Madness in the Making: Creating and Denying Narratives from Virginia Tech to Gotham City

A GREAT DEAL HAS BEEN MADE OF A POST-9/11 WORLD, WHERE security concerns ring loudly around the globe and fears of ‘‘the next inevitable attack’’ are rampant. Much scholarship in Popular Culture—analyzing media content, performances, television, films, and other cultural products and phenomena—and other fields have rightly been dedicated to these fears and threats, as the anxieties that accompany them are most certainly worthy of attention. As the years go by and the initial shock of 9/11 wears off, however, there appears to be a post-post-9/11 tone circulating, a waning of gut reactions to continual acts of violence around the globe. But between the continuation of psycho-political security fears (found everywhere from the stage to political rhetoric to the big screen to the proverbial morning coffee’s accompaniments in the forms of newspapers, television, and radio broadcasts) and the simultaneously dying concern for these fears are violent echoes, bloody ripples in the pond, like embassy attacks, school shootings, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a myriad of other violent acts that serve as visceral reminders of the strains that flow, shape, and tear the surrounding world and within. One such echo was the April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech (VT). After this terrible event a storm of sympathy for the VT community ensued on the part of virtually all universities across the United States and in other parts of the world. Impromptu and fixed communities instantly identified with, sent condolences to, and prepared for such an event to occur closer to home. Much of this identification with the