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| Elliot Rodger - From final Youtube video prior to the shootings |
At the time of writing it is the best part of a year since the tragic events of 23rd May 2014 in Santa Barbara, California - a day which saw the deaths of six and the wounding of thirteen others, along with the shooter's suicide. The perpetrator was 22 year old Elliot Rodger, a former local college student, who contrived a killing rampage - his deeply self-aggrandizing "Day of Retribution" - in seeming response to many years of alienation, sexual rejection and wider social frustrations.
As the events which so shocked and appalled have passed into recent history, the legacy this singular event engendered has come to be a divisive and deeply emotive one. Beyond the discussions of gun culture and its related violence in the United States, the shooting precipitated a, often vociferous, debate between groups concerned with the mediation of gender identity. Many groups, often drawing from feminist discourse, seeing in Elliot a reflection of a systemic misogyny, while the counter to this was framed by a less cohesive, but none the less valid, constellation of concerns; seeking to not overlook, but diffuse the assertions of singular misogyny into other causes, without the seemingly clumsy indictment of masculinity as a whole.
The reception and dissemination of Elliot's actions nearly unprecedented in the history of such events - ascribed to his self-documentation in social media and authorship of a manifesto - but also in the eclectic spectrum of analysis that followed in global and national media, social media and sundry online sources. In the months that followed, the topic of Elliot's actions, their cause and ultimate legacy, was saturated with analysis that was exceptionally diverse in focus, inflection and conclusion: it seeming that no rocks have yet to be turned over in trying to understand Elliot's rationale.
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| Police conference on the identity and weapons used by the shooter |
Coming to myself, and my own contribution, please know that I wholly appreciate the sensitivities surrounding the singular nature of these events, and it's not my intention of aggravate old wounds. But, as the events that culminated in the shootings may, in some part, remain nebulous and open to speculation, it remains of some importance that a case as singular Elliot Rodger's is not overlooked, but framed in the right way as to inform and color future receptions of nascent social problems, violence and mental illness. Insight, no matter how incremental, is essential in this respect, and it's here that I find my rationale for offering an analysis of the events and issues which preceded the shooter's actions, not necessarily the reception beyond these, as has been seen in some quarters of social media and its associated sub-cultures.
As to allow for relatively good digestion of these issues, and to hopefully preclude intemperate suggestions of pandering to one side or another, I would like to proffer a statement of orientation: a essential, uncomplicated premise which will inform this article, as it goes. It is as follows.
Elliot Rodger was a man who drew from particular developmental and social circumstances; these becoming factors - though not completely causal or instrumental - in the expression of serious mental illness, which he unfortunately developed before his crimes.
It is with this perspective in mind that we move to a consideration of those factors, or perhaps dynamics, which would seemingly result in the shooter's actions that day. To this end, I have envisioned three cardinal elements which I hypothesize gave some definition to Elliot's circumstances, and the final spiral which would end with his actions on the night of 23rd May, 2014.
In some ways, I envision this as a triangular formation, within which can be located the intermingling of issues and problems which evolved during the scope of Elliot's life. Though I don't wish to seem misrepresentative or arbitrary, I have chosen the points that follow to be rationalized into a rudimentary chronology, I feel giving the best meaning to the developing person that Elliot would emerge as.
1) Asperger's Syndrome & Developmental Issues
As analysis of Elliot's actions and words got underway, it would emerge and remain that Elliot's life was informed by developmental impediments and problematic ideation: emotional sensitivity, temperamental reactions, reasoning deficits for his successive ages and an array of otherwise noted issues that Elliot felt himself - albeit numbly as his psychosis progressed - and through other sources, as with his parents, peers and sundry authorities.
Though it remains debatable as to if Elliot ever received a formal diagnosis - his father asserting that he did not - it remains ostensibly self-evident that Elliot's development was colored by such problems.
Of course it must be reiterated with the utmost sincerity that Asperger's syndrome, or any other Autistic condition, does not simply predispose a person towards such actions as immediate violence, sudden crime or homicide. This statement cannot be expressed enough as to ensure that such individuals are not misrepresented or mistreated for being as they are.
Carrying on, if the tenor of Elliot's life and world view were textured by autistic development, then it would perhaps fall to his parents, family and educators to best discern his needs and determine developmental imperatives. Did this happen, though? It remains debatable. It is known that Elliot was seen by a intermittent succession of counselors, therapists and other persons from the age of eight onward, but any positive legacy they effected seems muted at this time. Though I don't doubt that they worked as they could, it remains that the lack of a central diagnosis for such rooted behavior does handicap to a point; the varied lengths of time between referral and the problems reported to them giving little in the way of a coherent foundation with which to begin treatment. In the end, it could be postulated that the best they could afford Elliot's mounting profile was to treat the symptom they found, and cushion the excess of his behavior within their competency.
This approach elected by his parents generates the understanding that though Elliot's family appreciated the potential of Elliot's problematic behavior - employing therapists - his secondary education was fragmentary; Elliot manifesting difficult behavior which saw him rotate through a few schools before eventually graduating from a school for the troubled or developmentally difficult called "Independence High". This recognition - albeit not singular - of Elliot's issue seems to have become more sporadic when his mandated education ended: their son continuing to see counselors and life coaches, though Elliot's experience of college life was fundamentally stunted by his seemingly unresolved habits and lack of social vocabulary or maturity.
Elliot's final years would see him eventually dropping college in favor of other pursuits which would only reinforce his mentality - through their lack success - and compound a sense of finality, which he had neither the insight, emotional reflexivity or wider ability to try and resolve. Though, perhaps it didn't have to be this way, as regards those first developmental challenges.
In all, I have no doubt that raising a child with developmental challenges can be arduous, though regardless as to the ultimate success of parenting, it remains that parents subscribe to a certain social narrative: a text of apportioned values which some, especially in higher or sensitive positions, might find constraining, distracting or disproportionate to their wider responsibilities. Accepting a diagnosis can be the beginning of this - the formality of openly having an autistic child, or a child with associated problems, and thus can be deeply unwelcome in what it alludes to for the years ahead. Still, beyond these, it remains that some will resist and deny a diagnosis out of love and insist on something else, to their wider detriment in the end.
I don't doubt that Elliot's parents and carers tried as they saw best, though it remains that much of this consensus did little to make their positions any easier, to afford insight and even to preclude the tragedy that followed. With retrospect, perhaps it could have been hoped that a formal diagnosis of something substantial in Elliot's character would have interrupted the fateful build to his self-imposed, miserable last years, and more importantly saved many others from death and injury too.
If Elliot did have Asperger's Syndrome, or some associated problem, successful treatment and cultivation of better qualities would have started with a more coherent recognition, planning and the promotion of a better mentality with which to build a life. It being that AS, and anything else, were not overly entertained, it prompts speculation as to what, if anything singular, his parents or other authorities imagined they were dealing with in such severity, and why his habits didn't merit deeper intervention years before.
2) Social Status & Privilege
"Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk."
- Neil Diamond, 1979
The first line of the song "Forever in Blue Jeans", by Neil Diamond, has since passed into popular culture as a well heeded, but only arduously observed maxim. Money does, as the song asserts, talk - but it can't truly instill nor is it spontaneous and its character is only as it comes to you. To an even tempered mind this would be pragmatically understood, but to Elliot Rodger, his seeming privilege- understood or alluded to - afforded him a status which he believed would propel him to success, almost as a natural law of the world around him. The irony of what transpires as his life unfolded - and especially in those last few years - would have been bitter and strange to the future shooter.
The nature and reception of privilege a deeply contended one, I must assert sincerely that privilege is not in itself a bad thing. But, privilege is rarely without wider constructions, and if not tempered or finely expressed, it can become a fount of much difficulty, and the justifiable pretext for much protest and redress.
The question of Elliot's status and the privileges he benefited from for much of his life well documented, it remains that this singular issue has become one of the most bitterly debated subjects amid the shooter's motivations. As aforementioned, some frame his privilege as being the belief that he was entitled to women - the misogyny so powerfully indicted by some commentators - and that his mounting, lethal impulse followed rejection by them. This perspective a potent one, its emotive power can be appreciated in the concise, vivid poetry of Anna Binkovitz in her work "For Elliot Rodger", as rendered at the CAMP BAR, Saint Paul, Minnesota on February 13th, 2015.
As powerful a factor misogyny can be, I am inclined to disagree with the singular assertion, regarding Elliot Rodger's actions. Misogyny, taken within the wider phenomenology of Elliot's experience - both subjectively and from other credible sources - is an expression of Elliot's issue, not the principle. Though, of course, it must be said that other such questions were propelled at the case, and particularly in regards to Elliot's racism - his contempt for other races, peoples of mixed heritage and especially Asians - do inform, as does misogyny, part of his world view. This is again a manifestation of something more intrinsic. Additionally, the questions relating to his masculinity - something which compounds issues of misogyny and racism - can be found to derive from understandings of status; not simply associated with the whiteness in his identity, but from a wider class association. And, particularly, what he believed that to entail.
Elliot's account of his life, as self-obsessed and unsavory as the document may be, does work to shine light on a topic that has received little attention in the wider debate; perhaps being conflated with other issues, or being too pointed to evoke, when compared to more direct narratives. In this, we find that Elliot's sexism, misogyny, racism and nascent narcissism are examined, though what of his classism?
A reading of Elliot's account will leave little doubt as to the esteemed position he believed to be his; this quality not simply a stamp of narcissistic delusion, but Elliot's own reading of the values and culture he considered to be his natural estate - albeit one remarkably skewed and blunted. To Elliot, the internalization of such a narrative would promote the projection of certain norms, as he saw them, and with particular regards to masculinity, materialism and the vindication of this, ostensibly, feted status through sexuality. Of course, much of this narrative sadly holds true in particular parts today, but Elliot's opinion would devolve even this dubious understanding of the world; his particularly brittle perspective of intimacy seeing him project a deeply anachronistic opinion of relationships between those he deemed below him, and those he believed should be attracted to him through status recognition.
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| "Lord Foppington" from the play "The Relapse" (1696 AD) |
A canny commentator on YouTube, reflecting on an analysis of his actions, noted that his feelings and reactions to situations, especially involving being in the presence of couples, were almost a comic parody of particular 17/18th century aristocrats - foppish, prudish, effete and deeply temperamental to all and any perceived slights to their status. Of course, in the more charged, rugged and ribald scene of Isla Vista - Santa Barbara's college district - this worked unfortunately against him; singling him out for typical insults, and not helped by his slight build and delicate complexion.
The salience of privilege and social class in this event a potent and somewhat underrepresented, it remains to me here to present some essential conclusions, without making this part overlong. It remains that Elliot Rodger's world was colored by privilege and by a class identity which he had no reservation about projecting; something which he absorbed, witnessed through coded situations or felt was alluded to while growing up. Unfortunately, Elliot's other issues seemed to preclude a more nuanced, critical understanding where this class identity was supposed to have traction among his peers - and especially among women he believed would comport themselves in choosing him as a socially sound alternative to other, "lesser" men. Of course, it remains that Elliot's ardent, patrician beliefs - both before and during his time in Santa Barbara - also register as a way of defending himself in the social order of things; this compared to the more disparate, heterogeneous nature of his background, which he almost certainly felt gave his position less voice and agency.
In all, could it be postulated that class perceptions played a distinct role in evolving Elliot into the shooter he would become? I can confidently say yes - albeit it must be noted that Elliot's understanding of his situation, and the vocabulary he drew from it, promotes two distinctions. In the first, it does mark how problematic class constructions can be when understood from a very skewed or corrosive perspective: Elliot's deeply obtuse opinion about what should be his by right and the candor of entitlement guaranteeing alienation in return. In the second, Elliot's perspective affords us a, admittedly extreme, glimpse of what can occur when privilege - compounded by learning difficulties and mental illness - departs from any adherence to wider, more general values of behavior.
In some sense, it's heartening to know that the most blunt and obtuse of privileged positions - held aloft by money, consumerism and ostentation - doesn't hold as much traction as it used to, and especially in the case of those who saw fit to bare out their position in hopes of others being socially or sexually obliged. But, it remains that the singular influence of class and social status in the dynamic of American society - and its indwelling problems - requires careful scrutiny to nurture any hope of progress; a scrutiny that must have the conviction to understand what it finds, and how to deal with it for the better. Returning to Neil Diamond, money does - and will continue to - talk, but what it is made to say must always meet with keen scrutiny, and sometimes refusal when money tries to talk over us.
3) Mentall Illness & Pathological Ideation
Of all the issues promoted to the fore by the deeds of Elliot Rodger, the salience of mental illness - wither to a greater or lesser extent - has been often bitterly contested across the social spectrum. It also remains one of the most difficult to discuss as it not only conflates with innate personality and developmental problems but is hard to accurately qualify too. Coming to the last component of my model, we will now consider the influence that mental illness exerted on Elliot's life, and if this played such a decisive role in bringing the Santa Barbara shooter to his conclusions. Still, given Elliot's phenomenology, chasing mental illness is like chasing a genuine phantom through a theme park haunted house: difficult, open to distraction but possible if sufficiently focused.
To begin, I feel it important to assert that Elliot's personal and developmental issues didn't destine or condemn him to mental illness. Rather, as they unfortunately do with a swathe of others far more grounded than he ever was, problems can evolve in the most ostensibly sound minded and successful. Did then Elliot's problems invest him with a latent disposition? This is debatable, but far from definite. Those with atypical mentalities and different developmental histories can be more receptive to extreme experiences which can lead to difficulties. But still, the same can be said of others in the mainstream of society who encounter situations or have singular experiences which trigger perennial psychological problems, later on.
The mental health of the human being is a complicated and challenging thing but can find a commonality in that mental health issues are extremely important: the wider the forum, the sooner undue stigma and prejudice lessens in wider society.
With a focus upon the very singular Elliot Rodger, I would like to postulate that his already difficult, problematic personality distended into mental illness when a number of factors converged, around the time of his 19th birthday, resulting in the creeping, but not inevitable, slide towards disaster seen in the years afterwards.
Elliot's 19th year finds, in the first, a growing frustration between his parents that their son's life has stagnated; and more so, Elliot's traditional, small collection of friends grow increasingly distant between themselves: some growing in different directions, while Elliot's increasingly vicious opinions make a relationship with him almost intolerable. At this point, Elliot's parents contrive a decisive plan which will prefigure much of what comes after, in a bitterly ironic way. Proposing that Elliot begins a new college career in coastal Santa Barbara meets well with Elliot, but his move to the town - despite his ostensibly best resolutions - meets with poor prospects from the outset. Despising successive groups of roommates and the local population of students while bemoaning a lot which he sabotages continuously.
His position in the town is not framed as just another chance, as he deems it, but as a "last chance" - Elliot considering that if he can't fulfill his ideal lifestyle here, then it will never come to pass. Not wishing to consider returning to his mother's residence, he cannot envision a successful life for himself beyond failure in Santa Barbara: a reasoning which poisons his mentality even further when he cannot bring various aspirations - most notably winning the lottery - to fruition. Elliot's mental state ever declining, previous reservations are cast aside as he sinks into a psychosis: ever more obsessive, angry and prone to randomly assaulting strangers who either offend him just by being, or don't behave as he deems fit.
This behavior not going completely without check, a particularly violent tantrum finds Elliot prescribed anti-psychotic medication with some proven efficacy over autistic behavior. Elliot refuses this and there is little intervention further as he, in a tumult of vindictive entitlement, plots his solution to his failures: a final retort to the world he garishly calls "The Day of Retribution", to be carried out in Isla Vista, the town's college district which he has come to hate.
Elliot's reasoning by now far divorced from reality, and pathologically stained, his remaining year in the town bares out the behavior of this mentally ill man. Most notably, as found in an examination of his manifesto, we find his psychotic delusions given to flights of self-justification. Increasingly framing his anger at the world as a fury at women - the seeming gatekeepers to his social validation - and to the men who work to deny him and cultivate women's attentions, he considers these two groups to be the principal embodiment of a world that has denied him his rightful place as their natural better.
When enacted most infamously, he charges the world with the responsibility to save itself from his impeding violence by granting him sex when he ventures out to a party. Frustrated and denied, as usual, Elliot's anger is fueled by alcohol when he insults a group near a balcony he arrives at; the insults rendered back enraging his entitlement as he tries to push several woman over this balcony. The group respond with a scuffle which finds Elliot pushed over, breaking his leg and shambling away - only returning to receive a beating when he finds his glasses have been lost: the group spuriously blamed for "taking his sunglasses" while he is tone deaf as to how the incident actually came about.
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| Police cordon the scene of Elliot's crashed car (Black BMW center) |
By this point the incident only delays the inevitable as Elliot feels his reasoning has been vindicated. Having already acquired a small arsenal, Elliot continues to nurse a small slither of hope that the world will, even at the eleventh hour, recognize his natural estate and grant him what he truly deserves. Of course, this outrageous, stunted belief never comes to pass and what follows finds the last of Elliot's psychotic episodes: the killing of six, the wounding of thirteen and a brief gun fight with police which he, of course, loses and crashes his car. Wounded and ultimately denied of the massacre he desired, Elliot shoots himself in the head. Dragged from the car, police and ambulance crews pronounce Elliot Rodger dead at the scene.
Elliot's mental decline after 19 is difficult, but precipitous, and would certainly have challenged those around him to discern that something was increasingly wrong with a man who's behavior was always challenging from his earliest years. Still, it remains that - in the absence of a more temperate reaction from Elliot - the reaction of others is suspect, and does contribute towards his behavior later on. Though his parents were certainly right to call for a psychiatric intervention, it seems that there was no invested attention after when Elliot coolly refused treatment; more so, the police response to his parent's concerns was stunted by Elliot's composed reaction - something the shooter remarked upon later, noting that if they saw fit, they could have precluded his plans there and then.
Still, it lingers in the mind that the response to much of Elliot's declining mental health after the age of 19 was an ill-informed, conceited and distinctly at arms length. Of course, this final, sporadic chapter of Elliot's life is one peppered with speculation as to what, how and why - possibilities and probabilities that many will mull over for years to come. But, it remains that the framing of Elliot's behavior - wither they were half hidden and furtive or not - is dubious, considering how little was done towards a more substantial move to secure and treat what was an unstable, increasingly aggressive person in a community that should have been more perceptive of health problems than most, at all levels.
Conclusions: what can we learn from the life of Elliot Rodger?
Drawing conclusions and proffering prescriptions has become, and will remain, some of the most difficult things a society can become tasked with - more so especially as it nips certain assumptions and challenges the everyday narrative.
As I said before opening, I considered that Elliot's life and ultimate end were framed by three factors or dynamics: these now discussed as above with Asperger's Syndrome and developmental issues, social status and privilege with mental illness and pathological ideation. These, I feel with some conviction, formed the essential parameters of Elliot Rodger's experience and it may be said that from an understanding of these, we can perhaps glean some insight into just what happened with events preceding the Santa Barbara shootings.
In the hope that the respective elements above have stirred some interest in their content, or have added some deeper nuance to the wider issue, I would like to draw these together in a singular way, if I can.
Elliot Rodger's life and his development were uneven, staggered and problematic; a conclusion his family, peers and sundry authorities tend to agree on. But, from the beginning, it would seem that Elliot's development was one defined by guarded, linear responses as opposed to growth and greater cultivation; interventions and reaction as opposed to better planning and working within a more cohesive framework which a singular diagnosis would usually have prompted. Given what is known, it would seem that Elliot's life was not colored by any particular understanding or penetration of his conditions and his mentality, uncultivated and untempered, which increasingly whirled out of control over the years as he grew.
In any respect, this would have been problematic, but it remains that the social and cultural landscape, in which Elliot was orientated, were ones in which status, social primacy and the affirmation of hierarchy were very important; a context in which, it could be mused, that validation of class identity would and could lead to future success and personal vindication. This competitive, driven and far from healthy mentality is challenging for most, but to the skewed, blunted mind of Elliot, the symbiosis of these values with his own perspectives created a world view which held that overt display, and appreciation of, social rank should, and would, open all doors.
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| Elliot, seemingly flying first class |
The tide having so overwhelming turned against him, the cognitive dissonance would have been painful for all but was world shaking to Elliot; a man who's world view staked so much on the affirmation of his societal class and identity, beyond any other quality he deemed of lesser significance. His views tempered to the extreme by anger, frustration and stark incomprehension, he increasingly charged his future with this desperation; a desperation compounded as his declining mental and emotional health alienated peers and parents alike as they struggled to live with his spiraling behavior. His views orientated to the increasingly pathological, the narrative that emerged as he moved to Santa Barbara was one of acrimonious entitlement - something that fueled his angry ideation through those last few years of his life; his mentality bringing his life into an ever more stark relief of absolute success and validation, or seemingly nothing at all.
The spasmodic decline of his mental health documented in numerous incidents and encounters, he sought to rationalize the clumsy congerie of beliefs he held. Most notably, as with the authorship of his manifesto, he identified that the gatekeepers of the unfair, unjust society he would war against were young women - particularly as they had denied him the wider validation he felt was his through their lack of obligation. Seen to be complicit in this were the men - all and any - that Elliot felt either impeded him or somehow challenged his person hood. In the last, Elliot feeling so singularly impugned, would retaliate in the shootings of May 23rd 2014 - very much removed from Elliot's aggrandised vision, but at a deadly, tragic cost none the less in the deaths of six, the wounding of thirteen and the scarring of a community in turn. And, of course, Elliot himself died too.
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| Elliot Rodger's Crimes - Santa Barbara, 23rd May 2014 |
If asked how such a process of events could have been avoided, it would be somewhat overlong, but as with the three factors, there would also be three prescriptions. In the first, mental and developmental difference must be taken seriously by parents, teachers and authorities at large; the wider world already less than happily disposed to those of atypical mentality, it remains that the autistic, and assorted other conditions, must be better received and incorporated into a normative, successful narrative, for the betterment of all.
Following, in a world where the fantasy of class dissolution is actively indulged from top to bottom, it remains that the values and beliefs that Elliot found himself exposed to came from somewhere; more holistically, it stands to what can become of someone of socially charged entitlement and privilege who then suffers an incremental melt down when things don't acquiesce to the supposed way that makes the world work. Even if that person was evidently embodying a deeply pathological interpretation of such beliefs, the dynamic of those beliefs must be scrutinized also to determine if real reform could help preclude such problems from arising in the first place.
The mental illness that compounded the former two remains nebulous, though psychological problems are not always fairly considered and are subject to stigma or prolonged marginalization; sensationalized by some and effaced by others in the respect of this case, in favor of competing explanations for Elliot's actions. If Elliot's original decline was perhaps caught, or at least tracked over some years, by more receptive parenting or engaged authorities - the latter more assertive about the severity of such behavior and what it might entail - it could very well be that Elliot could have been confined and treated as the imperative determined.
Taken together, a firm diagnosis or progressive development conflated with a more nuanced, critical social education would have dampened the ideation of certain beliefs before outright pathological behavior emerged during Elliot's earlier years. Of course, there will be numerous other insights and compelling arguments, though this hypothesis occurs to me as both the most valid and resonant, considering the wider context of Elliot's life and actions.
In a final prescription, I will note with a somber conviction that Elliot Rodger remains responsible for his actions that night in mid 2014, but this alone does little in the way of better understanding or, more so, precluding such incidents happening again. In this, I choose, a more holistic orientation as to the events which preceded the shooting and do believe that a more critical perspective is very much necessary. Elliot Rodger charged himself with personal vindication through affirming a number of values in his wider society; values and beliefs which he saw, albeit skewed, but saw none the less as a way to validation and success. Could it have been that, perhaps sometime during his earlier years or later education, that a infusion of critical awareness of the world around him would have enabled him to think more constructively, while also pursuing a less ignorant, more temperate place in it? It's certainly possible, though unfortunately didn't come to pass.
In a better world, I do believe that more critical perspectives on class, social democracy and the dynamics of social relationships throughout society, would be essential to a place in which events like the Santa Barbara shootings would be rare. And more, to be treated as a indictment of wider, more systemic issues - truly an opportunity to learn and grow - as opposed to dispersing the issue among numerous, not always temperate, agendas and returning to a mainstream, cyclical narrative which leads nowhere.
Thank you,
Clark Caledon.
20/02/2015.
