Holmes showed up in court today - acting insane - or drugged.
A few people seem to believe that by ignoring the events which took place, and not mentioning the 'joker's' name - will make this stuff go away.
Others see nothing wrong with our culture and choose to believe this 'terrorist attack' is just an isolated incident - unrelated to the Batman franchise, the entertainment industry's glorification of violence and death, or the consumers desensitization to the same.
Even more wonder why bad things happen to 'good people', while ignoring the terror attacks and murders which have become commonplace in places like Syria, Nigeria, Iraq, Israel, Chicago, North Minneapolis, Planned Parenthood, and so on. All isolated incidents?
Really?
This has been my reaction to these events. On Saturday I saw about 30 minutes from the first of this trilogy -- it was only about violent responses to evil. The problem was, in order to carry on this so-called combat against evil, evil had to be committed. That 30 minutes was all I could take. No wonder these things happen.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Batman traditionally does not kill. I'd have to see the first two films again, but I thought it was explicitly stated in the movies.
ReplyDeleteI know for a fact that in the comics, Batman (and Superman) follows a serious code of never killing his opponents, no matter how evil.
But rather than blaming violent movies themselves, I'd say many people confuse cause and effect - I tend to believe that the coarsening of the entertainment industry re: violence is a result of society's own coarsening, and not necessarily vice-versa.
Some people can play violent video games all day and it never interferes with their real-life actions regarding life and death, or what they think is right and wrong.
My point is not that extreme violence in games and movies is a good thing, but that people who enjoy such things are not James Holmeses waiting to happen. I think that's an erroneous conclusion.
And to be fair, while I like video games, I don't like the violence for violence's sake kind of games (Grand Theft Auto, e.g.) - I DO like World War II stuff or adventurer kind of stuff. As far as movies go - it depend son the genre and what point the violence has - whether it is gratuitous or not. Certainly the Joker in the Dark Knight was not meant to be admired any more than Hitler is meant to be admired in books about the Second World War.
" ... A woman who was suggested as a possible date by the website said it was "pretty scary getting matched to a mass murderer"..."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9419299/Batman-Colorado-shooting-James-Holmes-fixated-by-altered-states-of-mind.html