Emotions Are Made of This

One event, mixed emotions, permanent memories. That’s what two high students left before they killed 17 students and a teacher. In April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did this tremendous event in order to be heard. They stated in their diaries that they had trouble being heard when a jock bullied them, a girl played with their emotions, and couldn’t find someone who would simply just listen to them (except for their diaries). However, this isn’t about what motivated them, but what effect they left for the town, Columbine. The shared feelings, created by these two murderers, brought those people to a sense of unity and togetherness is called Collective Effervescence. (Picture on the right: Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold)

It varied differently from one emotion to another, from one phase of the event to another, from one person to another. The emotions were definitely mixed and it caused sadness, anger, confusion and so on. The first phase I would probably say it was confusion as to what’s going on from all the students who first heard in the cafeteria on that day. Then it led to a basic human instinct, which is the need for survival; that instinct is also associated with fear.
In the video below, you will see what emotions you get during the event when the students start shooting in the cafeteria. Later on it will view what happened right after where all the people are confused, in fear, and weeping for their losses. (Possible emotions will be mentioned supporting the cultural effervescence theory.)

Not only that they’ve committed such hideous act, but these two murderers support sociologist Émile Durkheim’s theory from his book Suicide. The book states that there are three patterns of suicide most commonly referred to as egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide and anomic suicide in men only, as it also mentions that men have the highest rate of suicide than women, which is the important part.



Even by just viewing a film (such as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine), the unity of shared emotions still lives on today. Not only to the ones that saw the event, but the ones who simply reliving the scene on the screen. It never seems to die because now it’s part of our history and a cultural aspect in the small town of Columbine.(Picture below: Michael Moore's comic for the documentary's promotion.)

"Tainted Love" as cultural object

In the opening chapter of his book Mix It Up: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society, sociologist David Grazian offers a brilliant deconstruction of a single cultural object, the storied history of the song “Tainted Love.”

Written by Ed Cobb, the original version of “Tainted Love” was recorded by soul singer Gloria Jones in 1964.

Seventeen years later, the U.K. duo Soft Cell would enjoy a smash hit with their cover of the same song. The Soft Cell cover of “Tainted Love” set a (then) Guinness World Record for the longest consecutive stay on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart (43 weeks).

Soft Cell member Marc Almond wrote that "his only significant contribution to the song's instrumentation was the suggestion that the song begin with a characteristic ‘bink bink’ sound which would repeat periodically throughout.”

In 2001, shock rocker Marilyn Manson recorded a cover of the song for the soundtrack to the film Not Another Teen Movie. Note how Manson slows down the song to a crawl, underscoring the grotesque -- and tainted -- aspect of the song’s primary theme, uncovering untapped dimensions in his reinterpretation.

Finally, Brazilian pop singer Rihanna sampled the bassline and signature “bink bink” beat for her song “SOS,” which paid tribute to the original song with the inclusion of the line, “I toss and turn, I can’t sleep at night.” Note how the musical score to Rhianna’s own song is built around the hook contributed by Soft Cell’s Marc Almond.

In his deconstruction of this enduring cultural object, Grazian reminds us that, “Pop music, like Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama, can transcend its historical moment to enjoy endless cycles of rediscovery and reinvention, just as ‘Tainted Love’ began as a 1960s northern soul song, and found new life as an 1980s synth-pop classic, which two decades later would be sampled for inclusion on a 2006 R&B dance hit.”