So, roughly a week ago there was this grade-A asshole in Colorado who shot up a movie theater and killed 12 people all in some misguided delusion that he was the Joker instead of, you know, a loser. Now naturally this stirred up a media frenzy, and that story is about all we heard about until The Olympics kicked off a couple days ago.
Hell, when I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, there was actually a local news camera crew outside the theater pretending to give a shit about my safety and asking me questions like “Do you feel safe at this theater?” To which I had to respond “Uhhh, it’s Midtown Manhattan, one of the most heavily policed and surveillanced areas in the world, yeah, I think I’m good.” It took me a full minute to realize he wasn’t talking about random street crime, but instead, trying to plant the notion in my head that another mass shooting was probably on the way. Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t.
In fact, I’m willing to guess that the type of dangerous Comic-Con loser that would begin to think he was The Joker in The Dark Knight Rises probably isn’t all that common. At least, not as common as the dangerous rageaholics that routinely kill people that cut them off in traffic or disrespect them at nightclubs. Or the worker drones that just snap and shoot up their office buildings, something that seems to happen at least twice a month. No, I think we can all agree that the worst most fanboys can do to us is give us an internet tongue lashing when we say that The Avengers wasn’t a very good movie and that Joss Whedon is not, in fact, a better storyteller than William Faulkner.
Actually, I’d argue that the newness of this tragedy is exactly why it became such a big story. I can almost hear the excitement in the newsrooms when the story first broke “A movie theater? With an anticipated, popular new release starring Anne Hathaway and other movie stars?” [Somehow, it wouldn’t have been the same if it had been Ruby Sparks or some other micro-indie with Paul Dano that only a few thousand people give a shit about.] “Yes! An entirely new setting to make people afraid of!”
That may sound overly cynical to some readers, but as someone who’s worked at a local TV affiliate, I can tell you, it isn’t. They don’t see a tragedy and think “Oh man, that’s terrible.” They see a tragedy and see ratings. And in a weird way, I don’t blame them. Nobody exactly stays glued to the local weather broadcast when it’s sunny. They watch when a hurricane’s coming. Not to mention the longtime rivalry between movies and television. Billy Bob Thornton recently argued that too many people are “staying at home watching Spartacus or whatever that shit is and we need to get them off their asses to go to the movies.” It’s a pretty simple competition: the more people stay at home watching TV, the fewer people are at movies, the more people at the movies, the fewer people staying at home watching TV. The subconscious undercurrents might be “Why risk getting mass murdered at a movie theater, when you can stay at home…all…the…time.”
And that’s why I’m encouraging people to go out, watch a movie, and really try not to let dumb, panicky fear drive their decisions like it so often does. In an extremely stable country like America especially, where the killing of 12 people can honestly close down a theater, hurt the opening weekend of a film, and possibly weaken an entire industry. I can’t think of anything much safer than going to the movies and sitting down for two hours. It’s one of the safest activities in the world, and to let one total loser ruin that is exactly what he would want. [It’s no coincidence that the Joker himself argues almost exactly that in The Dark Knight, saying that people will freak out over almost exactly this kind of thing.]
The most significant thing this guy has ever done with his life is to kill 12 people—-that’s why he did it, and to honestly give up one of the few escapes everyone can still afford only plays into his hands. So, to answer that fear-mongering reporter’s question: yes, I feel safe at the movie theater. And the truth is, so should you.