Last night, I decided to watch a movie I knew absolutely nothing about. I just saw that it had received good reviews. It was called “The Fallout” and boy was I surprised when it turned out to be a drama starring Jenny Ortega about a group of American high school kids dealing with the fallout of a school shooting. Considering what happened this week at a Christian school in Nashville, it made it very raw and real.
Our kid grew up in Asia and Europe where this is not an issue or a concern and like most of the world, we think the amount of school shootings in the USA and the lack of change decade after decade is absolutely beyond belief. It’s amazing Americans aren’t more embarassed by this. But throughout history, no nation in its formative century was ever more attached, impacted, or dependent on the gun than the USA was in the 19th Century. The atmosphere surrounding the settling of the United States was truly one of extreme “Wild, Wild West” violence. Only Australia might have even an inkling of this individualistic, violent, culture looking out upon an “open continent” in its formative years, but Australia was underpopulated and mostly uninhabitable.
It’s deep, deep, deep in the American DNA that guns and violence make things work; that it keeps order and reduces risk. And it is part of the American male machismo. It’s reflected in American cinema, in music, and in American foreign policy. That little hand-held weapon allowed an entire continent of the most valuable land in the world to be conquered and settled. From the valuable but highly contested Appalachians to the farmland surrounding all sides of the mighty Mississippi, to the gold of California and the trees and fish of the Pacific Northwest–the lands and territories that became the United States are simply the richest, most resourced, most valuable land in the history of the world. Deserts, bayous, deep-water ports, giant estuaries, year-round snow-capped mountains, -even adding on tropical islands and arctic tundra-there is nothing the United States geographically lacks. Located at a perfect latitude, served by thousands of navigable rivers that connect the richest topsoil in the world–the land and natural resources of the soon-to-be 50 United States were one giant gold mine for the taking. And Mr. Gun consolidated all of this wealth and bounty for one people: “the Americans.” I read a lot about the Old West because it was so incredibly formative in defining American self-identity, American culture, and even American religion’s addiction to radical individualism (“all that matters is what is best for me, not the greater good of society or the next generation. Don’t tread on me.)”. It’s a radical departure from the core civilization values of the bulk of the world’s nations and people groups that were all highly dependent on the group and seeking the greater good for daily survival.
This movie “The Fallout” (very subtely I thought), explored the emotional health ramifications for this generation that, sadly, is under constant threat and actually has to practice drills to build barricades as if they were fighting in the 18th Century French Revolution. [It was surreal recently watching news footage of a first grade class in the United States having 6 year olds practicing moving their desks up against the door to make it hard for the shooter to enter and massacre all of them]. This same past week, there was a false-alarm shooting threat (the 2nd one this year) at my son’s college in the USA. So now we too get to join the list of American parents that actually have to think about this stuff daily, as does our child and their entire generation–Gen Z–the 2nd American generation having to grow up picking their hiding spaces and planning how they will react if it suddenly becomes a live-or-die war zone situation. I remember 10 years ago when kids coming out alive from school shootings would say to the news reporters: “we never thought it could happen here!” They don’t say that now. The “land of the free” with the well-endowed territories now has four-hundred million guns, a highly-medicated society, and a Congress dominated by the gun-lobby despite the majority wanting stricter gun laws. Oh and did I mention the politicians threatening or actively calling for Civil War. Frankly, you’d be crazy to think your local school might not get an active shooter.
It’s amazing that in the USA the “logical solution” is much more likely to be changing the entire architecture of an already constructed school building (to avoid multiple entry-points for active shooters) or arm the nerdy math teacher to fight against a high-powered assault rifle when the Uvalde Police force is too scared to go in, than to actually make acquiring assault rifles hard to get. They say that “you can judge a society by how it treats it’s children.” On that score, how is the USA doing? I’m not hopeful there will be a change. At least not until the generations that didn’t have to grow up with this threat are dead and off the stage. If I were a High school student today, I’d go on strike and do a massive march to NRA headquarters–not Congress (because that will amount to nothing. They’re bought and paid for). The old Christian saying, “live by the sword, die by the sword,” comes to mind.
I love Westerns. Part of the fun is the constant action and the stark contrast of good versus bad. But we don’t get a lot of Western movies that focus on the PTSD that children suffered in the Wild Wild West. I’m grateful at least one film has focused on that in regard to our society that really does find school shootings acceptable and a small price to pay for “freedom from tyranny.” Jenny Ortega put in an amazing performance, by the way.
Patrick Nachtigall received his Master’s Degree in Religion from Yale University and is the author of six books dealing with religion and globalization including, “In God We Trust: A Challenge to Evangelicals” and “No Religion Required, a Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Chocolate Milk, and Untimely Death.” He lives in Italy.