Cho Seung-Hui's Plays (screen plays written by shooter)

[joshcryer]

Source: AOL News

AOL News has obtained two plays a classmate says were written by Cho Seung-Hui. Ian MacFarlane, the former classmate and current AOL employee, provided us with the plays. A note from Mr. MacFarlane and links to the works appear below.

Read more: http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/

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I read the first play and he seems to be an angry lonely kid. No surprise there.

[soothsayer]

1. No future in theater, methinks. Weird.

[Benhurst]

2. Certainly not now.

[Ian David]

3. Is Ian MacFarlane any relation to Seth MacFarlane?

Seth MacFarlane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973) is a two-time Emmy-winning American animator, screenwriter, producer, director, and voice actor. He is best known as the creator of the animated series Family Guy and American Dad!. He is also the executive producer of a new live-action sitcom The Winner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_MacFarlane

[Maat]

4. Wow. Sounds like he was abused as a kid.

And, of course, he did not get the counseling he needed (if, indeed, anything at all was done about the abuse, and, IF, it was reported). Sad, heartwrenchingly sad.

[DerBeppo]

12. Why?

As a writer, this line of thought is pretty insulting. Attaching allegations of past abuse simply due to FICTIONAL works is as ridiculous as the Scientologists blaming medication or Jack Thompson blaming video games.

Do you think Stephen King was attacked by his father in an old hotel or that he attacked his family in turn?

[Maat]

30. Well, yes, but you would probably incorporate a theme ..

logically into the story. In his writing, he repeatedly incorporates the theme of abuse, in an angry fashion, in a strange fashion. I'm not criticizing his writing. He seems rather obsessed with themes of abuse; it's a traditional red flag when one is a social worker. I'm just betting that he was abused as a kid, and that's why he was angry. If that offends you, I'm sorry; but, chances are that he was.

[barb162]

36. He probably didn't get psychotic all by himself.

He was showing signs of psychosis for a while according to the teachers and roommates. What was his family doing about it? From all accounts, this guy was looney-tunes and it wasn't just his writing. But even going just to his writing, his English professors were very disturbed by his writing and tried getting help for him.

[MichaelHarris]

5. Something to ponder

Was he creative or crazy? If crazy is the choice we really need to watch Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Terrintino, Alfred Hitchcock (he's dead but I would still watch him) and anyone else that wrote creepy stuff.

[Ian David]

6. "While I 'knew' Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him..."

<snip>

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.

More:
http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays


You know what's going to happen?

Not stricter gun laws.

They're going to start doing background checks on college applicants.

I predict that ChoicePoint, the company that purges voter registration laws, will get the contract.

They're going to suppress the minority enrollment the same way they suppress the minority vote.

Kids from tough neighborhoods who may have made a bad choice or two are going to lose their shot at a second chance.

[whistle]

20. Who owns ChoicePoint?

[whistle]

7. Two plays about pedophilia, child molestation, broken families

...and teenage rebellion against adults. Does that sound like the kind of composition an English major who is a junior or senior in college would write? I mean, would professors allow compositions like that to pass by their grading oversight without having someone come in and evaluate this person? Or is it possible that the compositions were planted as piece of evidence to make the public believe that yet again another lone angry disturbed gunman went berserk and committed these heinous murders?

I don't know the answer. But I have observed that lurking under the spot lights once more is our lone angry disturbed nut-case of a war mongering murderous president and vice president and their handlers like KKKarl Rove, desperately grasping at anything that might raise their approval ratings so they can ram their agenda through congress for an ever expanding war, spending budget and political power.

[kestrel91316]

9. So you think Bush put him up to it?

Or framed him?

I'd laugh if that weren't so sick and bizarre.

[whistle]

11. No not really, but I could attempt to write a play about it and it ...

...probably would draw an audience. I think the White House staff having the president and first lady show up at the campus for todays vigil was in seriously bad taste and smacks of opportunism!

[pitohui]

16. so as the hippie said to robert anton wilson re charles manson, will this be bad for freaks?

look, folks, difficult topics like pedophilia, molestation, broken families are EXACTLY the kind of topics that many young people who want a career in writing are eager to grapple with

look at the writings of any of a thousand kids who have any real ambition to write something real and true, rather than star trek knock-offs, and you're going to see these themes

i hate this crap about "it's the quiet ones you have to watch"

what's going to happen is the usual harassment and forced treatment/drugging/counseling of people who are more naturally inner directed and quiet, with their need for stillness and their wish to tackle difficult in themes in writing rather than in stupid-ass chitchat and gossip, treated as a disease

i was mute for long periods as a child, it didn't mean i was fucking deaf as well, people would actually make those cracks to my face about "it's the quiet ones you have to watch" and how it's the quiet ones who kill

they can kiss my ass

loud obnoxious people kill a lot more people than quiet people but this is going to be good for another crackdown on being quiet and defining having a different kind of personality as abnormal

yeah, THIS kid was sick, but to assume that ALL kids who write about difficult themes are sick...well, the treatment is worse than the disease, isn't it?

stephen king had a difficult childhood, majored in english, and writes truly disturbing gross-out material -- know what? last time i looked he was one of the good guys also out there to march for peace and to try to support the work of other writers

you don't assume somebody is ill because you're bothered that they write about difficult themes

sorry for the rant

[ClintonTyree]

8. Wow....

and he was an English major? I'm surprised the professor of this class didn't alert the mental health department on campus. Maybe they did? That was one screwed up individual there. :wow:

[grasswire]

31. His writing instructor made repeated attempts to warn the school

She was just on CNN. She went to school administrators repeatedly to warn them that the student was very trouble and, in her mind, dangerous.

She even decided to protect her other students by schooling him one on one, not in the classroom. She did that for a year or semester. Schooled him AWAY from the other students because she and they were afraid of what he might do.

[ClintonTyree]

34. I'm not clairvoyant....

but I see many, many lawsuits in Virginia Techs future. Someone should have done something. You can't ignore warning signs like that. Sad. So sad.

[Greyskye]

10. yikes!

As others have noted, those one-acts are terrible from just about every aspect you can think of. Execution, content - none of it at college level.

And the emotional content is especially bad. With 20/20 hindsight, it's pretty clear that this kid was in terrible shape. :(

[whistle]

13. It would be interesting to compare the two plays to other compositions

...the shooter may have written for other classes and have an expert determine if these were in fact written by this person and to see if there may have been a turning point where he became seriously disturbed. Personal diaries, compositions on written English exams, notes, outlines, etc. would be possible sources. I find it very hard to accept these two very short play compositions as being composed by a senior English composition major. It also could be a hoax, I'm not clear on why someone at AOL would have such material in their possession holding it until now of all times, only to be able to conveniently make this material public. This is very very strange.

[DerBeppo]

14. It's not hard to believe that this material was available.

Many university creative writing courses require students to post work online to save on photocopying costs. It's reported that this is where this material came from. The gap in time is probably due to AOL fact checking and verifying.

[marshall]

15. That's the kind of plays teenagers write

I judged a high school playwriting contest one year and every play except one had something to do with abuse or addiction or death. It was very depressing to think about what a troubled time of life it can be.

[pitohui]

17. now there's a poster who has met young writers

thank you

my experience is the same, this is what young people write about, plot drivers require conflict and the conflict they are most likely to see in their communities are addiction, suicide, abuse

[whistle]

19. Really, at what grade level were these plays: 9th; 10th 11th or 12th?

...Urban center city high school, suburban or rural? Northeast, midwest, south or west part of the country? Jesus, if this is what our children are writing about and focused on, America is totally screwed!

[pitohui]

23. what would you expect kids to write about?

kids have little experience of life, they only have experience of domestic issues, to write about ANYTHING you have to have a problem (the conflict)

a kid has no real experience to write about the drama of adult relationships or war or political/corporate struggle or even a really good cop drama that would be based on anything except teevee

when instructed to write about what you know, even the kid with the most boring suburban lifestyle possible, has to create conflict to advance the plot, and if not based on self, then will be inspired by what kids known to him are going thru (drugs, abuse, broken homes)

there is not a thing unusual or sinister in this

[marshall]

33. This was a rural high school

A theatre festival attended by 15 to 20, all very rural high schools and for the most part white. Most dealt with either parents who were mean to their kids or kids who were mean and unappreciative of their parents. And pretty schmaltzy, the one I remember best had a girl center state cradling her mother who had just died of a heart attack while ironing the girl's prom dress while the girl was yelling at her to hurry up so she could get dressed, as "I Just Called to Say I Loved You" played on the radio.

[ElizabethDC]

27. I know a lot of high school students try to write edgy college admissions essays

when I was applying to college a couple years back, I remember reading articles about how some kids would say that they wish they had more tragedy in their lives so that they would have more interesting things to write about. Some students aim for the dramatic in an attempt to get more attention because they thing that's what will get them into college. This is likely prevalent in other scenerios, too.

[Threedifferentones]

40. He was a senior in college, not a teenager.

I read those two plays and you're right, they are the kinds of plays "emo" kids write in HS, and the quality of writing HS teachers will accept. I haven't written any fiction in years myself, probably since HS, but I am a junior at UT Knoxville and I can tell you that the English majors I know here are writing things way beyond that crap, which isn't necessarily saying much because those two plays seem downright awful. If those are supposed to be examples of his recent work I bet they are fake, since I can say almost certainly he could not have passed upper level writing courses here at UTK turning in junk like that, and I doubt VT's English courses have HS-level standards either.

[pitohui]

18. "none of it at college level"

suggest you apply to college in south korea, major in korean, and see how well your early efforts read

seriously, the kid was fucked up, but give me a break -- it would be more amazing if the plays were actually brilliant at this point in his life

[melissaf]

35. true, but

hadn't Cho been living in the US for fourteen years? That's long enough for him to have picked up a certain amount of fluency in English.

I've taught freshman writing and creative writing at the college level, and I was also struck by the lack of emotional depth and maturity in the plays. They seem to simply be vehicles for him to spew hate speech. I also think it's interesting that in both plays, a) the main characters are teenagers, and b) despite the fact that they're the ones heaping all sorts of abuse on the adult characters, those adults are ultimately portrayed as the victimizers and the teenagers as victims. That, I believe, is a major sign of the mass-murder mindset: I am a victim, everyone else must pay.

And one more thing: if a student of mine ever wrote a story about students plotting to kill a teacher, you'd bet I'd be reporting the kid to every authority figure I could find. I'd also probably ask him to leave my class. In my experience, college teachers have the flexibility to throw a student out of class if that student acts threatening or disruptive. I certainly wouldn't want to sit in a room, one-on-one or otherwise, and workshop Cho's plays.

[chelsea0011]

21. The comments by the AOL users are the typical moronic

chatter. It never ceases to amaze me with the hate that AOL users come up with. Any chat/comment is usually filled with hate comments.

[ElizabethDC]

28. Lots of sites are that way

not just AOL. A lot of entertainment and news sites have really nasty comments. It's really unfortunate.

[B3Nut]

39. You mean like these?

Here's a real winner:

-------
"24. I COULD GIVE A MAD F*** BOUT VIRGINA AND WAT GOES ON IN IT WE GOT ENOUGH SHIT GOIN ON N OUR OWN CITIES N STATES TO WORRY BOUT SOME SHIT THATS ALREADY DONE N OVER WIT 33 PPLZ DEAD OK BIG F****** WOO AINT THE FIRST TIME SOMEONE STUPID DID SOME SHIT LIKE THAT AND AINT GONNA BE THE LAST ONLY PEOPLE TO BLAME R THE SKOOLZ THEY THE ONES WHO SUPPOSE TO MAKE SURE SHIT IS SAFE N THEN SOME SHIT LIKE THIS HAPPENS YEA O-----K NEWAYZ ALL I KNO IS THEY EEDA STOP INTERRUPTIN MY SOAPS LIKE DAT

JESSICA at 2:49PM on Apr 17th 2007"
-------

Awww, poor Jessica. All this news is interrupting her SOAPS! The NERVE! And get a load of the spelling and grammar...good grief! A brain-dead nincompoop devoid of human compassion. Is this what our society is producing? Wow. Just....wow.

Or how about this one?

-------
"293. You guys r idiots! Stacey is right so shut up! And another thing i know this kid he went to my elementery skool and he used 2 throw bananas at me! jk. anyways this kid is a gay muffin and i know he aint in heaven right now. I think his parents neva got to read the script cuz they didnt undastand it cuz they chineese. aight peace
HAfeZi at 3:29PM on Apr 17th 2007"
-------

Ummm, his parents were Korean, in point of fact. But this doesn't stop this addleheaded poster from spouting mis-spelled xenophobic nonsense. And just what the hell is a gay muffin? Is this poster a blithering homophobe as well? (I think we all know the answer to that question.) Again, what a lovely example of an erudite command of the English language....NOT. I really don't "undastand(sic)" how this kid ever passed "elementery skool(sic)."

What's really sad is that there was over 470 pages of comments last I looked...over 7000 posts. Un-freaking-believable. (No, I didn't read them all...between the xenophobia, hate, and bad spelling and grammar my brain was starting to hurt.)

Shaking my head,

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[justjones]

22. Why would a fellow student save another student's plays?

Obviously, he sensed something deeply disturbing in Seung-Hui's writing, otherwise why would he save this garbage? He must have knew one day that this would be relevant. :shrug:

[pitohui]

24. i used to have another friend's writings

were you never a kid? when i was a teen, we passed around each other's writings all the time, maybe there was some kidding about publishing this stuff when/if the other person got famous but there was nothing sinister about it

good lord, my friend wrote an entire novel about life as a runaway heroin addict, for cripes sakes, her actual experience was getting drunk in her own suburban bedroom and wearing black a lot

people are reading way too much into this

you need to see the writings of a thousand other young people who didn't kill anyone, trust me, the work would be much the same, it's sort of a stage of being depressed that young writers go thru

[daleo]

25. If he wrote about people being tortured, that would be standard Hollywood fare

So is mass murder. In a movie, a mere 32 killings would hardly get you noticed. If writing about horrible subjects was enough to get you committed, a good percentage of Hollywood screenwriters would be certified.

[whistle]

29. So then is it art imitating life or life imitating art....or is Hollywood

....the center of culture and art or just crass commercialism on a sensational multi-hundreds of millions of dollars scale? Did this young man's writing actually mirror his limited narrow life experiences or was he influenced by what he saw in movies, read in comic books, watched on cable TV, fantasized from video games, absorbed from various on-line porno sites?

[daleo]

32. I suppose we are all influenced by our environment

It seems likely that he had a serious mental illness as well, from some limited references I have read to a diary. These are difficult cases, if the man was truly insane (e.g. hearing voices from inanimate objects, etc). The Bible and other religious works have been the basis for events along this line as well.

I guess my comment about Hollywood was to illustrate the sometimes fine line between insane delusions and popular entertainment. I am thinking especially about the recent spate of torture entertainments, like Saw (I think that's the name).

[Penndems]

26. Wow - This is some seriously sick stuff

This kid didn't have any business walking around, much less attending college. It certainly makes one wonder just what the hell was going on at that townhouse in Centreville, Virginia.

[truthisfreedom]

37. Best left to the professionals. This is a political news site... we should stop trying to analyze

the kid responsible for this mayhem and get on with the business of monitoring every shred of news pertinent to our cause.

[Vilis Veritas]

41. Wag the dog....

Dawg!

They got what they wanted!

[deutsey]

38. Just based on what I was able to get through, his writing sucked

I won't try to psychoanalyze him, but I can also see why his instructors were concerned.