Lately, many people are visiting the Jim Carroll Website and emailing me because of the supposed connection between a scene in the Basketball Diaries film the recent high school massacres in Colorado and Kentucky.
In case you are wondering, the scene in question is a dream sequence in which “Jim” (Leonardo DiCaprio) strides into his classroom wearing a trenchcoat and swinging a shotgun, then proceeds–in slow motion–to blow away the teacher and all the kids in the room.
In Paducah, KY, the parents of the students slain in the 1997 shooting are suing the makers and distributors of the film as well as video game manufacturers and porn sites. According to an April 13, 1999, AP article, attorney Jack Thompson says, “We intend to hurt Hollywood. We intend to hurt the video game industry. We intend to hurt the sex porn sites.” However, he also lets Jim Carroll off the hook. The lawsuit says the Jim Carroll book on which The Basketball Diaries film was based had no shooting episode. The suit says the scene was included in the film “for the sole purpose of hyping the movie and increasing its appeal to young audiences. This had the effect of harmfully influencing impressionable minors such as Michael Carneal and causing the shootings.”
For the record, yes, there is a corresponding scene in Carroll’s book, The Basketball Diaries. Perhaps the lawyer has the brains to understand the differences between the book’s shooting fantasy and the film’s rendition. More likely, the lawyer recognizes that it is more advantageous to claim that Hollywood intentionally fabricated a violent episode as part of its mission to corrupt the youth of America. It is much easier to point an accusing finger at Hollywood than it is to try to understand why kids have guns at all, why they confuse fantasy with reality, why kids have . . . problems so severe that they murder their schoolmates.
There are, in fact, two entries in which Carroll describes his fantasy about turning his classroom into Swiss cheese. Concerned parents, psychiatrists, and politicians would do well to actually read the book . . . which is, after all, the actual diary of a teenager.
Here are the relevant excerpts:
Winter ’65
I have this strange feeling that creeps up on me fairly often in classrooms, especially my first class in the morning, English. . . . It’s just that I get this complete urge to suddenly take a machine gun and start firing like mad toward my right side. Not at anyone or anything unless they got in the way but that wouldn’t matter much because I would aim fairly high. Just to do that a few seconds, like one whole round and that’s it. I don’t know why, dig, but I guess it would just release some tension or shit. (p. 83)Winter ’66
I’m gonna do it soon, if only I could get my hands on one I know I could slip it out of my bag and make Swiss Cheese out of this place. . . . didn’t I talk about it before, my fantasy that always creeps up on my back when I’m sitting there each morning . . . just wanting to whip out a tommy gun and blast away (Nothing less will do, no pistols, nothing else but rat-a-tat-tat, dig?). (p. 150)
While the book needs no defense, there are important differences between the fantasy Carroll describes in his book and the way the film depicts the fantasy. Two crucial points Carroll spells out explicitly are that he wouldn’t shoot at anyone and that his weapon would have to be a machine gun. The point is speed and noise, not murder.
So what’s the role of movies in all this? Movies existed when Jim Carroll was a teenager in the 1960s, too . . . and, sure, young Jim was influenced by them. In interviews, Carroll has mentioned the film Shane as a crucial turning point in his life. And for goodness sake, his first major collection of poetry is called Living at the Movies, and an early Rolling Stone article quoted him saying that his poems are like movies. Should we blame his 30-year-old fantasies about turning his classroom to Swiss cheese on Shane? Do we also get to blame his poetry on the influence of Hollywood?
Obviously, pointing a finger at Hollywood is a serious oversimplification of a much larger problem. We need to understand not only why 15-year-olds have violent fantasies but also why they act on them. Do movies really have such powerful influence that kids decide to copy their violent scenes just for fun? Or is it something else?
Carroll wrote about the nature of violence in film over a decade ago in his “sequel” to The Basketball Diaries, Forced Entries (1987). In “A Bag of Fruit,” he has just witnessed a hideous car accident. He comments:
Violence is so terribly fast . . . the most perverse thing about the movies is the way they portray it in slow motion, allowing it to be something sensuous . . . the viewer’s lips slightly wet as the scene plays out. Violence is nothing like that. It is lightning fast, chaotic and totally intangible” (p. 101).
Perhaps the sensuous, slow-motion violence in movies can inspire a kid to fantasize about assassinating his classmates. But why does he act on the fantasy? How does a teenager learn to draw the line between fantasy and reality? To be sure, sexy representations of violence are, by definition, misrepresentations. But what do kids have for comparison? How do kids learn the difference between what’s on the big screen and what happens on their front porch? Do we teach kids about violence? Do we teach them what real violence is like and how to deal with it . . . and not do it? How are they supposed to process 24-hour-a-day news coverage of wars and murders and rapes that happen in places thousands of miles from their homes? Do we teach them how to understand the violence they see on Monday night football?
I am no fan of the Basketball Diaries movie, but I think it is absurd to blame it for the horrendous acts of violence that have been happening in American high schools. If the film is a factor in some shape or form, please–let’s not mistake symptoms for causes. Let’s use the film . . . and the book! . . . to understand what is going on.
For starters, we might look at one of my least-favorite “artistic freedoms” in the film. In the book, Carroll writes about how his extreme fear of the nuclear bomb intensifies his need to become the best writer he can be. In the film, “Jim” (DiCaprio) is instead afraid that someone is chasing him.
Discussion question: why, in relocating the film from the 1960s to the 1990s, is bomb-terror replaced by a fear of random violence?
Cassie Carter, Phd
Webmaster, The Jim Carroll Website
May 1999