of an angel. The episode premiered on May 4, 1999, two weeks after the shooting, and the fan who wrote to Judge had been inside the school during it; she credited the episode with helping her allow herself to grieve a friend of hers she was in love with and, during the shooting, decided to finally tell only to find out later that he was one of the shooters (because of this she had been pressured to repress her feelings).^[14]
• Two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were postponed after they were to air soon after the shootings. The first was the episode "Earshot". Though the episode had to do with school violence, there is a scene reminiscent of the University of Texas at Austin's shooting. Also "Graduation Day, Part Two" was delayed by almost two months after the shootings because of the scene where the students are wielding weapons. It was only aired after The WB received "thousands of letters demanding that the finale be aired".^[15]
• In the American Horror Story episode "Halloween (Part 2)", the ghost of a victim of Tate's high school shooting, which he doesn't recollect, asks him, "Do you believe in God?" When he is surprised by the question, she says, "You asked me if I believe in God and you put a gun to my head."^[16] In the following episode "Piggy Piggy", a sequence in which Tate shoots several victims in a library is depicted, and it is much like the library massacre in the Columbine shooting.^[17]
• An episode of the Discovery Channel show Zero Hour documents the events of the massacre, and includes a detailed reenactment.^[18]
• Rampage, the first episode of the fourth season of Cold Case deals with a mall shooting that was based on the Columbine massacre.

Film

• Reunion, an acclaimed short film about the 13 victims murdered in the Columbine tragedy and what their lives might have been like had they not been cut short.^[19]
• In 2003, a mockumentary called Zero Day was released that detailed the events leading up to a school shooting. This was heavily based on Columbine.^[20]
• Bowling for Columbine, a documentary by filmmaker Michael Moore, explores the massacre within the context of american culture at the time. ^[21]
• Freddy vs. Jason Mentioned by Kia and saying that the police were acting like some kind of Columbine thing.
• I'm Not Ashamed is set to be released October 21, 2016. It was commissioned by Rachel Scott's family to honor their daughter, who was the first victim of Columbine.^[22]
• Elephant A 2003 film directed by Gus Van Sant that subtly follows two students and their plans to shoot up their high school, inspired by the events of Columbine
• Dawn Anna, a Lifetime film, was produced in 2005. The film is inspired by Dawn Anna Townsend, whose daughter Lauren was killed in the schools library during the shooting. Actual news footage of the school during the shooting is briefly shown. Dawn Anna is played by Debra Winger.

Literature

• Brooks Brown, a survivor who was targeted by law enforcement and students after the massacre due to his lifelong friendship with Dylan Klebold, reacted to the shooting and its aftermath in his 2002 memoir No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine.
• The 2009 Jeff Kass book Columbine: A True Crime Story is a book in which the author explains the events that lead to the tragedy using research.
• Shooter Dylan Klebold's mother, Susan Klebold, published an essay about the aftermath of the massacre in a 2009 issue of O Magazine.^[23] She has also written a memoir titled A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, released February 15, 2016.^[24]
• Dave Cullen's book Columbine, released in 2009, includes an analysis of the massacre and the shooters.
• In Theory of Bloom, Tiqqun reveals the revolutionary potential of school shootings.
• An unpublished issue of Hellblazer by Warren Ellis (writer) and Phil Jimenez (artist) depicted a study of a series of fictional school shootings. The series is monthly and it would have been the September 1999 (#141) issue, however the August 1999 (#140) was followed by the October 1999 (#141) issue.^[25][26]
• The satirical newspaper The Onion discussed the massacre in its article Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying.^[27]
• Stephen King has cited the massacre as a major reason that he has allowed an early novel to fall out of print: Rage, written under the Richard Bachman pen name, which deals with a high school gunman. (However, certain themes in the book were developed into the story of Carrie.) King actually referred to Carrie as the "female version of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold."^[28]
• The Wattpad story History of Buck by Ethan Wallen revolves around title character Buck killing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold two days before the shootings occurred, thus preventing them from happening. Ironically, Buck was meant to kill humans (excluding children).^[29]

See also

• Columbine High School
• Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
• School shooting

References