A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
The grisly shooting in Aurora Colorado, at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” has sparked a debate about U.S. gun policy. Do guns kill people or do people kill people? This facet of the tragedy is what our pundits and commentators are now fixated on.
What surprises me is how little people are talking about the cultural significance of the shooting–namely, that the shooter James Holmes seems to have been inspired by The Joker of the earlier Batman film, “The Dark Knight.” Anthony Lane, writing for The New Yorker, is one of a few writers to dwell on this connection, and he ultimately concludes that “no film makes you kill.” I see his point–that films don’t kill people, but people kill people. And yet, I think he is too quick to dismiss the ties between the villain of the Aurora shooting and that of “The Dark Knight.”
When “The Dark Knight” came out in 2008, everybody was talking about how morally disturbing it was. My sense is that people were troubled by the amorality of The Joker and his delight in taking lives at will for no purpose whatsoever. The Joker, played by Heath Ledger, who of course ominously died of a drug overdose not too long after the film was released, was a frightening embodiment of psychopathic evil. In 2007, Ledger described The Joker as a ”psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” The Joker’s evil is something that affected nearly everyone I knew who saw the movie.
Could it have affected Holmes, too? Was Holmes inspired by The Joker to act out his maniacal terror fantasy? He must have been. Holmes, after all, came into the theater decked out as The Joker would be–his hair died a reddish-orange and with a deadly arsenal of weapons on him:
From the front of the theater, the shooter set off what witnesses and authorities described as tear gas or a smoke bomb. He then started firing weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle and shotgun, as the horrified crowd realized too late that the dark figure in their midst wasn’t connected to the violent action movie.
“There were many, many rounds fired,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at a news conference Friday, adding, “This is a very tough day for a whole lot of people.”
Corbin Dates, a 23-year-old AT&T Inc. worker at the late-night screening, said that when he saw the theater’s emergency doors swing open and a man walk inside, he thought it was some kind of movie-related stunt. Even as people screamed, he thought it was part of the show. Then he saw the man throw a gas canister into the crowd and begin firing.
Holmes had methodically thought his plan out. He even rigged up his apartment with deadly booby traps, which were intended to inflict maximum damage on the police who would be sure to search it in the aftermath of the murders. Holmes’ coolly calculated effort to inflict the maximum amount of casualties, from the gas canisters to his rigged up room, is perhaps the most Joker-like–the most strikingly evil–element of this story.
Beyond that, there are further reports that Holmes is acting like The Joker in jail:
Holmes, 24, first told cops he was Batman’s enemy The Joker after the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday that also left 58 people wounded.
His deranged behaviour has continued in jail with him spitting at guards.
One prison insider said of the gunman, who is under suicide watch in solitary confinement: “He hasn’t shown any remorse. He thinks he’s acting in a movie.”
Holmes’s answering machine message was also inspired by The Joker.
Glenn Rotkovich — who ran a gun range the maniac tried to join — told of his shock when he tried to ring Holmes.
He said: “His message was bizarre. He was slurring words but he didn’t sound drunk. Looking back, I think he was trying to be The Joker.”
The more details you read about the shooting, the more you realize that the line between fiction and reality had evaporated in Holmes’s mind.
There’s no doubt that the guns Holmes had on him allowed him to kill people on a mass scale that would otherwise not have been possible. But are the guns what caused him to act? Like many of us, he was clearly emotionally affected by “The Dark Knight.” More, he was likely inspired by the amorality of The Joker in that movie. I’m pretty agnostic on the gun issue, but even without guns, who is to say Holmes, a neuroscience grad student, wouldn’t have simply gassed the theater or gone in there with knives to kill people?
The basic point is that the tragedy in Aurora is more a cultural event than a political one (about gun control). The basic question is what to do about that? We obviously can’t censor emotionally and morally fraught movies–in this case, a great thought-provoking one–that have moments of disturbing amorality in them just because they might set some psychopath off. But is there anything we can do, from a cultural standpoint?
I haven’t seen the latest installment in the Batman series yet, but Mark Judge nicely points out that it has an elevating moral theme–hopefully one more elevating than the last film’s, especially given the recent tragedy.
- Comment (31)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments:
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Another chilling possibility: It appears that Mr. Holmes set music blasting in his unlocked and booby-trapped apartment approximately 30 minutes before he unleashed his massacre. He may have been counting on Aurora police and fire units to be engaged in a disaster at his apartment building, enabling him to wreak carnage in the theater and then calmly walk out to his car and escape.
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
I'm not sure what more Nolan could have done to make the second Batman movie a powerful morality tale. The problem isn't with depicting evil, it's with someone seeing that evil and wanting to embrace it.
I don't suppose we think that the evil shouldn't be portrayed, do we?
May '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
We're debating guns and movies. Shouldn't we really be debating how we handle the mentally ill in this country? It's a debate the left doesn't want to have because they know they are responsible for the current mess.
The past horrors of the country's mental institutions (think The Snake Pit) causes us to "main stream" a lot of potentially dangerous people in our society. We think a weekly visit to the shrink and a prescription is going to keep us safe. But it doesn't.
And when these fragile minds snap everyone wants to look at some other reason other than the implications of their policy decisions. So we need to regulate and limit the freedom of 99.9% to validate their view of how to handle the psychotics in our world?
Edited on July 23, 2012 at 6:15pmRe: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
I was going to try and articulate precisely the same thought that Mollie just expressed.
"The Dark Knight" does not glorify or cheer on the senseless evil that its villain perpetrates; on the contrary, the film enlists every sympathetic character and the audience in rooting for his downfall.
Emily asks if we can "do" anything about depraved violence "from a cultural standpoint." But, of course, all we can do is precisely what Nolan's films do do: capture our entire society's collective imagination with tales of brave heroes looking pure evil in the face, staying strong, and punching back hard.
We should judge and value art by asking whether its message, as properly understood by reasonable citizens, uplifts our society. Not by asking whether a hopelessly inhuman monster might "get any ideas" from the bad guys' behavior.
If it wasn't the Dark Knight that set this freak off, it would have been something else. We've had criminally insane psychos long before we had Hollywood.
Jul '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.: I'm not sure what more Nolan could have done to make the second Batman movie a powerful morality tale. The problem isn't with depicting evil, it's with someone seeing that evil and wanting to embrace it.
I don't suppose we think that the evil shouldn't be portrayed, do we? · 12 minutes ago
The problem is not the portrayal per se, but that our culture glorifies evil. Batman may have been the hero, but the Joker was the star of the movie. Just look at the number of references to the Joker and "Why so serious?" online, and the complete lack of reference to anything Batman said or did.
Edited on July 23, 2012 at 6:19pmSep '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
There is a third rail of creepiness to the tale:
Just as the Unabomber was an amoral and highly intelligent mathematician, I'm curious about his chosen vocation of cognitive neuroscience. I certainly don't think that even those who claim to be hard core materialists are automatically defacto amoralists even if they publicly profess that all moral codes are arbitrary and merely illusory neural activity and qualia masquerading as reality.
But, using the Unabomber as a comparison case, the fusing of a soul predisposed to evil influences (and I will not discount the possibility of someone so corrupted that they fall prey to demonic influences) added to high intelligence, narcissistic introspection, and then a materialist preconception of human activity, creates someone that resembles no one if not Professor Weston from CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.
Jan '11
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
For me, this issue is on par with watching the Twin Towers fall.
The proper response is not to hide our faces in fear, but to confront it. The signs and sights are disturbing, and for every terrorist who was cheered by the Towers coming down, there were Americans who became determined to confront it.
It was ever thus.
It's dramatic to call life a "field of battle against evil." But while we have the spectacular battles against terrorists and psychopaths, we also have the day-to-day struggles with the smaller demons. The bubble-gum, comic-book heroes pale in comparison.
This story off of Drudge gives me hope: heroes. There are plenty of people willing to fight, at a moment's notice.
May '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
The beginning of this very movie has Evil not being portrayed, and the city going back to sleep, prepared to turn out the old guard for peace time.
To not portray Evil is a step to deny it. Darkness exists in all of us; we can no more escape that reality than we flap our arms and fly. We are bound together by our darkness and our light, and we cannot deny one without the other.
We must confront the darkness in ourselves and in our organizations. Penn State did not do this, nor the Catholic Church, just to name two in the headlines. If we only look at the light we carry, we will never see what lurks in the shadows, and we will remain with a narrow view.
We must look into the darkness, we must look at Evil mindfully. If we do not, Evil will still find us, but it will find us unprepared and unable to cope.
May '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
I agree. Too many families are desperate for help and we cannot force help on their loved ones until the danger is very high.
EJHill: We're debating guns and movies. Shouldn't we really be debating how we handle the mentally ill in this country? It's a debate the left doesn't want to have because they know they are responsible for the current mess.
The past horrors of the country's mental institutions (think The Snake Pit) causes us to "main stream" a lot of potentially dangerous people in our society. We think a weekly visit to the shrink and a prescription is going to keep us safe. But it doesn't.
And when these fragile minds snap everyone wants to look at some other reason other than the implications of their policy decisions. So we need to regulate and limit the freedom of 99.9% to validate their view of how to handle the psychotics in our world? · 10 minutes ago
Edited 10 minutes ago
Nov '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Whiskey SamThe problem is not the portrayal per se, but that our culture glorifies evil. Batman may have been the hero, but the Joker was the star of the movie. Just look at the number of references to the Joker and "Why so serious?" online, and the complete lack of reference to anything Batman said or did. · 1 minute ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
I think "glorifies evil" is a bit of an overreach. Christopher Nolan's Joker was adored because he was a well written, interesting, and, yes, entertaining character. I would bet money that 99.9% of the people perpetuating the "Why so serious?" meme would be appropriately sickened if someone like The Joker were to appear in real life.
Dec '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Bryan G. Stephens:
Penn State did not do this, nor the Catholic Church, just to name two in the headlines. If we only look at the light we carry, we will never see what lurks in the shadows, and we will remain with a narrow view.
I don't follow.
What does the Catholic Church have to do with this?
Sep '11
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
"Can movies inspire people to kill" is the wrong question. The precise form in which the killer decided to express his insanity could have been inspired by many things; it happened that this one caught his fancy.
It's reported that his mother associated him with the massacre as soon as she heard of it; that suggests that he had been on a rapid descent into real madness since not long ago he was functioning pretty well.
As others have said, the question is how do we deal with the mentally ill. At least in California, deinstitutionalization was a complex and bipartisan process. Budget was a consideration, but leading psychiatrists assured everyone that the mentally ill could be managed in the communities because of these wonderful new drugs. What to do with people who wouldn't come in for help, or who refused to take the drugs wasn't factored in very well. Then there was the extension of the civil rights movement to the mentally ill, and we were off to the races.
Jul '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Umbra Fractus
I think "glorifies evil" is a bit of an overreach. Christopher Nolan's Joker was adored because he was a well written, interesting, and, yes, entertaining character. I would bet money that 99.9% of the people perpetuating the "Why so serious?" meme would be appropriately sickened if someone like The Joker were to appear in real life. · 3 minutes ago
Compared to the monochrome, mumbling hero? And I didn't base that statement on one character from one movie. Look at the proliferation of zombie movies that are little more than splatter-porn, or the Saw series (or some others I can name but might cause complaints if people Google them to see what they're about). People aren't going to see the heroes live or villains caught; they're going to be entertained by the latest way someone has dreamed up of degrading someone else. Our popular entertainment continues to have more explicit images of violence, constant references to sex, coarsened language. We shouldn't blame any one movie, but let's not pretend that our pop culture that constantly surrounds us and is brought into our homes has no influence on us.
Edited on July 23, 2012 at 6:54pmMay '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
The Church ignored the darkness of its own priests preying on the young. It covered it up instead of owning up to it at once. More damage was done during the cover up. I use it not to attack the Church but to make a point:
When we don't face Evil head on, we we ignore the Truth, Evil will spread.
Michael Horn
Bryan G. Stephens:
Penn State did not do this, nor the Catholic Church, just to name two in the headlines. If we only look at the light we carry, we will never see what lurks in the shadows, and we will remain with a narrow view.
I don't follow.
What does the Catholic Church have to do with this? · 10 minutes ago
Sep '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Ever notice that no mass murders were ever inspired by Chariots of Fire, The Princess Bride or Amazing Grace?
Dec '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Bryan G. Stephens: The Church ignored the darkness of its own priests preying on the young. It covered it up instead of owning up to it at once. More damage was done during the cover up. I use it not to attack the Church but to make a point:
When we don't face Evil head on, we we ignore the Truth, Evil will spread.
18 minutes ago
Thanks for the clarification!
My two cents are as follows: A sane person isn't going to watch a movie, read a book, or listen to a song, and decide to start killing people. These forms of entertainment may give some creative ideas or inspiration to an insane person, but they aren't going to turn a sane man into a monster. The same can be said of an evil person. They aren't evil because they watched too many horror movies.
Are they?
Jul '12
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
It is the view of most people that the arts are powerful enough to intrude upon and shape the personality; movies are among the most obvious examples, music is another.
Our plastic minds enjoy an almost hypnotic state sitting for hours in a darkened theater and watching an immersive, visually sensuous film with surround sound. I don't think this is controversial. We've all been there.
What happens when a link between real violence and the movies is established? Faced with this, the industry goes into a defensive crouch, declaiming they have no responsibility for the images and ideas on film.
Their problem is they've crossed the line many times in the name of "art." They've made movies that were pornographically violent, and exploited sadism and sexuality without limits. And this they did knowing the capacity of art to enter the minds of viewers and exert powerful influences, in one way or the other, to the creation of our modern culture. Art and culture are psychologically experienced, are they not? This is trumpeted at Oscar Awards ceremony and never challenged, except when the connection between film and actual madness and murder is seen.
The hypocrisy is palpable.
Jul '12
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
I think it's wrong to suggest that the movie was in any way a cause of what happened.
Yes, the murderer might have been inspired by the Joker, but there is no accounting for the thought processes of the deranged. How many criminal acts have been "caused" by schizophrenic delusions -- things that did not exist at all? This is no different; the perpetrator here saw something in the Joker that was not there. The cause was in his head, not on the screen.
We can't police our popular media looking for any image or idea that an insane person might twist into something dangerous. Where would you draw the line? Charles Manson was inspired, in part, by a song about a playground slide.
To suggest that culpability rests somewhere else is to dilute the responsibility that must ultimately rest with the man who pulled the trigger.
May '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Movies can inspire or introduce ideas. So can a lot of things. Artists fool themselves when they think they bear no moral responsibility in their works. But art alone shapes no one.
But no face paint — the iconic marker of the Joker. Color me skeptical.
For the sake of learning, here's a confession. The Dark Knight is one of my favorite films, and I admire both Batman and the Joker. As an Aspie with muted emotions and introverted personality, part of me has always been attracted to various manifestations of evil. Everyone has potential for both good and evil; mine is just extreme.
As evil goes, the Joker is a rockstar. Villains are rarely so charismatic. He believes life has no purpose and people have no inherent value, so the world is his nihilistic playground. He's evil, but he's fun.
We must distinguish between strengths of character and strength of will. Love is a choice. The loveless can also be strong, intelligent, funny and charismatic.
May '10
Re: A Cultural Aside on the Aurora Shooting; Or, Can Movies Inspire People to Kill?
Whiskey Sam
The problem is not the portrayal per se, but that our culture glorifies evil.
Agreed.
Humanity has always appreciated dark beauty, like the melancholy of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or the elegant doom in Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain."We have always appreciated horror stories, like the golem or the dragon. But the appreciation was of the beauty and hope within the darkness, beneath the flaws, beyond the dangers, etc. In stories, there was a popular expectation of redemption and the triumph of Good.
Modern horror films and black metal are something else. They relish the evil and corruption. In both fiction and music, we have witnessed the emergence of ever more brutal and coarse genres which have garnered popularity and financial success. And they are just the tip of the iceberg. Within more mainstream genres, expecations of didactic or redemptive conclusions have faded. Vulgar jokes and scenes are appreciated because they are vulgar, rather than in spite of that vulgarity.
In other words, art has always reflected our fallen existence and the search for good within corruption. But modern art revels in the corruption, preferring it to the good.