Some thoughts on the underlying themes in The Dirties, tracking from types of school shootings to the nature of yourself as influenced by those around you, partially in conversation with @pink-carnelian's post here (wonderful commentary on Dirties!Matt's position as a consumer rather than original generator of the shooter archetype, and how one of the movie's biggest points is about how thin the line is between victim and aggressor, how stigmatization is used to pare down the uncomfortably broad human capacity for cruelty, all of which I'm also going to be talking about now lol)
For obvious reasons, I'm going to be very bluntly discussing school shootings. YMMV.
So, I do disagree with the statement that The Dirties isn't a movie about "school shootings" in a political way, because I don't think politics can necessarily be detangled from any sort of social commentary. They're overlapping spheres. But I do agree that it's a social commentary first and foremost and it lacks an intended politically actionable message.
The funny thing about The Dirties is I refused to watch it for a while, actually, because there was so many mass shootings while I was in middle school and high school and college that I kind of really didn't want to hear what a edgelord Canadian had to say about imagining himself as a school shooter. Egg on my face, somehow. The thing is, having grown up perceiving myself more in the "potential victim" role (because of aforementioned shootings), I did forget there has been a lot of kids, who, in the wake of Columbine especially, were made to sit with suddenly being cast in a "potential perpetrator" role. In particular, mildly to strongly socially awkward white boys, apparently reaching as far as Canada. And isn't that a thing to wrestle with? All that to say, Matt did have a very impactful little window to peer into and story to tell, and now it's one of my favorite movies ever probably.
Simply put, The Dirties is a reaction to growing up and seeing qualities you yourself and maybe your friends have be painted as indicators for potential school shooters. It is about the very strange feeling you get from that, and the... could things end up there? How much would it take, shifting things, to get there? Am I scared of how much or how little it'd take? ... of it all. Matt himself has basically said this.
But the thing about the indicators of school shooters, is the discussion is only really focused on a specific type of school shooter, and the broad narrative in media is often a bit at odds with the research (which also hyperfocuses on that specific type of school shooter).
It's important, I think, to detangle then the mythology of the school shooter, especially the Columbine era myth, from the 'average reality' of this specific type of school shooter.
There's something to be said about how school shootings as we know and discuss them are mostly defined by their lack of target — when you think of a school shooting, the goal is to kill children for the flash of it. For the impact it'll have on others, who are not those children. Which is grim, but, it is. In the literature it looks like they're called rampage shootings and a key differentiation is that at least some of the victims are targeted indiscriminately. These are the events you think of when you think school shooting. These are the shooters you think of when you think school shooter. These are the ones that shoot up elementary schools because it's not about who their victims are, but what their victims are, and how society will react to it.
This is opposed to targeted, personal shootings, "interpersonal disputes," which are much more common, but don't get nearly as much press. For example, at my high school a guy shot another kid at the edge of campus over a girlfriend. Despite being in what I'd call the heyday of school shootings as a political topic, especially for the specific area, this barely resulted in a news story, especially since the victim didn't die. Even myself and my fellow students basically just blinked and moved on once it was confirmed the event wasn't a sign we were all going to be gunned down next lunch.
These types of school shootings are extremely common; more common than the baseless, terrorizing type. However, they get next to no news in comparison, and certainly much less research despite their much broader perpetrator pool. This is in part because the victim was singular, and in part because there was a clear, confined motive and execution.
Part of what keeps the eye of the public on rampage shooters is the glut of violence, and part of it is the mystery. How could someone choose to do that? What makes someone capable of that? With indiscriminate violence comes uncertainty. With uncertainty comes fascination and an attempt to create coherence.
Despite the way Dirties!Matt dresses himself up in the metaphorical clothes of a rampage shooter, his shooting is very obviously an interpersonal dispute. He is "just here for the bad guys." So why is he doing it? Keep this in mind.
The important thing about the rampage type of school shooting is that because it is so uncertain, we attempt to find motive. We seek rationalization. Both to prevent it from happening again, and also to feel safer by confining the behavior away from the shared social consciousness. This behavior is reflected enhanced and worsened by the media, which in particular searches for 'signs'. This is where the narrative of bullying becomes very relevant, even though the 'average' rampage shooter was not bullied (though, they do have strained relationships with their peers usually). In particular in the wake of Columbine, the big narrative and goal became looking around and seeing which children supposedly most resembled the killers — and it was not truly the killers, but the myth and media narrative that sprung up around the killers instead.
So. Imagine you're in high school, and you lie all the time for fun just because you can, you're overly intense and focused on results no matter the means maybe to an unsettling degree, abrasive in some ways and generally feeling very detached from understanding the social web you're an awkward part of. Imagine this, and then imagine there is a horrible shooting in America and everyone starts discussing how the killers are psychopaths and were bullied like you were in middle school and they loved movies just like you did. And it was a sign of immorality, a complete disconnect from reality that you already struggle with, it was a sign that meant they had access to this unique, abnormal level of violence. Traits that had already been off-putting for people are suddenly further stigmatized.
The general discussion is, if you are this sort of person, this level of violence is within your grasp, unlike normal people. Normal people wouldn't do that, but abnormal people like you could. The creation and focus on the development of this archetype is both an attempt to stop future events but also to sanitize the depths of potential human behavior by relegating acts of violence to "flawed" people, to create a solvable problem — which in itself can deeply harm those who fall in that category, as those acts of violence are not necessarily any more natural to them than to those who do not share stigmatized characteristics. In trying to close the door to that violence for the majority, they highlight it with a field beacon for you.
You can't say you even thought about it before, really, but suddenly everywhere is saying you should be.
How would that feel?
The thing about not just rampage school shootings but school shootings in general is I honestly think they're akin to a cultural psychosis phenomenon. Culture bound. Once the veil is pierced and it is put forward as an option for rejecting society or manifesting one's pain, more and more people will take it. Similar, in a sense, to how going postal briefly went in and out of fashion. There are plenty of acts of terrorism that people don't do simply because the idea isn't out there. Once it is? Very difficult to put back in the bottle.
But the structure around it can shift. The lead in can vary. In some countries, becoming possessed, historically, could be a societally... not accepted, but known way of responding to struggle. Think of the rise of cutting in the 00s. Anorexia in the 90s. We create ways to communicate pain.
And these things are often further culture locked. We know rampage shooters are almost all white boys. Interpersonal dispute school shooters vary much more, more in line with the general crime schema in the surrounding area. How does the kid who has realized he is the one everyone is looking at carefully fit in?
Dirties!Matt isn't the average school shooter. But if the conversation keeps saying he is, if the conversation keeps insisting that kids in great pain or struggle have this tendency, this potential result, this exultation of the violence done to them coming back around — what path does that create?
You won't do things you don't think of, things you don't think are within your ability. What if the narrative becomes that it is, and that it is a response? A bad one, but a response nonetheless? It's the same thing that causes upticks in suicides, you know? Copycat serial killers.
I don't say this to say people are very easily influenced. But society creates its own ways to communicate with it. It creates and models ways you can solve your problems, even if they're anathema they're still blueprints. You can forcibly reset the view of you, even if its negative. Myself, I had a very internalized disagreement with reality as a kid, that was very encouraged by society until I broke with it. It was not considered a good thing, per se, but it was a known thing. When something is known, it can be responded to. These are the subconscious maps we use to seek help or to enact the results we want from those around us. Thankfully for me it did not become more drastic than it was. But I mention it to say, it's something anyone can fall down a path for. Thinking you're immune is the act of a fool. We are all socialized.
It's not "video games cause violence" but about what saying that does, is a way to put it. We are all very suggestible.
Matt Johnson repeatedly said around the media circuit for his movie that it was not about saying that forms of media like films and video games cause school shootings, which is fascinating because arguably for Dirties!Matt it does. But not in the way people mean when they talk about it, which is probably why he rejects it. Obviously, just playing a first person shooter doesn't make you more violent. And it didn't make Dirties!Matt a rampage shooter. But would Dirties!Matt have chosen to get back at his bullies in this manner if there was not an extant story to mimic? Would he have chosen to dress himself up as a rampage shooter if there was not an existing canon of society that takes his qualities and characterizes him as such? Would Matt Johnson have been able to imagine himself in these shoes if he had not found disconcerting kinship with the painting that sprung forth from the Columbine massacre?
It didn't make Dirties!Matt a rampage shooter. But it did make him a school shooter. It did open that can of worms, provide that charted path to consider.
Dirties!Matt, despite embracing the theatrical aspect of a rampage shooter, very strongly differentiates himself. It is his own statement of sanity for himself, his tether to reality. He might have plenty in common with those guys, but he's not hurting innocents. In his definition. He might scare them. He's going to create such a scene, they're going to have to pay attention, pay attention to how he is hurt, pay attention to how he is now choosing and forcing society to view him through his own narrative, but he won't hurt them. He can die in this and it will be how he wanted. It is an acceptable form of suicide.
This is part of why the movie is so tragic. There are so many obvious struggles that Dirties!Matt has, and no one sees or has a clue how to handle him. All he has is vague societal expectations. By the end of the movie, he is completely detached from the painful reality of what filling them means. It is so easy to end up that way. Not just when you're a kid, but especially when you're a kid. It is so easy.
So yeah, The Dirties isn't a film about how violent media drives kids to shooting up schools, though it is a film about how the narrative about it can lead kids there. It provides zero politically actionable advice for how to stop school shootings, or handle bullying, or handle how kids can follow horrible paths to try and soothe their wounds. It gives literally no answers. It also, arguably, feeds the very thing it comments on, that being the narrative about kids who are called school shooter-adjacent. But that's not its fault. It's impossible to discuss risk factors without cementing them. Once you introduce something as a cultural response to suffering, it can be very hard for everyone to forget.
Ultimately, I think it's an unfortunate sort of prophetic. I think we will be seeing more school shootings, with a more diverse group of perpetrators as more and more explanatory paths are carved to the same destination. I think we are already seeing it some, and I think it has been understudied due to how interpersonal school shootings are comparatively brushed aside. I'd like to be wrong.
What The Dirties does do, though, I think, is remind the audience that the perpetrator is human. There is no group of people who are uniquely destined to be heinous. We all have the same capacity for evil. It would be nicer if that were untrue, but it isn't. The movie reminds the audience that the perpetrator is human, and that reaching the point where things like this seem natural involves a serious and very tragic break with reality. It's pathetic. It's sad. It's a failure on many parts, and there is no clear solution. But you cannot hide behind the idea that there is an archetype uniquely capable of something, because people are like plant roots, and will grow to fit the pot you put them in. The Dirties is Matt's exploration of how he could be pushed that way.
Everyone has their own version of it. Maybe it's not school shootings. But there is something vile you've been pigeonholed into. Maybe multiple things, maybe it's changed over time. How many little touches would it take to have pushed you down that path? That's what this movie asks. It is easy to tell yourself that you wouldn't because you are a good person. Those who do terrible things are terrible people, and you are not terrible. But how easily would you become so? How thin is that veil?
The social commentary, at least the one I've taken, is thus: we are all people, all capable of great and terrible things. We can all break and we can all heal, and no one understands where or why one of those can become permanent or fade away. Is this something that generates sympathy in you, or fear? Either way, maybe you're facing it more now.
Hiro Kimura, ''Howling Mad'' by Peter David, 1989
Premise: Wolf is bitten by a werewolf and turns into a man on full moon nights. That's the gist of it.
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