Wait a second... In Roman times the top entertainment wasn't movies of violence, it was actually people fighting to the death in front of people's eyes. For hundreds of years. Public hangings were forms of punishment and entertainment for almost every culture for the last few hundred years.

Obviously the world in general was a much more violent place in the past, but by standards of human history our modern culture of simulated violence in video games and the movies can't compare to real violence as entertainment.

slight understatement.

There has been violent media is the past. Ever heard of the Bible? Or the Odyssey?

It was at the premier of the sequel to THIS ONE and the mass shooting and boobie-trap was straight out of THIS ONE, yes. Is the violence and sadism in TDK really not special among current movies? I guess I wouldn't really know but it certainly seemed that way to me. Kind of sad, actually, if that's the case.

But, c'mon, as soon as you heard of this shooting did you not think, "Great. Some nut thinks he's the Joker."?

You go, girl!

The Sopranos treats violence and death in a much more serious and realistic way than Justified does, imo.

The normal people/violent people meme is a massive false dichotomy.

Many "normal" people, perhaps all of them, can become "violent" people based on any number of triggers. The brain is strange.

TMZ just put up his match.com profile. Doesn't even list Batman in his favorite films. Seems like a normal profile with the exception of the hair and title. Was active 3 days before the shooting.

Holiday, if the dark knight movies are never created, do you think this guy still commits an act of mass violence?

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_aleve...p?pageID=child

It has been a very long time since I read On Killing, but this blog post is lol******ed. Before we had all this teevee and vidyah games people used to go watch public hangings with their kids and bring a ****ing picnic lunch.

That's a lot of firepower and gear for giving up without a fight... Something doesn't add up.

I think you are being a little thin skinned here. The guy started to grin when he heard of the shootings. I don't think saying he sounds like a "psycho" really does much harm to those with mental illness since it sounds like the guy may actually have at least some sociopathic (if not psychopathic) tendencies (but who knows, he might just be a douche).

I too think it is okay to call to question violence in movies. Because I think it is also okay to call to question the treatment of mental illness. The sensationalism of such events in journalism. Guns. The breakdown of society, of family etc. For the chances are fairly high that it isn't necessarily one thing, but the total sum of many.

And until we begin spending more time considering the merit of our criticisms, as opposed to immediately dismissing them, it will never end. Begin taking some responsibility at the many levels of society; from government, to industry, health care, journalism, family, and yes, personal responsibility, it will never end.

So while these threads and incidents elicit many hot button topics and discourse that can often appear to be unreadable, I think it is important to not confuse that with unnecessary. The examination of it and the anger it generates is more likely to evidence a problem than be mere confusing noise. And who knows, in it, maybe one day a solution.

I remember about a year ago a local newspaper saying it would no longer cover these events in the same way. So having it be my first source for news, I monitored it to see how they would handle this story. There was nothing on it while in every other newspaper and media source it was a headline. Finally later into the next day an article appeared on what i thought was the subject (from Canada). That article began "Man Shoots.....himself in forehead." And proceeded to cover a story of a local dumbass who discharged a gun by accident, into his own face. Not gonna lie. I laughed. And kudos my local newspaper, for at least keeping to your word.

.

so many lulzworthy opinions itt

This is the part that confuses me. Where does an unemployed student get the thousands and thousands of dollars to buy all of the equipment he had? And the armor he had sounds pretty specialized. Is it even commonly available for civilian purchase?

Jack the Ripper? Mack the Knife in Three Penny Opera? One of those may not be real.

You mean would he still have had a psychic break without the movie? Probably yes, I suppose.

Would he have still come up with the plan of crowd-slaughtering mayhem exactly like the Joker would do? I'm inclined to think not.

I oversimplified for the purposes of this thread, but you're obviously deliberately reading far too much into what I said.

Of course ordinary people can become violent (even kill) with the right set of circumstances. And, as others have rightly pointed out, there is a correlation between the viewing of violent images and an increase in aggressive/violent behavior.

However, we're talking about a pretty wide difference in terms of degree here. Studies measuring increased violence/aggression find links between viewing violent images and increases what might be considered normal or socially acceptable types of violence - verbal aggression, verbal fights, physical fighting in kids (hitting, kicking, threatening).

However, that's completely different from the type of abnormal violence in this case. A normal individual who watches violent video games might be more inclined to call someone an ******* in a bar and pick a fight, but they aren't going to pick up assault rifles and fire them into a movie theatre.

All humans have the potential to be violent in some way. Not very many humans have the potential to be indiscriminate murderers. Not without a significant amount of psychological warping, far more serious and long term than watching a Batman movie.

Also, whoever said there's no records of serial or mass killings prior to the modern society gave me a big LOL. Do a little bit of research before posting something so preposterous. I can think of at least a half dozen examples without picking up a book or using Google (Vlad the Impaler, Jack the Ripper, Albert Fish, Lizzie Borden, Glatman, Gein), and at least one of those dwarfed any modern killer in terms of volume. Violent and/or disturbed individuals have been killing others throughout history. It's one of the possible explanations for stories about monsters such as vampires and werewolves. Just because we don't have records going back 1000 years ago doesn't at all mean it didn't happen.

Feel free to take a break from being too cool for school to explain how the Dark Knight did not actually glorify violence. I'd love to hear anything beyond "No it didn't".

Multiple personalities would certainly add up. A jeckyl and hyde type of disorder, of course just speculating

semi-grunching, but I feel like this guy was mentally ill (to say the least) and was going to find a way to do some sort of crazy display one way or the other. The movie and its bouts of random location violence were simply a convenient one to use. Basically, he was gonna do something even if TDKR or TDK had never come out.

That being said: do I think this happens at the premiere of The Notebook? No not likely. It could have easily happened at a sporting event or a shopping mall or something though.

Not to mention 2 seconds of googling indicates there were spree killers before tv existed and when films were silent and black a white.

I'm expecting most of the 6,000 rounds to be used up in practice trips to the firing range. That would be a lot of weight to carry around on a rampage.

I'm not sure if Google would be this glib, but throughout history people have been barbaric savages. Those previous spree killers, they were almost certainly exposed to horrific violence before their spree (whether it was perpetrated against them or they just witnessed it)--they just didn't see it in a movie is all.

[ ] being too cool for school

[x] every post you have made itt has been laughable

By your logic (and i use the term loosely) any film with violence in could be "glorifying" its use... Are you suggesting that an audience needs constant reminders during action films that this is not the way to act in real life or that their actions always have consequences? It is a work of fiction for gods sake. It is not trying to set a standard of morality for the real world and any intelligent viewer can see that. Furthermore, if every film ended with the bad guy getting his comeuppance, what kind of reality would that be portraying?

Killers or crazed gunmen like the one who carried out such a horrible crime in Colorado are not influenced by children's superhero films. They are influenced by their messed up childhoods, acute feelings of social exclusion, (sometimes) extreme religious convictions and maybe most importantly; mental illness.