Dress and the Columbine Shootings: Media Interpretations

Dress and the Columbine Shootings: Media Interpretations

At Columbine High school on April 20, 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took the lives of twelve students, one teacher, and themselves in the worst school shooting in the US to this day.

Major newspapers in Colorado published over 1,000 articles about the massive school shooting. The media made substantial links between the Columbine shootings and appearance cues including appearances and dress of the victims and the gunman. Out of all of these articles, approximately 12% focused upon dress of the gunman and the victims.

Appearance had quickly become a factor in the media's interpretation of the incident, associating dress with actions, linking violence to appearance.

Gunman Appearances

Sophomore Amanda Stair explained, "We hid under different tables. Two guys in black trench coats walked in. They said get up or they would shoot us." (Anton, 1999).

Much of the media was associated the gunman's black trench coats with the popular movie The Matrix. In the film, Keanu Reeves wears a black trench coat and battles the forces of evil with his gun. The gunman called himself the "Trench Coat Mafia" resulting that the film is likely influence for the 2 gunmen, as they carried weapons wearing long black trench coats, enforcing power.

Within the first week of the incident, the media switched over from what the gunmen and victims were wearing, to why they were wearing it and how it could have contributed to the violence.

Victims Appearances

"The masked shooters targeted specific victims, especially ethnic minorities and athletes then randomly sprayed the school hallways about 11:30am with bullets and shotgun blasts, witness said. The bloody rampage spanned four hours." (Obmascik 1999).

Targeting Jocks

Several students were quoted saying that the gunman had targeted jocks and athletes on their shooting spree by associating jocks with sports hats or jerseys.

Student Brittany Bollerud quoted, "They yelled, "This is revenge. They asked people if they were wearing a sports hat, they would shoot them." (Obmascik 1999).

Targeting Minorities

Ethnicity appearance also played a major role in which the gunman targeted. The shooters targeted ethnic minorities.

"They shot a black kid. They called him a nigger. They said they didn't like niggers, so they shot him in the face." (Obmascik 1999.)

Possible Solutions For Prevention

By constructing the Columbine shootings as an appearance-related problem and proposing appearance based solutions, they media may have shortchanged am opportunity for real social change to prevent future shootings.

It may help to steer away from dress and physical appearance by forcing school districts to consider implementation of dress code and uniform policies. This way, there are not extreme subculture groups formed for other people to judge or target.