Batman: When Life Imitates Art

I saw the latest Batman movie, more out of curiosity about the cultural phenomenon than a desire to be entertained. I also wanted to avail myself of the opportunity to analyze what about it inspired an intelligent young loner to imagine that there was something heroic in shooting up a theater full of men, women and children.

I surmise the problem stems from the fact that Hollywood is too effective at its job. In setting up the protagonists and antagonists in their comic book dramas, Hollywood’s purveyors of images skillfully create larger-than-life, iconic antagonists, villains who are intelligent, resourceful, violent and alienated , often motivated to exact indiscriminate revenge on a society they feel has treated them unjustly. The Batman creators are particularly effective at this (witness Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, the Penguin, the Joker, Harley Quinn, the Mad Hatter, the Riddler, Catwoman.) While the moviemakers’ presumed intent is to draw their audiences in on the side of the hero protagonists, by creating antagonists with certain admirable qualities, they also produce the unintended consequence of bringing certain individuals in on the side of the villains with whom perpetrators, like James Holmes, have much in common — intelligence, resourcefulness, propensity toward violence, alienation and a desire for indiscriminate revenge on a society they feel has treated them unjustly.

In identifying with bizarrely appealing Hollywood villains who command attention on the world stage, the perpetrators suffer from the delusion that they too are deserving of similar attention, and, frustrated by their lack of affect and celebrity in a celebrity-mad culture, seek to fulfill their desired end by committing atrocities like Aurora, Columbine and Virginia Tech. Sadly, they succeed by the very nature of their crime, leading other similarly unbalanced individuals to follow in their footsteps. The fact that their actions are unconscionable does not register for such individuals, inasmuch as negative attention is preferable to being ignored — at least so child psychologists tell us. It would be interesting to learn what psychologists have to say about the fact that all the perpetrators so far have been boys and young men. 

Moreover, the fact that they perform these comic-book atrocities garbed in iconic, Hollywood villain attire (and in the case of Holmes, act out in front of the presentation of a comic-book movie) establishes beyond doubt the causal link between Hollywood and the perpetrators -- a tragic example of life imitating art. Actually, by this logic, I have to include the violent-video-game industry alongside Hollywood in this indictment. And beyond that, we have to ask ourselves the question as to whether Hollywood and the video-game industry have desensitized us to the point where we accept as reasonable the idea of video gamers in air conditioned rooms in Las Vegas delivering death and destruction from drones halfway around the world.  

I don’t see any ready solution to this problem in a free society, unless we are prepared to censor Hollywood and the video-game industry.

While there is something to be said in favor of outlawing assault rifles, large-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, trying to solve the problem by outlawing guns in a culture that venerates the 2nd Amendment and where there are already more guns than people doesn’t seem feasible. That horse has already bolted from the barn.

In short, unless we are prepared to censor Hollywood and the video-game industry, round up all handguns and surround all public venues with airport-type security and surveillance, we’re going to have to live with such atrocities as a feature of modern life. Welcome to the 21st century. 

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