In my last year of high school a terrifying nightmare of mine came true: a school shooting threat was written in the men’s bathroom and videos of a student holding a gun circulated on social media.
When I got to school that day police officers surrounded the campus and teachers locked classroom doors. From outside my African American Literature class, someone was arrested and taken into custody.
We were simply moments away from our lives being altered forever by a teenager with an AR-15.
“The Fallout,” directed by Megan Park, Canadian actress, singer, and debut director, was released on HBO Max on Jan. 27.
The film explores the emotional aftermath of a school shooting.
These tragedies aren’t rare. After I graduated high school, there was a shooting at San Francisco State, the college I attended from 2018 to 2020. Once again, I remembered the moment of fear I felt during my senior year.
In 2021, there were approximately 199 shootings at high school and college campuses around the United States according to a study by Everytown, an independent research organization.
Media representation of school shootings has increased in recent years and most teen TV shows have episodes dedicated to such events, including 2003 teen drama “One Tree Hill” and Canadian 2016 teen drama “Degrassi: Next Class.”
Most shows don’t depict the long-lasting trauma students face after a shooting. By the next episode, they’ve moved on to another plot point.
“The Fallout’s” sole focus is how students address grief.
The movie begins with Vada, played by Jenna Ortega, and classmate Mia, played by Maddie Ziegler, hiding in a bathroom as the sounds of shots ring throughout the school. Later on, Quinton, played by Niles Fitch, joins them after witnessing his own brother die at the hands of the shooter.
Unlike other media portrayals the movie focuses less on the shooting itself and draws attention to the way students cope with the tragedy. Although some characters are inspired to make a difference the focus is on an aspect of grief that is often not depicted in films: silent suffering.
“I think the media wants to really read this depiction of these very resilient young adults who are telling the grownups what to do [and] to fight the power [and] I think that's a narrative that needs to be seen and also balanced by the fact that there are so many students who are also then suffering quietly [and] their stories are not being shared,” said Lesther Papa, SJSU assistant professor of psychology.
Papa said that both reactions to school shootings should be equally represented in the media: those who become activists and those who quietly deal with their grief.
Mia is so terrified that she can’t leave her house and Vada isn’t inspired to do much aside from trying to find a way to escape her grief.
Vada withdraws from everyone and chases any moment of relief from her pain. She experiments with drugs and gets drunk.
Papa said this kind of response is normal, despite not typically being shown on the big screen since impulsivity is already common in young adults and can be exacerbated after a traumatic event. This includes engaging with drugs and alcohol, Papa said.
“Anything that can give you this feel-good [to numb the pain],” said Papa.
After the shooting threat at my high school, most of us didn’t talk about what could have happened.
Lock the doors. Stay away from windows. Turn off the lights. Be quiet. Play dead. These instructions were ingrained in us when we began elementary school.
After the Columbine school shooting in 1999, there was an increased push for active shooter drills in schools all over the U.S., according to a Dec. 2019 The Trace article.
The Trace is a publication dedicated to reporting on gun violence in the U.S. according to its website.
Although the effectiveness of shooting drills can be argued, the mere practice of preparing for the event instills more fear in students, according to a 2020 report by Everytown.
There is a 39% increase in depression and a 42% increase in anxiety as a result of active shooter drills in schools according to the same research article.
In a generation that has always been one eight-hour school day away from a school shooting, we have normalized the event and the feelings of fear around it.
“There's going to be then an entire generation where [the expectation is going to school is not going to] always be an expected place of safety,” said Papa.
This goes beyond just high schools, as 36.6% of school shootings occurred on college campuses between 2013 and 2019 according to a May 9, 2020 Everytown research report.
Last November, San Jose State University faced a shooting threat after someone hacked a Discord account, according to past Spartan Daily reporting.
I, once again, felt afraid.
Our response was more terrifying. Few of my peers were surprised and the administration treated it as standard procedure: increase police presence and give professors the option to let some students stay home.
When students face even the threat of a shooting together, they cultivate community over their shared fear.
Director Megan Park explored the idea of collective trauma through the bond between Mia and Vada. They become extremely close despite their opposing personalities because of the shared fear they faced.
Collective trauma is the impact a shared traumatic event has on a group of people, according to a May 23, 2020 Psychology Today article.
“This collective shared experience [helps] put them on a level footing in a lot of different ways where [they] both get each other in terms of they have survived the same event at the same time,” Papa said.
Many scenes between Mia and Vada have minimal dialogue. They’ll be in a sauna together talking about love, or dancing in an empty parking lot.
It’s those moments of silence between them that say the most. The comfort is something that Vada and Mia both need which leads them to share an intimate moment because of unspoken camaraderie.
Papa said their friendship was likely since they shared such a significant traumatic moment with one another.
“They're literally in the same place together, [so] then there's a lot of comfort that comes with that,” Papa said. “They don't have to explain their situation to anyone. They don't have to really go into detail how it is they feel because the other person was there.”
Towards the end of the film, we see Vada reconcile with her turbulent feelings of anger and sadness as she goes through therapy and learns to lean on her family.
Although she's having a hard time feeling her emotions, Vada screams “I am scared to go to school every day” and “life’s fucking hard” as we finally see her process the emotions she’d kept bottled inside herself.
It’s a heartbreaking scene because it reflects the sentiments of young adults all over the world who don’t feel safe anywhere anymore. If it's not the threat of a school shooting, it’s the threat of a global pandemic.
“The Fallout” is an exceptional film because rather than showing the courageous teens we have become used to seeing, it focuses on the quiet moments of one girl’s grief. She isn’t trying to change the world, she is simply trying to make sense of what is around her.
In 2022, life is fucking hard but at least we have each other.
