The Dark Knight Massacre; Victim Of It's Own Success

                                               
It is the height of irony that the real villain of the Dark Knight massacre is The Dark Knight Rises.  Thank the producers of this movie.  Thank Stallone and Van Damme and Arnold and all those who participate in producing television and movies that cheapen life and that make the most heinous violence both exciting and common.

Blame this massacre on every American parent who allows their children to watch extremely violent video games.  News reports indicate children from age 3 months to age 6 were attending the midnight showing of this violent movie.  Blame those parents for bringing their children to a movie that exposes them at a tender age to the cinematic slaughter of human beings.

Blame Hollywood for dimming the line between good and bad; condition viewers to believe that violence by both "good" and "bad" is a good and necessary thing.  Blame a culture that feeds an addiction for greater and more horrific realms of violence to boost theatre adrenaline.

Blame the toy makers for putting profit over responsibility, allowing our young ones to worship the "icons of action", to be marketed at Toys R Us or given away with little Johnny's Happy Meal.

Blame the stark graphics in the autopsy rooms of all the many CSI's for the slow but constant cheapening of the human, devoid of soul, in favor of the corpse that holds no human values.  Teach the kid that a human corpse is no more frightening than a slab of beef hanging in a meat locker.

I have never been to one of these action movies.  When they appear on my TV screen I hit the remote immediately.  While we had a few violent movies in theaters when I was growing up, they were few and far between and parents didn't take their six year olds to midnight showings of 'violence orgies".

At this point, when the news is most likely freshly distorted, we don't know much about the shooter...except this:  the fellow who committed these heinous acts has seen all of Van Damme's and Arnold's and Stallone's work.  He has no doubt played his share of combat gaming.  He is "combat trained" having spent his entire youth being exposed to "virtual violence"

For now we know that at least a dozen are dead and dozens more injured.  That's a high price to pay for our culture's addiction to virtual nirvana.

Sad, Damned Sad.