YOU ARE WHAT YOU CONSUME?
Batman Robs! Mexican Dark Knight Moviegoers Confront Real Dose Of Evil
THIEVES IN BATMAN MASKS RAIDED A MOVIE THEATER IN NORTHERN MEXICO and robbed patrons seeing The Dark Knight Rises of an estimated $16,000, Fox News Latino reports.
The heist comes less than two weeks after deranged neuroscience student James Holmes entered an Aurora, Colo. theater and opened fire, killing 12 and injuring 59 others.
Holmes, a gifted student who was under psychiatric care before he turned violent, was formally charged Monday with 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder yesterday. Prosecutors have not yet decided if they will seek the death penalty against him.
The movie theater robbery follows a spate of actual or threatened copycat crimes. Also previously, four men robbed a Singapore movie theater showing Dark Knight Rises, netting an estimated $55,900 haul.
The latest robbery heightens the question posed by the Washington Post of whether the Dark Knight tragedies could financially hurt all movie companies. Numerous critics have said that the movie itself — called by the Chicago Tribune calls “a 164-minute anxiety disorder” — takes movie violence to a disturbing new levels.
“No movie has ever administered more punishment, to its hero or its audience, in the name of mainstream entertainment,” wrote the Wall Street Journal‘s movie critic Joe Morgenstern.
The third film in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy “has only one thing on its mind. It means to string the audience along, while stringing it out, on a bloody masquerade performed by masked pretenders,” contends the Tribune’s Michael Phillips.
The question of whether or not violent movies feed violent tendencies has been debated for decades, with the debate always smothered out by corporatists and free speech advocates. But Holmes’ horrific crimes seem to be raising concerns to a higher decibel. Even famed director Peter Bogdonavich, who has realized his own violent fantasies in the 1968 movie Targets, has crossed over to the other side.
“Violence on the screen has increased tenfold,” the director told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It’s all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy.”
Of course, there are still defenders, like Michael P. Coscino who wrote to Phillips after Holmes’ assault.
“I am already past the point of disgust with much of the media trying to relate The Dark Knight Rises with this unthinkable mass killing. … All you do is give reason for the possible next shooter as to what kind of scapegoat he or she can use.”
No doubt the debate will grind on long after James Holmes is found guilty by reason of insanity and locked away in a mental institute. Free speech is constitutionally protected, after all. Maybe our only chance for stemming the tide is shaming the moviegoers who feast on the gore.
Sure they have the right to fill up on the degrading violence. But shouldn’t we shun them for wanting to?
