"Elephant", Ebert review
"Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous.
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2 comments:
Thanks for relocating this decade-old yet up-to-the-minute review.
To bad Ebert's wrong, or at least partly. While I agree that violent movies (or video games, etc.) aren't a problem, while I dislike the kind of reporting he's talking about the kinds of people who do these things have problems that could be set off by anything, or nothing. Take a normal, healthy person and desensitize them to even real violence they won't become a murderer. Most soldiers, despite this kind of desensitization, don't become serial killers. If they did the U.S. would have a far greater problem than they do given the size of their armies. Gun control is also not the answer as this has happened in countries with much tighter control, like Norway. Gun control is as effective at stopping gun violence as Batman or any superhero would be at fighting crime. I'm not sure what the solution is. I'm not exactly pro-gun, either, not having ever owned or ever used one.
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