Douglas Coupland’s decision to use a high school shooting as a central idea in Hey Nostradamus! is genius. This tragic, previously foreign and shocking concept has become a cultural reference, one that is understood and recognized. Similarly, “Chick flicks” (or lit!) sprung from the likes of Pride and Prejudice, and what once must have been a little known concept has formed its own niche as a fictional genre. High school shooting is now just as familiar; Columbine has expanded into a well-known tragedy. Like “chick flicks”, where you don’t have to see the movie to know that boy meets girl, there’s a conflict, and they get together at the end, you know immediately from the mention of “high school shooting” in the novel’s description that a handful of alienated teenagers decide to get revenge and make a point by massacring their classmates. This familiarity, the way high school shootings are now globally recognized, makes Coupland’s decision to use this theme as a vessel for the messages he is trying to get across a brilliant one. Yes, it’s pretty sickening how this scenario is now internationally identified, not only itself as a whole, but its individual parts as well: estranged students, their reaction to their isolation, their destruction- but that’s what makes this topic so perfect for Coupland’s cause. He has chosen a perfect medium to appeal to the widest spectrum of people, to pique the interest of the general public, in the way that a compilation of essays with the same purpose couldn’t. By making the high school shooting a central aspect, he can almost guarantee the general public’s interest- a massacre in their own backyard? Looks interesting…
Once he’s captured interest on a large scale, he can easily get his messages across; the need for open minds, the call for reducing cynicism, and increasing doubt. By choosing a fictional high school shooting to play on reader’s emotions, and giving them something they can relate to and recognize, Coupland displays his views perfectly, and he has chosen the ideal method to do so.
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I don't know if highschool shootings are as recognizable as the average boy meets girl chit lit but i understand what you are trying to say. It is actually extremely frightening that highschool shootings are internationally recognizable. It is such a horrific thought and the idea of it happening close to home seems far fetched. It is one of those mentalities that yes it happens but it will never happen to me. But Coupland does an amazing job of putting this shooting into your everyday highschool. The way he encorporates the long term outcomes and four different perspectives on the shooting is unbelievable effective. This book, had a great impact on me and Douglas Coupland was successful in incorporating doubt into my mind.
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