78 pages • 2 hours read
Dave CullenColumbine
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Trench Coat Mafia
The Trench Coat Mafia can be seen as symbolizing the lore that swirled about the Columbine attack in the following weeks. The Trench Coat Mafia, or TCM, was a legitimate clique of students at Columbine High; however, Harris and Klebold were not a part of this peer group. The TCM got its name due to a student who was an outsider being heckled by other more popular students; in response, he wore an outlandish Halloween costume to school, and then kept wearing the long, black duster (a sort of cowboy/Western version of a trench coat) after Halloween was over. Friends followed suit.
In some way, Harris and Klebold being aligned with the TCM has basis, as both did begin wearing the dusters in question before to the Columbine attack; to some, it would seem that aesthetically, they were indeed part of this clique. Further, both boys wore dusters on the day of attack. However, the national press, in an attempt to deduce motive, would wrongly put forth that Harris and Klebold were part of the TCM, and the TCM itself was a virtual gang at the school. This misinformation, Cullen proffers, would remain in American collective consciousness indefinitely.
The tragic irony of the wrong-footing of the public by the press—intentionally or otherwise—in regard to the Trench Coat Mafia is that both Harris and Klebold, in addition to members of many American subcultures, did and do feel alienated and ostracized by their peers. By placing false blame on the TCM, and, by extension, Goths and other groups that are largely perceived and self-perceive as “other,” the national press, in its coverage of the Columbine attack, reinforced such stereotypes.
Cassie Bernall’s Martyrdom
Another falsehood that never quite disappeared from American collective consciousness was the “martyrdom” of Cassie Bernall, one of the students killed in the attack. It was reported by other students—multiple students—that Cassie was asked by either Harris or Klebold if she, Cassie, believed in God. When she responded she did, the shooter killed her. Other students would prove this untrue, but Cassie’s mother had already included it in a memoir about her daughter’s life andchose not to omit the story from the memoir.
In this way, Cassie’s supposed final words become revisionist history that distorts not only her actions but also the motives of the killers, as it reinforces the idea that Harris and Klebold targeted a specific demographic (racial, theological, social), when, in fact, their prime goal was sheer body count.
The Basement Tapes and Eric and Dylan’s Journals
Cullen describes the Basement Tapes as “a series of videos … specifically designed to explain [Eric and Dylan’s] attack,” going on to say that the videos “were so disturbing that the sheriff’s department would choose to hide them from the public, concealing even the existence of [them] for months” (35). Years after the attack, the sheriff’s department would say that every known copy of the Basement Tapes had been destroyed.
The recordings and journals of Harris and Klebold can be seen as symbolic of two main things: the fact that the shooters knew they would have an audience for the act they were carrying out, and that the suppression of graphic writing and imagery is beneficial to society. In regard to the former, the tapes were a way for Eric and Dylan to vent their rage, share their plans, and leave behind proof that the attack was all theirs. In not releasing this information to the public, law enforcement officials deny sociologists and criminologists perhaps the best information available as to the psychological makeup of the perpetrators. While transcripts of the Basement Tapes are widely available, the destruction of the Tapes themselves was a decision made because they were too graphic. In this manner, suppression of the Tapes aligns with the banning of books—the purposeful withholding of content in the name of a perceived societal morality.
