What do you think: Plays written by the VA Tech Killer.?

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/c...

What do you think: Plays written by the VA Tech Killer.?shows

The problem here is that there were signs that the person had something wrong with him. Fellow students and teachers all sensed it and are sharing those feelings now. But what do you do? He is 23 years old, the teachers recommended that he get counceling, but you can't force him to go. And if they had suspended him from school and kicked him off campus that may have made him snap even sooner. And he was anti-social but he was not making threats to harm other students or teachers directly. The plays are disturbing, no doubt, but what do you do when adults show signs like this?

What do you think: Plays written by the VA Tech Killer.?comedy show opera theater

I was JUST reading about that! You would think, all the bad things he put in his plays, officials would have taken more caution. + kids always made fun of him, so there was clearly a motive for him doing it all.
I read the plays, and they certainly are violent. But I'm cautious not to take these two plays out of context; I mean, we're not told if Cho wrote 40 plays, and all the other 38 were about prancing unicorns and sunny summer days. It's easy for us to look at two isolated scripts, and say "oh, everyone should have known".

The problem with creative writing is that it's supposed to be creative, and, in disciplines such as English writing and drama, we must make a distinction between art and life. A lot of the time, teachers push students to explore their creative boundaries, and to even explore taboo or controversial material.

I mean, look at William Shakespeare. If you want to read King Lear, it has really terrible violence - eyes being ripped out of live skulls, and nasty, nasty deaths. In King John, there is another scene where a prisoner's eyes are to be put out with hot pokers. And Romeo and Juliet, a high-school staple, features teen suicide. A lot of other drama and writing has equally - and even more graphic - violence.

But we study this stuff openly in English classes everywhere - it's even considered fine literature. And then, when you compare the violence in literature and the violence imagined by screen writers, directors and producers for many of Hollywood's most celebrated movies and films, Cho's writing really pales into insignificance. I mean, look at "Silence of the Lambs," or any one of the three films in the "Saw" trilogy, which features people's ribcages being ripped open while they're still alive, and people being forced to put their own hands into acid. That's way nastier than Cho's writings, but it made the film producers multi millions.

Because of the graphic nature of a lot of material in English, Drama, and Arts - and because we don't know if Cho wrote other plays that weren't of this orientation, I think it's difficult to condemn his teachers for not "recognising" the "warning signs".

Otherwise, we should probably lock up a great many of the world's best writers and artists in the name of safety and security. And we should probably shut down Hollywood while we're at it.... minds that twisted should be referred to counselling, right?