MAKING SENSE OF AURORA (CONSIDERING MOVIE VIOLENCE)
In an era of 24 hour news instant commentary and snap reactions on social media, people have been searching for a way to explain the murder of 12 cinemagoers and wounding of 58 at a late night screening of 'The Dark Knight Rises' in Colorado.
The explanations for the latest shooting spree in the US have ranged from whether the accused, James Holmes was a Tea Party supporter or a Democrat to whether he was trying to ape Heath Ledger's The Joker from the previous 'Batman' movie.
Inevitably the slaughter in Screen Nine of the Century 16 Multiplex in Aurora has kickstarted a debate on onscreen violence.
Reports have claimed the gunman shouted "I'm The Joker," before opening fire on those inside, while New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said he was told the assailant died his hair red like Ledger.
Analysts have noted that in the 'Batman' series, the superhero, Bruce Wayne's parents are killed on leaving a movie theatre by a small time criminal. They have also observed in 'The Dark Knight' novel one of the atrocities the Joker carries out is the slaughtering of a TV audience, using gas.
The massacre prompted 'Dark Knight Rises' director Christopher Nolan to issue a statement, expressing the shock of the cast and crew of the movie.
"I believe movies are one of the great American art forms and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime," he said.
"The movie theatre is my home and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families."
As people search for answers, it is far too easy to pin the blame for the Aurora massacre on screen violence or even the 'Batman' series.
As a film fan, I have lost count of the number of dramatised violent incidents I have witnessed in the cinema or on my sofa. However they have not spurred me on to perpetrate acts of violence.
Violence is everywhere in our culture. It can be regularly seen on our TV news channels and occasionally on our sports fields. It can be found in music, in theatre and in great novels.
As a fan of Shakespeare, I have watched onstage and onscreen countless acts of carnage and cruelty in many productions of 'Hamlet', 'King Lear' or 'Macbeth'.
Earlier this week, I attended one of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's barnstorming gigs at the RDS. Violence or the threat of violence has occasionally surfaced in his lyrics from 'Jungleland' on 'Born to Run' right through to 'Jack of All Trades' on his latest album, 'Wrecking Ball'.
Yet no one would or should rush to blame Shakespeare or Springsteen for inciting violence nor should those rules apply to Nolan, Martin Scorsese or any filmmaker.
Many great movies and TV series have had terrifying moments of violence - the garrotting of Luca Brasi of Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather', Travis Bickle's eruption of gun violence in Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver' and the death of Omar Little in HBO's 'The Wire'.
All of these sequences are shocking and appalling. They are not glamorous acts of violence, they depict suffering and they are all the more powerful and off-putting for that.
Arguably the most powerful depiction of screen violence is the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. A triumph of montage editing, the Master never showed the knife plunging into Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) but tricked moviegoers into believing they had. There is no doubt Hitchcock pushed the boundaries of how violence could be portrayed.
Every time an act of violence is depicted onscreen, filmmakers tread a moral minefield.
The best directors and best movies show the terrible consequences of violent acts onscreen for the perpetrators and those close to the victims.
Tim Robbins' 'Dead Man Walking' bravely and sensitively deals with the consequences of an horrific act of murder and sexual violence in Louisiana on the families of those killed and also the perpetrator as he prepares for his execution. However it does not flinch from depicting the full horror of Matthew Poncelet's (Sean Penn) act of violence.
Personally, I have found Robbins' depiction of violence easier to reconcile than the casual violence of Sylvester Stallone 'Rambo' or even Quentin Tarantino's stylishly directed and hugely entertaining 'Pulp Fiction'.
But should filmmakers shoulder the blame for the brutality of a lone gunman who unleashed violence in a Colorado multiplex? No.
In one of the most sensible contributions to the debate following the Aurora massacre, forensic psychiatrist and Fox News analyst Dr Keith Ablow pointed out 'Batman' did not kill those attending the midnight screening of 'The Dark Knight Rises' but a very disturbed real life person did.
Dr Ablow observed death and destruction in movies like 'The Dark Knight' trilogy were "far less toxic than local television news, which demands that viewers focus first on death or destruction, then shifts instantly to sports and the weather" or newspapers which love from stories on economic calamity to comic strips.
He argued: "That sort of emotional whiplash, which suggests that nothing tragic is really a tragedy, that the funnies or a spectacular catch are just a moment away, and just as important as a child being kidnapped by a predator, truly has a better chance of further eroding the emotional stability of a psychologically unstable person."
This is a point which Marilyn Manson also made in Michael Moore's excellent anti-gun culture documentary 'Bowling for Columbine'.
As a parent of a six year old, my sensitivity around dramatised and real life violence has intensified.
In an age where real life violence like the Aurora massacre makes its way, as it did yesterday, onto the bulletins and web pages of CBBC's 'Newsround' or where 'Horrible Histories' comically sends up the brutality of the Ancient Aztecs, Spartans or Tudor England, you cannot insulate your child from the reality that the world can sometimes be a violent place.
All you can hope for is that violence is properly presented in a way that does not desensitise people to the horrific impact of what they are watching.
The Aurora massacre, the Columbine School murders, Virginia Tech, the 2011 Tuscon parking lot shootings do have one thing in common - the perpetrators easily and legally obtained firearms. The same was true in Hungerford in England and Utoya Island last year in Norway.
That is the very alarming issue at the heart of all these atrocities - weapons legally getting into the hands of very disturbed people.
While filmmakers should certainly reflect on how they depict violence onscreen, the easy availability of firearms needs to be confronted as President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battle it out for the right to occupy the White House over the next four years.
It should be confronted but don't bank on it.
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