FILM JULY 24, 2012
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How startling to see the speed with which the film business can respond to audience taste. Within hours of the massacre at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, (far quicker than the removal of the Joe Paterno statue), Warner Brothers were in action. Premieres in Paris and Tokyo were cancelled. Most of the players in the movie—writer-director Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, and Anne Hathaway—issued statements of sorrow. Ms Hathaway, Catwoman in the picture, said, “My heart aches and breaks for the lives taken and altered by this unfathomably senseless act.” In short order, it was decreed that television advertising for the film would be halted. Then came the masterstroke of humbug: Over the film’s first weekend, the studio would announce no box-office figures. Not to be upstaged, every other studio assured us they would stay silent on their figures, too. It would be Monday before the unreliable numbers were whispered abroad, and records were sheepishly admitted.
Meanwhile, some members of the National Rifle Association said they were surprised that no one in the cinema in Colorado was armed and ready to fire back. Later still, it was reported that the gunman’s automatic rifle had jammed, thereby sparing a few lives in all probability.
I hope Anne Hathaway is mistaken—not about her heart (we all share that stricken mood), but about the “unfathomably senseless" act. I know no more about the shooter than has appeared in every newspaper and website. I daresay in time he will be assigned the label “insane” and everyone can say that insanity is an aberrational human condition, and nothing to do with the recklessness that permits so many weapons in the country. For the rest of his life before that midnight screening, the shooter was remarked on as a smart kid, albeit a loner. How many million young Americans does that describe, and how many of them have used the screen to exercise their hopes and fears? The mindset of that young shooter cannot be allowed to be “unfathomably senseless.” We need to ask why.
There’s no reason for Christopher Nolan and the actors to feel personal blame. Nolan and his cast are all talented, and The Dark Knight Rises has just a PG-13 rating. From Warners’ point of view that was a measure to increase the audience, so the immense violence in the film, which includes characters firing at the crowd in an enclosed room, is moderate by today’s standard, and in the brutal fistfights there is very little blood and every instinct for mythic virtue defeating the ugly figures of wickedness and disorder. The lead villain is called Bane, but it would be as absurd to charge Bane, Tom Hardy (who plays the part), or Nolan with responsibility for Aurora’s tragedy as it would be to say that the name Bane was meant as a jab at Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.
In a battering fistfight, where he is repeatedly hit in the head, Bane sheds no blood, despite the fact that he wears a grim metal mask throughout the film, a grill that would reduce his face to pulp. So the violence is compromised to a point of enjoyability in a rating system that would be content for you the parent to take your three-year-old child to see the film (and buy a ticket), so long as you had thought seriously about the matter in advance and been with the kid in the theatre. Has no one noticed how alone we are at the movies, or how unreal their violence is?
The only other thing I know about the shooter is that he told police when he was arrested that he was “the Joker.” That character goes back to Cesar Romero and Larry Storch, but it includes the lovingly spooky devil from Jack Nicholson in Batman (1989) and the haunting performance of the late Heath Ledger in the last film in the series.
The Dark Knight Rises is a very poor film, in my opinion, and I write as a fan of Nolan’s, especially of Inception which may emerge one day as a masterpiece about memory. The script is flat and verbose; the action is slow; and the pretensions towards intimations of modern doom are heavy-handed. The male performers seem stunned or weary, and it is a mistake to put Tom Hardy in that mask—his best sense of mischief is in his smile. On the other hand, Anne Hathaway is good to look at and fun to listen to, while Marion Cotillard, after two hours in which one wonders why she’s in the film, has moments in the last half hour that remind us of what a witch she can be.
So see the film, and chat away about the millions it earns. But ask yourself about “loners” in this best of nations, and why some of them need to fantasize over an on-screen power that has missed them out in real life. Look closely at the violence; see how excitingly it is shot and cut; and just listen to the souped-up impact of the blows struck time after time. There was a moment in film history, in the 1960s and early ’70s, when the often absurd discipline of censorship gave way and those old staples of movie dreaming, sex and violence, took on fresh energy and inventiveness. Nearly fifty years later, the sex has dwindled. There is just one kiss in The Dark Knight Rises, and no nakedness, no flesh, no eroticism. But violence has been a runaway train in our movies to the point where this film can get a PG-13.
I would no more censor The Dark Knight Rises than I wish to see it again. The coyness with its box office was fatuous and self-serving. The shooter may have been very disturbed and very unusual. But in Colorado he had unquestioned access to a small arsenal such as will be denied to him should he end up in a mental hospital. But when it comes to fathoming, that is supposed to be what human beings are good at, so let’s set aside the notion of senselessness and examine the matter as closely as we can.
*Editor's Note: This article has been revised following publication.
7 comments
We live in a world that accepts violence, in the movies and in life. Look no further than the comments to Campbell's essay, Marijuana, the new blood diamonds. I often make the distinction between principles and rationalizations. In no other subject do rationalizations play a larger role than in violence. Whether it's the end users of marijuana that goes through a distribution system fraught with violence or the makers of a foreign policy that at it's core is predicated on violence for the non-compliant. Thomson distinguishes realistic violence (such as the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan) from unrealistic violence (such as in The Dark Knight), from which I infer that he is suggesting that it's the latter that deadens some of us to the consequences of violence. Maybe. But I would suggest that the many, and socially acceptable, rationalizations of violence have a much greater role.
- rayward
July 24, 2012 at 7:46am
Humans evolved with the capability of violence, to capture food and to defend ourselves against predators. Throughout our evolution, we have often used violence on each other, despite innate reluctance to kill & harm other humans. (Soldiers/police are trained to overcome reluctance; even so suffer PTSD.) We are clever/cunning creatures; we ever improve tools/weapons/tactics. Defense always disadvantaged against offense. Most of us consider violent defense against violent offense justified. Devil is always in details; starting with who guards guardians?
- skahn
July 24, 2012 at 12:03pm
I think Skahn's post gets at what's missing in Thomson's brief piece, which, I think, founders on a logical error. He wants it that Hathaway be wrong about the Aurora slaughter being an "unfathomably senseless act." Thomson wants to begin fathom it, to get causal purchase on it. To try to do so he notes the abundant and well crafted violence and hints at (suggests?) some nexus between that violence and movies as an increasing "loner" experience. To wit, for examples: ... Has no one noticed how alone we are at the movies, or how unreal their violence is?... and: ... But ask yourself about “loners” in this best of nations, and why some of them need to fantasize over an on-screen power that has missed them out in real life. Look closely at the violence; see how excitingly it is shot and cut; and just listen to the souped-up impact of the blows struck time after time... So, as I read this, there is, is there not, a tentative thesis lurking here: that we can get some purchase on fathoming this unfathomably senseless act by considering the sheer prevalence of violence in our movies such as Batman typifies? But Thomson, doesn't, as I read him, have the courage of this tentative conviction. He ends his piece by saying we should set aside notions of senselessness and consider what he says as closely as possible--this tantamount to him not owning his idea. Actually, Thomson's tentative thesis runs into the brick wall of Holmes's obvious psychosis, sociopathy or whatever his mental defect may be identified to be. And here's where I see the pertinence of skahn's comment, even if I take a different meaning than the meaning he intended. I take the idea that violence is bred in our bone and that its aberrational explosion will always occur from time to time in different forms. As that is so, and as we perforce absorb and mediate what we experience, so movie violence such as Batman typifies may clothe an aberrational explosion. Which is to say, the aberrational explosion is antecedent to the form it apes, but is not caused by what it apes. If no Joker in popular culture, then some other heinous villain. If what I say is right, that movie violence is not the cause of aberrational real violence but may inform how it manifests itself, then what Thomson wants to examine closely will not sustain scrutiny. One other thing: in wanting to take up Hathaway's idea of "unfathomable senselessness," Thomson confuses her meaning. She was not saying, I'd argue, that there don't exist reasons or causes, presumably buried deeply in the wracked fractures at the base of Holmes's ravaged psyche, for what he did. What she's saying, I'd argue, is that such massive, purposeless and wanton evil is beyond humanel reckoning, beyond moral reckoning. Even with some understanding of the neurological cause and effect of Holmes's slaughter, it defies moral understanding. It defies cultural-become-psychological explanations of which Thomson tentatively speaks. There is a terrible existentiality to it. It just is. It just terribly is. Thomson's stab at introducing some fathomable sense bearing close examination is a refusal or inability to face up to the truth of Hathaway's words: the world's overwhelming capacity for inexplicable evil and tragedy--the awful mystery of evil itself.
- basman
July 24, 2012 at 5:47pm
Hey basman, I guess I basically agree, especially with regard to Thomson's coyness, but I wouldn't completely discount the possibility that a violent pop culture that routinely and casually glamorizes sociopathy -- see, "I am the Joker" -- and *constantly* puts forward human suffering and death as entertainment for children, has zero effect on a propensity to commit violent acts. In order to do that, I'd need some sort of convincing scientific and/or medical evidence or just really compelling argument. Otherwise, I'll reserve the right to think that *just maybe* there's *some* relationship between our soulless culture and the depraved acts of some of its inhabitants. And it's not just the violence itself. It's the lack of human relationships, human values. Like Thomson, I miss the sex. I also miss the love, an emotion we appear to be quite embarrassed by. Movies should be making more love and less war. I don't like our fantasies, as expressed at the multiplex. They're just so infantile and crass, and then we have the indignity of critics taking them seriously. I recently watched a romantic comedy by the late great Nora Ephron, You've Got Mail, and it was like a breath of fresh air. At one point, Meg Ryan says something moderately mean to Tom Hanks, who is playing Ryan's nemesis in the bookselling business. Well, she feels just *awful* about it, and the incident emerges as a singificant conflict in the story. Imagine that: she hurt her enemy's feelings, and feels guilty! How quaint. I obviously don't think all movies must be sweet, adorable Ryan/Hanks affairs. Although, you know, we could use more of those. We could also use more adult thrillers. We've pretty much stopped making what used to be Hollywood bread-and-butter. The romantic comedy has generally turned into tedious bromedies or just degrading crap. And the thriller has turned into a loud, obnoxious, mega-events so far removed from anything human that it's hard for me to understand how anyone can get involved in this stuff.
- JakeH
July 25, 2012 at 4:32pm
I don't disagree with what most of what you say Jake, and am open to your qualification on my own idea of no real causal nexus between pop culture and aberrational, demented mass slaughter, such as Holmes's. I'd want, as you, to see the evidence either way. And to take one of your points even further: we get TMC up here, and I love the old movies from the forties and the fifties, even with all their melodrama, overacting, over the top dialogue and black and white moralizing (and lack of color). I get wonderfully lost in them.
- basman
July 25, 2012 at 8:10pm
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dark-knight-rises-shooting-peter-bogdanovich-353774
- basman
July 25, 2012 at 10:07pm
Thanks so much for the link to the great Bogdanovich tirade -- he's far more eloquent than he gives himself credit for. I loved his sincere, unfiltered, and justified outrage. I couldn't agree more. When it comes to offensiveness, we're formalists, to use a legal term I'm sure you know. This is because we're simple-minded idiots. Was there a naughty word? Was there a racist word? Was there a joke about a sensitive topic? Did we see a private part of someone's body? Did we see a sexual act? How much of it could we make out? How long was it? How nude were the participants? Did we see the bloody impact of a bullet or blade? Or were people tortured or destroyed in a more tasteful, child-friendly way? It's all about magic words, technicalities. This is exhibited in our (the U.S.'s) obtuse rating system, and in the latest bid by the FCC or network censors to make asses of themselves. The question, of course, is what the message is behind the magic words or images. What are the underlying values? A movie like Saving Private Ryan is bloody, but for a good cause. Not the greatest movie ever made, but now if nothing else you know what it was like to storm the beaches at Normandy -- pretty damn crazy. This is violence that's anti-violence. Similarly, a joke that seems racist might be ironic, and thus anti-racist. Weirdly and deadly serious superhero movies, like Nolan's Batman triology, that feature ever-increasing levels of genuinely upsetting (for adults, mind you) death and destruction -- that positively revel in it -- are PG-13, while perfectly lovely dramas like The King's Speech or nice comedies like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (another movie quaintly concerned with hurt feelings) are rated R due in each case to exactly one scene in which the main character hilariously repeats some variant of "fuck" several times. Oh, the horror. Never mind the real horror, casually served up to kids in a sanitized way that satisfies the formalist censors -- sans bloody impacts, f-bombs, human anatomy, or human feeling. We've decided that kids can't handle real violence, so, instead of censoring violence, we make it easy for them to swallow, which is perverse. Violence becomes acceptable for kids for just the reason it shouldn't be -- its sting is removed so that the audience is desensitized. But kids *should* see violence as truly awful, or not at all. What we should be worried that they can't handle is "unreal" violence. But we're too focused on making sure we don't let slip any four-letter words or secrets about the birds and the bees.
- JakeH
July 26, 2012 at 2:36am