The Dirties

Though bullying and a shooting are the main motifs of The Dirties, the filmmakers did an excellent job of avoiding exploitation and formulaicness, instead basing their treatise on an ambiguous connection between reality and fiction. In this respect, the found-footage format is not merely a fashionable quirk, as it rather offers the first of the clues that are intended to draw viewers’ attention to the ambivalence of the world presented in the film. Fiction in the guise of a recording of reality gives us a look into the world of the main characters, who stylise reality into fiction not only by constantly referencing films and cliches, but also by playing a certain role in front of those around them. The massacre itself is thus disturbing in how it fits into the creation and manipulation of reality, when it actually becomes only the fulfilment of a script that has already been acted out numerous times in the minds of the bullied protagonists. In this respect, the film provides crucial insight into the minds of school shooters. Thanks to the fact that one of the characters incessantly ridicules the way murderers and psychopaths are presented and intentionally works with manipulating his own image by repeatedly contemplating appropriate costumes and subversively fulfilling the profile of murderers, the film demolishes those psychological formulas. Conversely, it even relativises the roles of victims and attackers when it shows the shooters as people incessantly exposed to bullying, who, in response to the everyday wrongs perpetrated against them, seek refuge in their own made-up “scripts”, where they stand up to their oppressors. The Dirties thus in fact flawlessly lays bare the hypocrisy of the media, various interest groups and the public when attempts are made to pin the blame for massacres on movies, video games and music. Is it really so difficult to understand that when someone is exposed to abuse day after day, against which they have no defence or support, that person will start to be so consumed with thoughts of violent retribution that they will eventually make those thoughts a reality? The Dirties is thus a similarly crucial contribution to the discussion on bullying and mass shootings as Marilyn Manson’s chillingly articulate answer when Michael Moore asked him what he would have said to the Columbine shooters if he’d had an opportunity to speak with them: “I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say, and that’s what no one did.” (10.02.2014)