Trauma at the Movies: Cinematic Memories of Columbine

Authors

  • Johannes Vith University of Innsbruck

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.375

Keywords:

Columbine High School shooting, trauma film, Bowling for Columbine (film), Elephant (film), trauma studies, Columbine, school shootings

Abstract

The Columbine High School shooting of 1999 has become a cultural icon for school shootings in the United States and beyond. Still, there are only a few cinematic adaptations of it. This article addresses how these movies nonetheless impact the culture of remembering Columbine. It argues that films about Columbine use different strategies to mediate the trauma of the shooting that are closely related to framing or recreating trauma. In addition, as traumatic events such as Columbine often lack clear causes and effects, this article will argue that film is particularly effective in mediating trauma.

Author Biography

Johannes Vith, University of Innsbruck

Johannes Vith is OeAD Austrian Lector in the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics (German Section) at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and a PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research interests are film studies, trauma cinema, ecocriticism, and science fiction. He was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (2019-2020) and a university assistant at the University of Innsbruck (2020-2023). 

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Published

2023-08-31

How to Cite

Vith, Johannes. “Trauma at the Movies: Cinematic Memories of Columbine”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, Aug. 2023, pp. 90-106, doi:10.5283/copas.375.

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Johannes Vith

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.