Friday, July 27, 2012

THE COLORADO BATMAN MOVIE MASSACRE

I haven't seen the new Batman movie yet and really have very little interest, despite some rave reviews. I read and heard and saw rave reviews of the last Batman, DARK KNIGHT, but was pretty sure I wouldn't dig it, and I didn't.  I saw it because my youngest son wanted to, and I wanted him to see it with someone who would have a more critical eye.

I wrote about it in a post back then, seeing some plot points as seeming justifications for the actions of the then administration's (Bush/Cheney) actions and policies. From what I hear about this latest flick, it too seems to have some rightwing over, or under, tones.  But as I have said in many posts, not just the one about the last Batman movie, and as my friend the great photographer Robert Zuckerman has said in many comments on this blog more succinctly and better, I believe these kinds of violent movies, even when clearly fantasy, contribute to the level of violence in our world.

Michael Moore made a point recently in his response to the Colorado movie theater massacre that Canadians have a lot of guns and watch pretty much the same movies and video games etc. we do and yet they, like all other industrialized nations, have only a tiny fraction of the gun deaths we have in this country. So it can't all be about gun control and culture. But nonetheless it is clear that the automatic weapons ban could have kept the massacre to fewer dead and wounded, and that our violent films and video games etc. coupled with our violent history and bias toward vigilantism etc. has contributed to a culture of less sensitivity toward brutality.

I mean just look at the way we went from the "Marcus of Queensbury" idea of rules for boxing to all out kicking and strangling etc. in the kind of fighting now more popular among boys and young men on TV. Yes, a boy from a stable home with a good upbringing and positive models for settling disputes through reasonable discussion etc. will most likely not massacre innocent people in a movie theater. And one who has had a psychotic break or some deepseated mental aberration that can lead to inhumane, let alone inhuman, behavior, may become violent without watching merciless brutality on a movie or TV or computer screen. But even in the latter cases, a sick person might opt for a less destructive weapon than automatic rifles and handguns.

Recently a woman was accosted by a mentally sick man on the street in Manhattan and sprayed with Mace and stabbed. She survived the stabbing thanks to a nurse among the passersby helping until an ambulance arrived, and the man was easily caught without harming anyone else. Imagine if rather than Manhattan with its tougher gun laws, he was somewhere where he had access to automatic weapons when that same destructive impulse to harm a stranger came upon him.

I worked in commercials in the 1990s. Not something I had planned to do, and I did my best to avoid doing commercials for products I thought contributed to the culture of violence (and refused to do voiceovers for violent video games which was a big income loss at the time). And one of the things I learned in doing that was how corporations spend billions on research into how to get people to respond the way they want them to through filmed commercials.

No corporation would spend that kind of money unless they got results. So for people to pretend that violence on movie and TV and computer screens doesn't impact people, especially young minds, and sick minds, and yet commercials on the same screens do, is disingenuous at best. I suppose I'll eventually see this flick when it's shown on TV. My youngest has already seen it with a friend and dug it. My take doesn't have as much of an impact as it used to. But he's capable of critical thinking and if and when I see it I'm sure we'll have a lively discussion, as my older boy and I used to about the same thing, only then the violence wasn't even as bad as it is now. (I remember how the first GODFATHER movie and CHINATOWN and THE WILD ONES and other 1970s movies that first introduced a level of realistic violence never before seen on screen upset me at the time, and now they seem so tame!)

So, my take is that if the killer of those theater goers in Colorado had not see DARK KNIGHT and Heath Ledger's impactful performance as the ruthlessly violent Joker and didn't have easy access to automatic weapons, those people in that Colorado theater that night, or at least more of them, would still be alive and unhospitalized.

10 comments:

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Thank you Michael, for clearly stating the undisputable. The First Amendment does not allow Hollywood to fill our minds and culture with images (tutorials) of violence and murder. This is not the intention of the First. Nor does the Second Amendment allow for the accessibility of assault weapons. It had in mind single shot, slow loaded muskets and swords. And all the touters of the Second leave out its crucial tenet: a "well regulated militia." There is zero room for discussion on the indisputable FACTS that media violence and gun availability, combined with lack of education and lack of spiritual enrichment and lack of Honesty, Truth and Character have caused not only vast unecessary death and suffering but also to the present world economic crisis.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Also, kudos to Christian Bale for on his own visiting the injured shhoting victims.

Jerome said...

Michael, you're right about gun control laws; Michael Moore is wrong. Here's a comment by Andrew Potter, a Canadian cultural critic: "Moore claims that gun-control laws are unimportant because Canada has millions of guns but almost no gun violence...Moore fails to mention that Canada has extremely strict gun laws. There may be eight million guns in Canada, but they are almost all single-shot rifles and shotguns, locked away in gun cabinets in rural areas. There are almost no handguns, no semi-automatics and absolutely no assault rifles." from Nation of Rebels, p. 142.

Lally said...

That's true Jerome. Thank you for pointing that out.

JenW said...

Robert, I admire your convictions & love the way you’ve kept the stalker at bay in previous posts with your lively wit and intellect. Jerome, Thanks for making that clear. Michael, as usual, you stir me with your incredible insight and graceful expression of thought. OK, here’s another complicated piece of this puzzle: Sadly, many children of this generation are being neglected -not deprived of materialistic things like cell phones, huge flat screen TVs and computers, but devoid of emotional wealth- things that you naturally give your children and grandchildren through open discussions and real life experiences. A single parent can give this.(or an aunt, an uncle, a guardian etc.) It’s the quality (and time) that’s important. This missing foundation is being replaced with more interaction with violence in video games, TV & film. After the Columbine shooting, schools first started to implement character education programs because teaching values is just not happening at home. Michael-Why do you think you were disturbed by the violence in THE GODFATHER, back in the day? The kids today are “desensitized” to the violence. Have you checked out Mortal Combat or some of the popular video games? I remember a Bond video that came out when my son was young. When I watched the kids play it- I was horrified. The object of the game was to shoot and kill as many people as possible- (pure bloody shooting- no reason or plot.) Nothing Ian Fleming had imagined for sure! The violence and other problems we face are all intertwined. Each area needs urgent attention.

Lally said...

Jen, I'm not for censorship and the ratings system doesn't seem to work since video games that are supposed to be for adults only are easily accessible to kids and many adults don't seem to monitor games anyway. But the movie rating system can certainly be changed to reflect the perspectives expressed above. Making "R" ratings for sex and not violence has always been a problem. Gratuitous violence should have its own rating. Though I suspect as with games many parents would allow their kids to watch it anyway. No it seem more like a problem for the entire culture. There have been major shifts in the general mores of our culture at different times (post WWI or "the 'sixties" etc.) and I feel like it's up to all of us, creators and consumers alike, to bring about that kind of change again by making and supporting art and games that reflect a belief in love over fear, because in the end all that violence is just an expression of fear, which is always at the root of negativity I believe.

JIm said...
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JIm said...
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Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Cancer is not negotiable. Your ideas, utterances and assertions Jim are pure cancer and are not acceptable nor welcome in a healthy discussion. Your thinking, being cancer, must and deserves to be eradicated.

Lally said...

The stalker is deleted when he lies or curses out others. If you want to see reasonable arguments against his various comments over the years there are several years worth of me trying to reason with him and his lies being called out with facts by me and others but he only changes the subject when caught lying or starts yelling names, usually at me. Extremely childish. Like many on the right when their lies and misinformation and misdirections and media manipulations are pointed out, he throws tantrums. It'd be amusing if it wasn't so potent among too many miseducated people who get sucked in by the stalker's media masters like Rush and Faux News et.al.