This week, Bob gives us a timely and topical essay entitled "Are the BATMAN Movies Evil?" It's an interesting, albeit misguided and misinformed piece of writing. In it, our man with the Creative Insight (wink wink nudge nudge) addresses the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado. His piece here is about personal responsibility, and while I understand the point he's trying to make and do agree that we are and should be held accountable for our own actions, his logic and method of argument is deeply flawed and thoroughly short sighted.
We begin with a complaint about the fact that the news media has covered this event too thoroughly. Bob compares this tragedy to a car accident that killed fourteen people the same week, complaining that that tragedy got no news coverage at all while a shooting in a movie theatre was all anyone could talk about. Let me say that again: a shooting in a movie theatre, where a man willfully and with intent to harm others entered a building and opened fire on a crowd of people is comparable to a car wreck, where a truck flipped over. I'm not too sure about how these things compare. Maybe the people in the truck willfully entered it knowing it was dangerous, but I don't see how that equates to entering a movie theatre. Certainly no one in the truck intended to harm anyone, but it ended up that way. Anyway, apparently the shooting has become too personal, too real. We've gotten to know the victims and survivors of the Aurora shooting, and we feel their tragedy to be our tragedy. Why should these people's pain be any more important than the pain of other people suffering this week? Why does the media feel the need to cover this event so closely when there are other tragedies happening out there?
Well, to answer this question, I would point to the fact that people generally don't die in movie theatres. It's not a place where one expects death to find them. Sure, people die in car accidents all the time. Sometimes, people get shot or stabbed walking down the street. It sucks, but it happens. But in a movie theatre? Watching a summer blockbuster is not really going to put me on my guard, you know what I mean? It's shocking that someone would do this, and it's difficult for most normal people to comprehend why something like this might happen. A man gets stabbed on the street for his wallet, sure, it's tragic, but there's a logic there, a reasoning we can understand if not necessarily relate to. But this? It's just senseless and violent. We can't begin to understand why it happened, because there is no logic to it. That's why we're talking about it so much.
Now, I don't think anyone out there would find it reasonable or logical to blame the film for the tragedy. This could have happened at a showing of Ice Age or Tyler Perry's Medea or even Katie Perry's movie. Why did he pick Batman? Well, the shooter seemed to have a fixation on the Joker. OK. So a character that has existed for over 60 years, and has always been portrayed as a brutal, diabolical, homicidal lunatic (ok, maybe not always) is suddenly inspiring people to murder? Is Bob seriously making this argument, that if Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy never existed, those people would still be alive? I thoroughly and completely can deny that, Bob, and here's why: it's been pretty widely publicized that the shooter in question was mentally unstable, and was leaning towards a violent outburst, so much so that his psychiatrist warned the police about him. Sure, if Batman never existed, those exact people in that exact theatre may still be alive and well today, but odds are this kid would have shot somebody somewhere. So to blame Batman as the cause of this tragedy is simply nonsensical. Correlation does not imply causation, Bob.
The real discussion that needs to happen here is about the assault weapon (sorry, semi-automatic rifle) and very ridiculously stupidly large capacity magazine he used. Maybe, just maybe, if there could be a reasonable discussion about firearms in this country, this tragedy could have been mitigated, if not prevented. Sure, the shooter would still have had to make a choice to enter the theatre and open fire, but at least there would have been a chance that some people could escape while he's reloading. These weapons really only have one purpose and it isn't killing deer. And before you say target practice, I need to point out a few things: first, semi-automatic weapons are not as accurate as bolt action, so why would you use a substandard weapon if your goal is to be as accurate as possible? Second, why do you need 100 rounds in your magazine when you're shooting at a paper target that doesn't shoot back? Is it really such a burden to have to reload? When you can satisfactorily answer these questions with something other than "2nd Amendment," we can have a reasonable discussion about firearms. Until then, you're just a bonehead.
Getting back to the "essay," there's a great deal of discussion here about "evil." I'm not really sure what Bob is getting at, but I can tell you that the world is not this black and white, good and evil construct he's talking about. Sometimes, people do things that are out and out cruel, they intentionally go out of their way to cause harm to other humans. It happens, and we need good people who are willing to stand up and say "this will not happen while I'm here." Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who we're talking about), most of those people only exist in comic books.
More often, that evil happens as a result of other factors, and requires us to use our brains and not our instinct when reacting. When a person has an imbalance, when they're just crazy and do something so bizarre and violent and inhumane that it makes the rest of us stop and take notice, we need to keep our own humanity and react as civilized and intelligent creatures, not like a group of animals running on instinct and fear. That's why we have a judicial system, it's why we have amendments to the Constitution other than the first two (you know, like 4 through 8). Evil may come in many forms, like Bob says, but evil is also relative. One man's butcher could be another man's savior, one man's soldier is another man's terrorist. I feel sorry for people who cannot or will not see this. Their world must be a very dismal and dreary place, full of shadows with "evil" waiting to spring out at them at any moment. What they don't realize is that you cannot have good without evil, they are one and the same, which is the lesson that the Joker taught us in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.
Bob ended his essay with a quote, so I'm going to end mine with one as well:
We begin with a complaint about the fact that the news media has covered this event too thoroughly. Bob compares this tragedy to a car accident that killed fourteen people the same week, complaining that that tragedy got no news coverage at all while a shooting in a movie theatre was all anyone could talk about. Let me say that again: a shooting in a movie theatre, where a man willfully and with intent to harm others entered a building and opened fire on a crowd of people is comparable to a car wreck, where a truck flipped over. I'm not too sure about how these things compare. Maybe the people in the truck willfully entered it knowing it was dangerous, but I don't see how that equates to entering a movie theatre. Certainly no one in the truck intended to harm anyone, but it ended up that way. Anyway, apparently the shooting has become too personal, too real. We've gotten to know the victims and survivors of the Aurora shooting, and we feel their tragedy to be our tragedy. Why should these people's pain be any more important than the pain of other people suffering this week? Why does the media feel the need to cover this event so closely when there are other tragedies happening out there?
Well, to answer this question, I would point to the fact that people generally don't die in movie theatres. It's not a place where one expects death to find them. Sure, people die in car accidents all the time. Sometimes, people get shot or stabbed walking down the street. It sucks, but it happens. But in a movie theatre? Watching a summer blockbuster is not really going to put me on my guard, you know what I mean? It's shocking that someone would do this, and it's difficult for most normal people to comprehend why something like this might happen. A man gets stabbed on the street for his wallet, sure, it's tragic, but there's a logic there, a reasoning we can understand if not necessarily relate to. But this? It's just senseless and violent. We can't begin to understand why it happened, because there is no logic to it. That's why we're talking about it so much.
Now, I don't think anyone out there would find it reasonable or logical to blame the film for the tragedy. This could have happened at a showing of Ice Age or Tyler Perry's Medea or even Katie Perry's movie. Why did he pick Batman? Well, the shooter seemed to have a fixation on the Joker. OK. So a character that has existed for over 60 years, and has always been portrayed as a brutal, diabolical, homicidal lunatic (ok, maybe not always) is suddenly inspiring people to murder? Is Bob seriously making this argument, that if Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy never existed, those people would still be alive? I thoroughly and completely can deny that, Bob, and here's why: it's been pretty widely publicized that the shooter in question was mentally unstable, and was leaning towards a violent outburst, so much so that his psychiatrist warned the police about him. Sure, if Batman never existed, those exact people in that exact theatre may still be alive and well today, but odds are this kid would have shot somebody somewhere. So to blame Batman as the cause of this tragedy is simply nonsensical. Correlation does not imply causation, Bob.
The real discussion that needs to happen here is about the assault weapon (sorry, semi-automatic rifle) and very ridiculously stupidly large capacity magazine he used. Maybe, just maybe, if there could be a reasonable discussion about firearms in this country, this tragedy could have been mitigated, if not prevented. Sure, the shooter would still have had to make a choice to enter the theatre and open fire, but at least there would have been a chance that some people could escape while he's reloading. These weapons really only have one purpose and it isn't killing deer. And before you say target practice, I need to point out a few things: first, semi-automatic weapons are not as accurate as bolt action, so why would you use a substandard weapon if your goal is to be as accurate as possible? Second, why do you need 100 rounds in your magazine when you're shooting at a paper target that doesn't shoot back? Is it really such a burden to have to reload? When you can satisfactorily answer these questions with something other than "2nd Amendment," we can have a reasonable discussion about firearms. Until then, you're just a bonehead.
Getting back to the "essay," there's a great deal of discussion here about "evil." I'm not really sure what Bob is getting at, but I can tell you that the world is not this black and white, good and evil construct he's talking about. Sometimes, people do things that are out and out cruel, they intentionally go out of their way to cause harm to other humans. It happens, and we need good people who are willing to stand up and say "this will not happen while I'm here." Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who we're talking about), most of those people only exist in comic books.
More often, that evil happens as a result of other factors, and requires us to use our brains and not our instinct when reacting. When a person has an imbalance, when they're just crazy and do something so bizarre and violent and inhumane that it makes the rest of us stop and take notice, we need to keep our own humanity and react as civilized and intelligent creatures, not like a group of animals running on instinct and fear. That's why we have a judicial system, it's why we have amendments to the Constitution other than the first two (you know, like 4 through 8). Evil may come in many forms, like Bob says, but evil is also relative. One man's butcher could be another man's savior, one man's soldier is another man's terrorist. I feel sorry for people who cannot or will not see this. Their world must be a very dismal and dreary place, full of shadows with "evil" waiting to spring out at them at any moment. What they don't realize is that you cannot have good without evil, they are one and the same, which is the lesson that the Joker taught us in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.
Bob ended his essay with a quote, so I'm going to end mine with one as well:
You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.
