Over the last 19 years of my life I have had no serious encounter with the police. Of the most troubling to me are with the CUNY police (at times), but those encounters are over petty matters. For that reason, this post will be around a movie I recently watched that relates to Clyde’s articles.
What If?
Over the weekend I explored the possibility of a school shooting by watching “I’m not Ashamed”,which is a PureFlix movie. In it, a Christian girl struggling in life and growing in her faith fatally dies when two armed students shoot her. As later discussed, the armed students shot eleven other students and one teacher after shooting Rachel. Most of the movie is about the relationships that Rachel (the protagonist) has and the goals she tries to accomplish like spread the love of Jesus by talking to outcasts, forgive those who betrayed her and get a homeless young man off the streets. In a slightly cheesy movie with a heavy religious bias (conversion/faith and righteous living is pointed out as remarkable), that i would not elevate over other cliched Christian movies, except that the protagonist dies ¾ of the movie. Moreover, it would have little secular attention except that the much-dreaded event is the well-known Columbine High School Massacre and the main character is Rachel Joy Scott, now an inspiration to people all over the U.S.
The scenes that occurred before the massacre are chilling and real. The first chilling scene is when Eric and Dylan (2 shooters and Rachel’s classmates) are showing their homemade film to the class. In it they are shooting bad people on school grounds. The second scene is Rachel listening to the news that today (the day of the shooting) is Hitler’s birthday. “Creepy” is her response. The third is when she is in her theater class showing her teacher a sketch of a rose and thirteen tear drops that turn to blood. Rachel doesn’t know what those drops represent. Finally is the scene where the shooters are getting out of a car, waiting for the school to blow up. In this scene they shoot Rachel while she is talking with someone outside. They shoot her several times in the back and once in the head after asking if she believed in God.
Granted, these scenes and every scene in which the shooters are plotting is chilling. But what really gets me is the normality of Rachel’s life, the atmosphere of everything’s okay, that is portrayed within the movie. On the day of the massacre, like every other day, Rachel is shown getting dressed, saying bye to her mother, play-fighting with her brother in the car and attending school. The appearance of the shooters and Rachel’s sudden death was a stark contrast to the preceding scenes.
“I’m Not Ashamed” was chilling enough to give me a nightmare that night. And although it is a movie, it was based off real-life events and could have easily been the background to the Sandy Hook shooting, which I was old enough to hear about. In the end, what I question is whether the “stark contrast” in this movie is a truth. If a shooting or another such event were to occur on a subway or Grand Central Terminal, would I feel as uneasy as I did watching the movie?
Trailer for “I’m Not Ashamed”
