Delivered at 2nd Global Conference: Evil Children: Children and Evil, 9th – 10th October 2021, Virtual Conference.

Twenty years on from the tragedy, the mention of Columbine still conjures up vivid recollections in people old enough to remember it, due in large part to its unprecedented mass-media coverage. Whilst peer-on-peer school shootings had occurred before, the Columbine massacre scarred the collective American psyche, with both the scale and the lack of clear reasons behind their violent acts both horrifying and fascinating the general publice. Their crimes were as inexplicable as they were inexcusable, which combined with the ever-present and speculative reporting on the case from the national media made Columbine a source of national fascination. Perhaps more fascinating, in retrospect, was the crime’s aftermath: one defined by an urgent search for meaning.

The lack of any clear reasons for the boys’ crimes meant that the papers invented them, linking the murders to everything from bullying to mental illness, Marilyn Manson, media violence and even a non-existent cult. Unlike the Simpson school shooting, committed by a single adolescent with known pre-existing mental issues, the lack of clear motivations behind their actions mean that even two decades after their crimes, ‘Why Columbine?’ is still a question posed by the national press. It is a question the works of Lionel Schriver and George RR Martin sought to pose, modelling Joffrey Baratheon and Kevin Khatchadourian after the cold, rich teenagers whose crimes shook America. Faced with the idea of the murderous youth, however, and falling back to blaming mental illness or the mother for their killings, it is one neither author can truly answer.