Quote:
Originally Posted by Karak
This is an important point.
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.