I don't think the content of the movies really affect/inspire these clowns, they'd always find a bunny in the moon to latch on to, but it prolly deserves mention that in what's the big summer entertainment blockbuster movie?

I kind of agree with Holliday. While of course TDK/Batman didn't directly cause this, I'm leery of the insta-pass everyone seems to always want to give movies/music/media on causality issues. Even if TDK didn't support random extreme violence, it fetishized it to a lurid degree through Ledger's performance.

In the same sense, I'm skeptical of people who lol and dismiss out of hand the effect of, say, gangsta rap (lol old white people) on criminal behavior. Of course Jay-Z or whoever isn't putting the gun in anyone's hand, but they are in certain ways glorifying theft/drug dealing and murder. To say that that has no impact on the larger culture seems ridiculous to me.

Should Nolan be held legally responsible? Lolno. Is Nolan responsible for, by fetishizing chaos in a spectacular manner, maybe a sliver of the ongoing cultural coarsening that can affect mentally ill people like Holmes. Yes imo.

lol wtf ^

Anyways Im surprised that there are some people who think there is nothing mentally wrong with this guy. I mean seriously you would have to have something wrong with you to be able to walk up and down an aisle and just blow people apart with no sense of remorse, compassion, empathy or really anything.

This is an important point.

They went through all this "blame the media" with Columbine and there was nothing to it then and there is nothing to it now.

The murderer James Holmes copied a page from a 1986 Batman comic book:

Page from Batman Returns

Character in the comic book shot people inside a movie theater while listening to voices in his head coming from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" played backwards. Stairway to Heaven played backwards.

Oh, you're right. I forgot this had already been settled

Is this factual? I definitely dont know a lot about schizophrenia, but for an initial psychotic break isnt 2 months a lot of time to plan something like this? How did nobody sense anything was wrong with this guy during that time? How did he keep his madness contained for so long?

Im leaning against schizophrenia and feel this is a purely sociopathic act.

It was an excuse to carry out his plan. He was going to do it regardless. Whether it was being a serial killer that took years to get caught or a mass murder.

Keep wringing your hands and thinking about the children if it makes you feel better though.

Right, bc that's what I'm doing.

Its a pointless debate. Is the suggestion that we start choking free thought on the chance someone gets a warped idea from some story?

I think we mostly like free thought as humanity, so you know crazy people gonna crazy.

Seems to be routinely ignored, though.

A non-violent person can watch, within reason, pretty much any horrific acts and will not have an urges/desires/fantasies of acting them out.

Someone who is ALREADY VIOLENT/DISTURBED may take scenes from things they see - violent TV, movies, porn, photos - and use that to shape their violent fantasies.

So, in that way, could Nolan be blamed for some of the specific trappings the shooters violence took? Sure, although it was probably just as likely that the Batman franchise was utilized (as opposed to Spiderman, or Underworld, or some random cop shootout flick/book) as any other part of popular culture that shows some sort of violence.

But is Nolan in any way responsible? No, IMO. Someone who is violent/disturbed is going to act out in some way. If not in this way, in some other way.

Unless you are suggesting all types of sex/violence should be removed from popular culture, arguing that Nolan or anyone associated with this particular franchise is in any way responsible is ridiculous, IMO. You can't control what particular image a disturbed mind is going to latch onto.

In the 50s, a killer (Glatman, AKA The Lonely Hearts Killer) had his fantasies shaped by pulp crime magazines, which depicted terrified women tied up in danger in photos and drawings. When he abducted and killed women, he posed them in ways that were pretty much identical to some of his favorite scenes from those magazines. Today, those images would be considered pretty tame. Glatman would almost certainly still have been a violent offender. It was only the specifics that were shaped by the images he sought out and voluntarily consumed, not the actual violence.

You could say the same for John Hinckley as well then. His obsession with Jodie Foster was due to the movie Taxi Driver. From Wiki:

Obsession with Jodie Foster

Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. He watched the film 15 times in a row on a continuous loop. Hinckley developed an infatuation with actress Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in the film.[4] The Bickle character was in turn partly based on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the attempted assassin of George Wallace.[3] When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for a short time to stalk her. He enrolled in a Yale writing class,[2] and began slipping poems and messages under her door and repeatedly phoning her.

Failing to develop any meaningful contact with the actress, Hinckley developed such plots as aircraft hijacking and committing suicide in front of her to get her attention. Eventually he settled on a scheme to impress her by assassinating the president, with the theory that as a historical figure he would be her equal. Hinckley trailed President Jimmy Carter from state to state, but was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, on a firearms charge. Penniless, he went home again, and despite psychiatric treatment for depression, his mental health did not improve. He began to target the newly elected president Ronald Reagan in 1981 and started collecting information on the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he saw as a role model.

Hinckley wrote to Foster just before his attempt on Reagan's life:[5]
“ Over the past seven months I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. [...] the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you.


It appears Holmes became infatuated with the Joker character in the same manner Hinckley did with DeNiro's.

Sure, there are dozens of examples.

The point being these weren't normal people driven to commit violent acts by things they saw in movies. They were violent people whose violence was in some way shaped by something they saw in movies.

What did he gain by booby trapping his apartment with someone opening the door as a trigger?

Why not just detonate at midnight? Seems one less intangible.

Yup. Clare and Holliday need to consider that they (and millions upon millions of others) have watched countless violent movies and have never been driven to do something like this. This dude was going to do it regardless of whether the batman movies existed or not.

There has just never been any proof that violent movies or video games cause violence. That whole idea comes from people just "thinking" about the issue and coming to their own (wrong) conclusions like Clare and Holliday have here. The 'glorification' of violence actually has nothing to do with causing violence. As RJ has said, it may shape the types of violence but it certainly doesn't ****ing cause it.

No, that's not the suggestion. I would just like a little more intellectual honesty in the discussion, that's all. My take is that the "LOL OF COURSE MEDIA HAS NO EFFECT ON SOCIETY" side has a vested interest in believing this is so. People like their violent movies and violent/sexist rap and porn and whatever else, and for the sake of ideological purity they can't allow for any nuance.

I mean, I like that stuff, too, but it seems really obvious to me that that it does have an effect. Even leaving aside the question of whether it pushes crazy people over the edge, it exerts a massive influence on the larger culture, and often not a good one.

Perhaps he watched too many movies and thought it would be "cool" to do it this way instead of using a timer.

Link/source?

I was curious about this aspect: Is it entirely possible he had been on medication for psychological issues and he took the wrong mix of pills prescribed to him which could cause such a reaction? It is obvious he had mental health issues and I have been pessimistic about all of these medications used for different types of mental health problems.

No one is saying they cause it. But you guys are certainly welcome to continue arguing against what you think I'm saying.

Also, haven't video games been pretty conclusively proven to change behavior and neurological patterns? A second of googling says this is so, but if you'd like me to link some I'd be happy to do so.

I'd like to see a link to something scientific that says violent imagery in movies/music leads to a rise in violent activity in the real world (or even crime in general, or even has any negative impact whatsoever).

It could very possibly exist, but I've only ever seen people argue your side of this argument from the basis that it is "obvious" and never actually backed it up with facts/data.

Violent video games alter brain function in young men.

Frequent gamers have brain differences