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"Elephant" (http://www.elephantmovie.com/)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
HBO Films
R / UK:15
2003
Reviewed by a contributor February 17, 2005
[I wrote the below review about a month ago but put it aside while in the middle of editing. Minutes ago I found out that the Red Lake shooter actually watched "Elephant" according to "Friend says gunman enjoyed killing film," March 26, 2005. [mim3@mim.org adds: This movie would have been banned under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It's not just that the Red Lake shooter so enjoyed the movie. It's just an example of the entertainment dynamic eroticizing violence--and as long as our society has a problem like that, the right to make decadent movies for profit is not above the rights of the oppressed and exploited to survive.]]
From front to back, this movie is infused with sex. And I'm not just talking about the movie's promotional graphics and the seeming shower stall sex scene between the two school serial killers late in "Elephant." I'm talking about all the unremitting close-ups and the agonizingly long panning to reveal people's faces; photographer Eli's (Elias McConnell) taking pictures of people in intimate and sexual poses; the three bulimic girls talking about their parents searching their bed sheets; insecure Michelle's (Kristen Hicks) not wanting to change into shorts for P.E.; and even the principal Mr. Luce's (Matt Malloy) inexplicably (at first) long gaze at the towheaded teenager John McFarland (John Robinson). At the beginning of the movie, what sounds like an LGBT group discusses whether it is possible to tell apart gays and lesbians from other people on the street. Since straight-acting Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen) later kiss in the shower before shooting up the school, the implication is that "homosexuals" have varied appearances and perhaps different identities.
Part way through this movie, I thought "Elephant" was actually trying to make a comment on the relationship between gender or imperialist decadence, and school violence in white neighborhoods. However, as the movie progresses, it becomes clearer that much of the sex is there to make the movie's view of school violence more palatable to viewers who may even be high-schoolers themselves despite the movie's R-rating in the united $nakes. The sex is not a way of talking about gender, but a form of sex appeal; the movie's plot could have done without it. Some have claimed that "Elephant" is so sexual because the director is out as a gay man himself. This is just stupid; the director's being gay or not has no bearing on the movie's effects on most movie viewers.
Many reviewers have commented that "Elephant" does not try to explain school violence, just portray it--as if trying to explain school violence were a bad thing. True, "Elephant" tries to be oh-so-postmodern in its relativism and revisiting the same events again and again from different characters' perspectives and without telling the story in a "narrative" fashion. However, the movie can't help suggesting an explanation for school violence even if it is just trying to mock the ruling class' explanations. Eli asks a punkish-looking straight couple to smile and look happier for his camera. The movie shows Eric playing a "Doom"-like game featuring ordinary persyns as the only shooting targets, but not even "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" in the real world is that simple. Eric and Alex buy rifles over the Internet without any problems, and they watch a documentary together about Nazis and Hitler; Eric expresses naive interest in the documentary: "Is that Hitler?" For the sake of subtlety, the movie has Alex playing Beethoven on the piano: the makers of "Elephant" maybe knew that the Nazis promoted Beethoven's music. John's father (Timothy Bottoms) seems to be an alcoholic, and John has to take care of his father, but Alex's mother is "nurturing." It's just that Alex has gunk thrown at him in class, and Eric reveals that the school administrations have been unfair to him and Alex in some way.
With possible exceptions, like the librarian, the movie portrays all adults as being buffoons. This could have been a good thing, but the movie slips into idealism by not showing any adults intervening in the violence, not even police officers. "Elephant" is all about the "perspectives," and therefore the psychology, of the student characters. But at the same time, the movie claims not to have a perspective itself. It doesn't even delve deeply into the characters' histories. It's all about the relativism of the moment. The violence at the end of the movie has no single point of origin, and the different points of origin implied in the movie apparently have no history important enough for the movie to explore.
Come on. School violence either has a preventable cause--or it doesn't, and then the solution is just to repress the school serial killers who crop up sporadically. Those who claim to be agnostic about the causes of school violence are not only being anti-scientific, but pandering to those who would intensify the violent repression of youth. To the extent that "Elephant" discourages viewers from understanding the causes of school violence and only encourages them to sympathize with the characters with their complexity, the movie actually aids the repression of youth. School shooting violence becomes a "fact of (school) life," and we just have to deal with it. It's just an ugly part of the scenery. Often, this means more youth repression and social control.(1) "Bowling for Columbine" (2002) pretends, at least, to be interested in the social causes of school violence (despite Michael Moore's self-contradictory way of making his point about the relationship between militarism and school violence).
MIM does not say that school violence can end when there is still the imperialist-patriarchy and the militarism inherent in imperialism. For MIM, explaining school violence is not connected with trying to "solve" the assumed "problem" of school violence in the here and now. However, people should not talk about school violence or any supposed "epidemic" thereof unless they are trying to contribute to the scientific understanding of school violence or another related issue, and not just school violence in white neighborhoods but elsewhere.
"Elephant" is almost a caricature of the eroticization of power. The movie shows the naked back of a girl in the girls' locker room, and the camera voyeuristically watches the student serial schooler Alex taking a shower. Eric gets in the shower with Alex and plays like he just wants to experience kissing before dying. Later, Alex kills female students. It is hard to imagine how "Elephant" is supposed to discourage school serial killing when school serial killing is so sexed up. Eli, seemingly unable to help himself, even snaps a picture of Alex just before Alex starts shooting people, in the school library. It even makes specific instances of real-world school serial killing look sexy because the movie's references to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are unsubtle to say the least.
School violence is not just a manifestation of general anger or angst that needs to be "channeled" in a revolutionary direction. School violence coincides with something specific. The school system features prominently in the lives of children in imperialist countries; truancy is considered a "status offense" in the united $nakes. One way to deal with this is to proceed from the fact that children in general are gender-oppressed. It is also true that many fed-up white youth get involved in fascist politics or culture, which do not originate in just patriarchy, so fascism needs to be combatted. This includes opposing fascist views of homosexuality.(2)
Since "Elephant" makes a big deal about whether there is such a thing as gaydar(3) and showing Alex killing presumably gay and straight people indiscriminately, I will also point out that the movie's Liberalism on the gay question is incorrect. Whether gaydar exists or not, patriarchy must be destroyed, and with it, the gender oppression and violent repression falling on sexual-minority adults and children. For most of both homophobes and pro-gay rights individuals, the gaydar question is a sub-reformist lifestyle question focused on how to respond to perceptions of homosexual sexual orientation on the street.
At the same time, however, the gaydar question is not just a lifestyle question, but related to the gender strand of oppression. In a version of "Elephant" made in a socialist people's republic, the movie would touch on the relationship between patriarchy, and the perception and creation of sexual minorities' bodies and mental behavior. Factors for consideration would be the space available, including being forced indoors during lunch time, pressurization of a restriction on number of partners for gays and lesbians and power relations involved when straight and sexual minority people interact. (Maybe Eric is gay or bi, and Alex is straight, which is sort of implied in "Elephant.") If "Elephant" were to be remade in a socialist people's republic, it might touch on these questions.
Notes:
1. "Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for June 4, 1999." //www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/ma/radio/radio06-04-99.html>.
2. "Gay rights question heats up globally." <http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/gender/gayfight2005.html>.
3. The supposed ability, claimed by many, to tell apart gays and lesbians from straight people based on looks or persynality--"radar."