I
have had a full day to gather some thoughts on the Aurora murders. I have been shaking my
head trying to wrap my head around what it takes for a person to decide that
someone else no longer gets to live. Those
people were there to have fun at a movie and were met with chaos. The audacity of anyone to ruin the precious
joy it is to experience art with a group of like-minded people by staining it
in blood is reprehensible.
I
find myself on Facebook a lot when these things happen and, usually, have to
run away because the general reaction becomes so idiotic and infuriating that I
risk saying something I regret.
Therefore, instead of going on a status posting rampage, I’m just going
to blog about what I’ve seen and why it makes me angry. Feel free to hate me for it, but this is
keeping me sane.
“This
is why guns should be outlawed/If someone had had a gun, they could have done
something about it.”
There’s
been a tragedy where freaking children were shot. Could you wait five minutes before you start
using this for your political agenda?
Could you maybe just mourn the tragedy or keep your mouth shut?
“There
was a baby and a four year old there.
What kind of mother takes her baby to a midnight show?”
Yep,
she was totally asking for a crazed gunman to walk into the theater and murder
people. We should be pressing charges
against her for causing this incident. On
a similar note, if that 19 year old hadn’t been illegally drinking beer, she
wouldn’t have been drugged. She
practically raped herself.
I’m
not saying it’s a good idea to bring any child to a midnight show, particularly
if it’s a movie for adults. In fact,
please don’t. I will hate you for it if
I’m in the audience. However, let’s not
talk about the woman who just got shot at with her babies as though she bears
responsibility for the tragedy.
Various
petitions to get Christian Bale, dressed as Batman, to visit the kids who got
shot in the hospital.
I
get what you’re saying here. You’re
trying to get something good to come out of something bad, but, honestly, I
think a fully Batmanned Christian Bale visiting the kids who were shot at a
Batman movie is about as good of an idea as putting up a poster of “Scenic
Vietnam” in the PTSD ward of the Veterans' hospital. Also, I kind of hate all of the posts that
try to blackmail someone into doing something.
“You have the opportunity to be a real hero, Mr. Bale” rings with the
same dissonance as “if you love Jesus, you’ll repost; if you love Satan, you’ll
keep scrolling.”
Pictures
of Batman with an assortment of “In Memoriam” things
I
generally dislike the ribbon movement. I’m
not going to lie. They kind of scream “LOOK
AT ME! LOOK AT HOW FREAKING MUCH I CARE!! I AM SUCH A GOOD PERSON FOR HOW MUCH I CARE.” I’m not saying I’ve never displayed one, but there’s
a tendency when the least a person can do is the also the most visible way for
them to do it, it becomes the only thing that person does. I can’t emphasize enough that this doesn’t
apply to everyone. I’ve seen many a
friend who posts an awareness ribbon who also raises serious money for the same
cause. I’m just saying that they tend to leave
a bad taste in my mouth.
In
this case, I know that some of you are just looking for a security blanket, a
symbol to make you feel better about the event, but I feel that including
Batman creates two problems. One, and I
can’t quite explain why, creating a mascot trivializes the event. For the same reason we don’t have “Tradey,
the Ground Zero Bear”, we don’t put the Bat symbol on a memorial sign. Also, putting Batman on the memorial signs
seemingly imbues the property with responsibility. This had nothing to do with Batman, with DC
Comics, Bob Kane, or the movie industry.
It had everything to do with a man who had no respect for the sanctity
of life. When we reflect the incident
away from that, we are doing a disservice to the people who were a part of this
tragedy.
And
Finally,
“The
world is going to hell/No one is safe anymore/Fear, Fear, Fear”
Guys,
it’s always been this crazy. Hell, it’s
been worse. Anyone who lived in the Old
West could tell you that. When we allow
fear to take over, we castrate our ability to live full lives. If every person took the time to say, “I am
not afraid”, then we’d be the ones in power.
There would be no more terrorists.
There would still be bombers now and then, shooters, but no terrorists,
because terrorists imply fear and we don’t deal in fear. Fear is an abstract concept. We walk down the streets because we can and nothing
can stop us because we can’t be stopped by abstract concepts. It’s not because we are American, because it’s
so much more than that. It’s because we’re
human and humans are brave. It’s because
we contain within us an irrepressible fire that cannot be quenched. So don’t say that you’re not going to the cinema
this weekend because of Aurora. You’re
better than that. Say that you are going
and no one will stop you because you want that man with a gun to fail. And he will fail. He already has. My friends just got their tickets this
afternoon.
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