by
Breton is that of a desperate individual who has discovered
the hopeless situation in which he is entrapped, the impossibility
of escaping from being controlled by external forces through
ideas or interaction. Thus he has named something similar to
what the murderers of Columbine High School in Littleton also
had in mind: the radically empty acte gratuit as a final answer
to the pressures of reality. They looked their victims in the
eye, shouted “cuckoo” and opened fire.
But amok is not simply amok, and its perpetrators are not all
of the same mold: in frenzied rage, one sort slash and slay
their children and partners in an expression of the highest
psychological desperation. But the form of indiscriminate killing
that is becoming increasingly frequent has little in common
with their “terrible gaze straight on.” At least
the uncomfortably numerous American amok runners seem to see
themselves in the role of warriors, as coolly calculating executors
of a message signifying nothing. They develop their lethal scenarios
strategically; they use long-range weapons. Thus their “cold
amok” is not really the eruption, but its carefully planned
setting and staging. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harns, who rampaged
through Columbine High School, tinkered around with their bombs
for months, did extensive target practice and wrote in their
websites “I will shoot to kill.”
The terminology used in describing such violent excesses, as
molded by science and public usage, has an influence that should
not be underestimated, states the Berlin psychologist Gerhard
Hafner. Specialist have proposed that the term in frequent use
around the world be used only for the typical Malay amok. Otherwise
a term like SMASH (Sudden Mass Assault Syndrome with Homicide;
an acronym that stems from U.S. police reports) would be more
appropriate and less commingled with the romanticizing connotations
of something exotic and irrational. Massive cultural differences
are evidenced by the use of long-range firearms and the highly
rational approach to marksmanship training taken by many of
the perpetrators in Western incidents.
The carefully staged amok turns the perspectives of reality
around, as Joachim Neubauer asserts. In the Peter Bogdanovich
film Targets, a sniper nests down in a drive-in movie theater.
He takes aim at the audience of a horror film through the screen.
His scope makes the viewers in their cars into the ones being
watched: it is as if the film were watching its audience.
The unsuspecting viewer of fictional terror is transformed into
its real victim when the bullets smash through his windshield.
As long as the murderer continues to kill, he is
