From Columbine to Professional Wrestling: A Psychoanalysis of Postmodern Media Violence

In response to the shootings at the Columbine High School, various media outlets and politicians blamed everyone and everything from school teachers, parents, video games, and web sites, to teenage depression, prejudice, media depictions of violence, and peer-group bullying. I will argue that if we develop a psychoanalytic conception of postmodern culture, we can connect all of these separate causes in order to understand the function of violence in today's society. Moreover, this understanding of postmodern culture can help us to propose a more effective educational response to the contemporary problem of teenage violence. For even though people want to believe that every social problem has a single cause or answer, it is the combination of many diverse factors that often contributes to the complicated nature of these conflicts, and a unifying concept like postmodern culture can help us to bring together these disparate factors.

On the most basic level, postmodern culture embodies four main attributes: (1) the increase capitalistic production and distribution of information (mass media, internet, universal education); (2) a blending of fact and fiction (virtual reality, science fiction, spectacle culture); (3) a subjective sense of helplessness and passivity; and (4) a lost sense of authority, originality, and shared values. All of these aspects of our current society can be related to the different causes of teenage violence and the Columbine incident. While violence has always existed in human history, I will argue that the structure of postmodern culture changes the nature and effects of aggression and hatred within society. For what we find in the Columbine High School example is in many ways an exaggeration of central aspects of our current media culture of violence. In order to develop a psychoanalytic criticism of this new mode of violence, I will first discuss the Columbine tragedy and then relate it to an analysis of professional wrestling. I will conclude