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'The Dark Knight' to Blame for the Aurora Shootings?

As we all know, the premiere night (early Friday morning) of The Dark Knight Rises really was a dark night for an auditorium of movie viewers in Aurora, Colorado. My sympathies go out to the victims, including the wounded, and their families of the attack.

Many headlines have been indicating the shootings as movie fantasy having become horrid reality. Sadly, those headlines are true. Along with this, there have been fears of people wanting to blame movies with violence such as "Dark Knight Rises" for these killings. But the majority of media hasn't even been likening the gunman to the star character of Christopher Nolan's third and supposedly final installment of his Batman movie series.The media's been likening the shooter to the Joker of the previous film. Batman has never even used a gun, perhaps save once or twice in all his crime fighting career. He has been known to prefer fighting without fire arms. Batman is a symbol of justice, though in a very grim way and even though he appears to be on edge of his own sanity when fighting crime, he always holds back and brings the criminal to the justice that is fit. Perhaps the concern with Christopher Nolan's Batman movies leading to these shootings has more to do with the villains. But we can't forget that it's a hero that thwarts the evil deeds of those villains. Heroes are the mythic characters who represent hope in a violent and corrupt world.

Nobody has recently explained the mythic role of Batman better than NPR's Glen Weldon in his article "Catharsis In a Cape: On Comic-book Hereoes and Real-World Violence". I suggest you read it. You can also read my article at Examiner.com that speaks about the role of fantasy in life. I wrote it in response to the Aurora tragedy.

Until next time . . . 

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