Hm.

#1:  The author John Green is evidently the huge name in the “Young Adult novel” market.  I have heard any number of late teenagers on to 20 something years bad mouth the author as being disconnected from any high school life they know, sending  out a false message in propelling yet another variation of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” here, treating issues of teenage depression wholly wrong-headedly there, and in general lobbing out too many trite cliches.  I can’t really understand any animus, though.  I looked through a couple of his books and see that they look horribly uninteresting — so I’m not reading them.  Which I think would be enough to solve the problem.

#2:  I wonder if there’s not a more compelling narrative they might’ve focused in on going on elsewhere in the background.  No, I really wouldn’t have wanted to spend time with the “lurking killer” here, who obviously needs to stay in the background in order retain the premise.  But maybe over on the side of our dueling protagonists there’s a Max Fischer, a Jughead Jones, a Buffy Summers … ?

#3:  Isn’t this a rip-off of Gus Van Sante’s Elephant movie?

#4:  We see the warning signs of a school shooter being established.  They also happen to be — largely — warning signs for non-school shooters.  Such as the one where the lurking killer sticks his middle finger at the girl –  more a sign of sullenness than anything else.  From there, we do end up with maybe issues and concerns in their own rights that can more productively be addressed sans the worst case scenario presumption.  So I’m wondering if maybe,You can proceed accordingly with an alternate script.

#5:  Take bullying, for example.  This does not strike me as a matter most productively addressed with the “lurking killer” angle, being the universal experience of bullying, as opposed to the mass shooting which is statistically submerged by other matters (suicide, for instance — to their credit an issue dropped in in the organization’s press releases on this ad), hence quite a burden to drop onto the bullied kid, and in fact not really an issue with quite a few of the mass shooting incidents.  If I recall right, not Sandy Hook.  (At the very least he wasn’t killing from any a group of kids he was aware of.)

#6:  Okay.  The one where he has the text message where he’s pointing a gun forward with the words “See You At School” — that’s a little clearer and cleaner.  We can proceed with that one.

#7:  I don’t know what the ad is advocating, and to whom.  Yes.  Teachers and administrators should build and keep connections with all their students.  And –?

#8:  If there’s something they want us to do about guns, could they please spell it out?  Lest the NRA chime in by saying the lesson is that Evan should be packing to take care of this situation, and also win the girl.

#9:  I remember I once leafed through and read some of a teacher’s classroom planning book from my mom.  The book was out of my mom’s teaching range — jumping from elementary school to middle school, but for whatever reason… It addressed various concerns of behaviors of middle schoolers as the hurdle through adolescence.  A case study which struck me:  this kid was not associating much with the kids in the class, and he was of the type who wore a lot of heavy metal t-shirts.  The solution proffered struck me as circular — answering the problem by restating the problem — to get the kid to relate and associate more with his classmates, you get him to relate and associate more with his classmates.  I don’t think it gave a clear answer on the problem of him wearing Heavy Metal t-shirts — the shortest answer would be to buy him a bunch of shirts the other boys in class would wear (Popular sports teams?), but I don’t think that would work.  It did seem to imply that should the other problem be solved, the heavy metal t-shirt one would end up solved as well.

#10:  I remember once, 8th grade, a kid was pulled aside by the science teacher — who, in a very sincere and concerned manner asked him to please write out these song lyrics a bunch of times.  It was from Mariah Carey’s “Heroes”, and concerned finding that hero that lies in you.  The student dutifully did as he was told, and I scratched my head alongside him in murmuring our “what — ?” for one more reason we’re waiting out the year to be done with this teacher.

They mean well.  Might do some good.  Just… a sense of claustrophobia may sneak in.

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