by Gregg Easterbrook

About the author: Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor of the New Republic.

Millions of teens have seen the 1996 movie Scream, a box-office and home- rental hit. Critics adored the film. The Washington Post declared that it “deftly mixes irony, self-reference, and social wry commentary.” The Los Angeles Times hailed it as “a bravura, provocative send-up.” Scream opens with a scene in which a teenage girl is forced to watch her jock boyfriend tortured and then disemboweled by two fellow students who, it will eventually be learned, want revenge on anyone from high school who crossed them. After jock boy’s stomach is shown cut open and he dies screaming, the killers stab and torture the girl, then cut her throat and hang...