First, 100th post!
Second, Sorry I'm late.
Third, here's my post.
Within the blanket of the broad topic for this week, "words," and the subtopic censorship, I think that an interesting news story has arisen. The Virginia Tech shootings, of course, are on the news all the time, and everybody is scrambling to find an angle to take on them. It's probably too early to tell what the angle that will be repeated ad nauseum for months will be (like during Columbine it was playing violent video games or listening to Marilyn Manson), but one aspect of this attack that people are talking about that I worry might be the angle is the dude's creative writing.
Apparently, Cho was a creative writing student (he had at least taken some classes if that wasn't his major). Many classmates are coming forth and describing how dark and disturbing his writing was, and how as a result they should have seen this attack coming. Two of his plays have even been posted online, with many news organizations pointing to how twisted and dark they are. Famous poet Nikki Giovanni (I think the term "famous poet" might be a bit of an oxymoron) has said she had to speak to him in her class about his writing (and also his behavior, but that doesn't fit with my argument) and how it was disturbing the class.
Well, as somebody who a) is a creative writing graduate student, and b) wishes to teach creative writing for a career, this angle that the news is taking is bothersome. What if schools were to suddenly start deeming it necessary that all students who hand in disturbing or dark writing be reported to school counselors? Over the past semester in poetry workshop I handed in 7 poems. In 6 of those poems, there were deaths. In 3 of those, it was murder. Last semester, I handed in a poem called "Execution" to class in which a serial killer is the speaker, and he graphically disembowels a young couple and then wishes for death and hurt for all their families. In Frank Bidart's last book, Star Dust, a National Book Award finalist, there is a poem in which the speaker kills a woman with a hatchet, then stabs her through her gut and reaches up through her to pull out her heart. Frank Bidart and I aren't about to go on shooting rampages. (Well, I'm not. I don't know Frank Bidart personally, so who knows?)
In poetry, we are told (by Frederico Garcia Lorca and our teachers) that all good poems are written with an air of duende. That is, that the threat of death hovers just behind the poem, influencing the words and the way they form on the page. Even a great love poem must be written through duende, because we are transient beings who will one day die, and the love must be informed by that temporary nature.
I think that judging what people are going to do by how dark and disturbing their writing is is ludicrous. But people want to think that they can somehow be prescient about this sort of senseless act, and that's why they so desperately try to find the "cause." Additionally, if we learn something through this and are able to stop another person from suddenly cracking, then those 32 people who were killed would have died for something, rather than just senselessly. So I understand the psychological need to find something to pin this terrible act on. I just worry about how the censorship of dark ideas might influence the poetry classes I'm going to take or teach in the future. Will students start self censoring themselves so they don't get labeled as potential killers? Will the trust that must exist between a poetry teacher and student be destroyed when teachers must start turning in their students poetry to administrators for analysis?
Well, that's the end of my real argument. But I just wanted to add that Cho's two plays that have found their way online are not as deeply disturbing as all the news sites are making them out to be. To me, they just seem stupid, like the guy obviously wrote them in a half an hour just so he could pass the class. When I taught fiction workshop I was handed much more violent stories, and I never thought twice about whether or not the student was going to kill people. So we're just trying to say that the signs were there, rather than the reality of the matter, which is nobody can tell when somebody is going to snap.
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13 comments:
As you say, Glenn, there are many violent creative writing assignments handed in all over the country by relatively "normal" people like you. I am sure Cho's teachers had encountered this kind of writing before, just as you have, and dismissed it. I think the combination of his assignments and his behaviour in class is what his instructors and fellow students found disturbing (I mean, if he turned in these assignments and joked around and happily contributed just like everyone else, no one would have cared). The media, though, are not privy to exactly what went on in these classes. We have no written or video record of how Cho acted around and interacted with those in his classes. The media are left with the writings themselves, which, I agree, will more than likely be a really bad thing for people like you.
I've been thinking about almost exactly what you wrote ever since details about Cho began to come to light. I also agree that I've read things in *gasp* NY Times Best Selling Novels which are more disturbing and/or violent than the plays Cho wrote. (You can read them here if you're bored.)
This morning on Talk of the Nation (here) I heard a caller state in all seriousness that all college applicants should undergo a screening for mental illness prior to acceptance. How many of us would pass that? Sheesh.
I'll sign off by leaving you with a rather lengthy quote about suicide written by someone who was not a raving psychopath.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
I think that probably zero creative writing majors would pass a psychological screening test. On the other hand, since I'll already have my degree, that will substantially lower my competition in the job market.
Well though I have read some violent works, I think his plays were more disturbing because they didn't make sense. I don't think it was just because he was in a rush either (I'm sure you've written things an hour before class and they were more logical than those) - when they talked about his "manifesto" on the news this morning (and showed clips), they were much of the same. It's not a stylistic thing - I just think he couldn't get his thoughts together properly because he was that psychopathic.
I am concerned about morbid/violent writing being stigmatized now, but Caitlin had a point - professors should know the difference, especially in context of behavior.
The other question of censorship that has been raised, is whether or not NBC should have aired parts of his video and the pictures sent in. Not only is is upsetting, but there were fears of copycats. There were several students and family members of victims that were scheduled to be on the Today show this morning who cancelled when they found out that they were airing the footage. The point was made that it would get out eventually, and better that it's now, so soon after, rather than later, when everyone's starting to heal and have it open up the wounds again.
I've been thinking about some kid in one of my creative writing classes (don't think you were in that one, Glenn) who handed in two stories that were obviously meant to be as horrific and insensitive as possible. I read the first one, although I can't remember anything from it now-- something involving a lot of violence against women and disabled people-- and was told by a friend not to bother reading the second one. I do remember, though, that it was crap. It wasn't violence for art's sake or to make a statement or for any other reason than to shock people in the class. and I told the kid as much during class when I was called on to give feedback. in fact, I may have announced that it was the worst crap I had ever read.
In retrospect, that was not the best plan. Obviously he just wanted attention and for us to fear him in some weird way. I didn't fear him because I had no respect for him as a person or a writer, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have. I don't think that the teacher, who I liked a lot, recommended him for counseling or anything, nor did he critisize me for being so harsh. i think he felt the way I did about it-- just some socially awkward geek who can't find any way to get attention but freak out his creative writing class. *yawn* I also can't remember the name of that kid, although I may be able to pick him out in a line up.
I bring that up to show stuff like that happens in creative writing classes all the time. That kid didn't kill anyone (to my knowledge), he probably just went home and masturbated to Halo or Doom or whatever game was big then. But I agree with Caitlin, above. I think Cho's multiple recommendations for counseling had more to do with his attitude (his refusal to answer direct questions, to raise his face, to sign his name on the attendance sheet) than with one or two crappy plays.
And Jane, kudos for answering Glenn with WS :)
Well, I understand that his recommendation to counseling, and Nikki Giovanni kicking him out of class were a combination of work and behavior, but people are focusing on the disturbing nature of his work, and how it should have been a sign that he would kill all those people. I just worry how that will affect the nature of creative writing classes for the rest of us across the nation.
It'll affect the nature of creative writing classes the same way it will affect gun control laws.
At institutions with any intellectual integrity, at least.
First speaking to the nature of referring Creative writing students to counseling as a proactive response to the content of their work (and to overcomplicate an idea that Glenn crisply animated): First, that's an artistic cock-block if I've ever seen one! I'd suggest a book I once read by Kay Redfield Jamison called "Touched with Fire..." about the connection between the artistic personality and manic-- or mental ilnesses. Where do the teachers think the fuel for the writing often comes from? If we sifted through all the personality disorders in order to find 'clean' creative writing students--well, to what end would come from out those means? And clearly there's a distinct difference between sociopathic behaviours and someone creating materials of a graphic nature. I would have to speculate (for the sake of my argument--though admitedly generalizing) that Mr. Cho leaned closer to former than the latter. Richard Speck? Perhaps not; but at a certain point, creative he may have--or have not--been, he made the choice--the methodic premeditated choice--to perform his acts. He was not the fell fawn he made himself out to be nor was this simply rage or even a passionate outcry. This was the non-creative underbelly of the human condition. To place a moratorium on creative expression in the shadow of someones mumbled fury is worse than slaughter of first born sons or virgin sacrifices; Its like the government punishing drug users and not addressing the bane that caused the person to seek and medicate the malady.
Finally...I just want to say this: I'm one of those people who write--and draw--graphically-violent material (though never violent AND sexual)and often the subject mater has been linked to my character. I had to explain that a) though I am quietly an oft-hateful person (misanthropy has taken me hostage), I am also freakishly adoring of animals and a pacifist by nature and b) its the ones who outwardly express NOTHING that actually makes me wary. I have a vent, a release and if you look at biology as a whole, it is more likely that we'll be killed by what we cannot see than by what we can...unless it's a hippo--than your odds are even-steven.
Thanks for letting me speak.
"TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story."
I'm pretty sure that if college applicants had to pass a mental health screening then we would have no more psychology majors -- I mean maybe a few, but not many. Certainly I have never met a psychology student in a Ph.D. program who would pass such a screening; so eventually we would have no more psychologists. That would be a pretty funny outcome given their goal.
In all seriousness, what do they propose we do with the people who do not pass? Do they think that denying them access to higher education will make them healthier?
Melissa
There was actually an article in the NYT last month about mentally ill young people going off to school. Some were excited and felt ready, others were apprehensive. It was a very interesting and touching article and I'd be glad to look it up for anyone who wanted to read it.
The idea that people should be screened before being allowed to go to school is ridiculous, because of the reasons Melissa has given. Wouldn't someone like Cho just have shot up wherever he was working instead?
First, the infrastructure to screen student coming in (and then monitoring their creative writing papers for threats through their academic careers) would be much too large to be feasible.
Second, universities and colleges aren't gated communities. What's to stop a non student from walking on campus and shooting? Not only is it too expensive, you're no safer for it.
There was a good discussion on NPR yesterday (possibly the same one Jane linked to) in which a creative writing professor pointed out that good fiction is all about human suffering; that in order to connect with a character we need to see him in some critical point in his life, and often those moments are either physically or emotionally violent. He also said that writers, like actors, are capable of taking on another persona, and often that persona is disturbed in some way. The prof went on to say basically what Caitlin said: people who turn in violent work but then laugh and joke around in class are not cause for concern. Cho was mentally ill. And I sincerely hope that the media will put their focus where it belongs: on his mental illness, not his major or his ethnic heritage.
I think this might be the one brooke referenced. It features FSU English teacher Diane Roberts.
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