{"id":924,"date":"2012-07-20T17:52:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T23:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=924"},"modified":"2012-07-20T17:52:43","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T23:52:43","slug":"another-mass-shooting-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/another-mass-shooting-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Mass Shooting in Colorado: A Dark Night Indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I posted a short entry and link to the Media & Society facebook page<\/a> about the heated debate on Rotten Tomatoes about The Dark Knight Rises<\/em>. The essence of the story, as reported by the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, is that the comment section of the latest Batman film was out of control with trash talk and threat of physical violence because of a couple of unflattering reviews of the newest movie in the Batman franchise. Apparently fans of the series were not taking kindly to the negative reviews and, as often is the case with online discussions, the anonymity and deindividuation<\/a> (I know it’s a big word…look it up) led to brutish behavior on the part of some.<\/p>\n

This morning I woke up to horrible news that a gunman had opened fire in an Aurora (suburb of Denver, CO) theater where movie goers had gone to see the newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.<\/em> Dressed in a bullet-proof vest and gas mask, and with his hair colored red, the shooter opened canisters of gas and then opened fire with multiple weapons in the crowded theater. Some 71 persons were shot and 12 are reported killed. Taken into custody, the gunman–recently a PhD student at CU’s medical school–claimed to be the Joker, the villain portrayed by the late Heath Ledger in\u00a0 the previous Batman film.<\/p>\n

All of this will no doubt raise questions, and even political posturing, about the shooter’s motives and the state of our society. Some of these questions may be genuine attempts to deal with the loss by looking for explanations. Others may be asking questions in an effort to direct public dialog to topics in which they have political axes to grind. Some of the questions will look to the media. Was the shooter in any way influenced by the Batman movies? Are villainous portrayals on the big screen capable of triggering desperate acts by deranged individuals?<\/p>\n

I began this blog with reference to the uncivil behavior in an online forum. Some might argue that this online incident is indicative of a greater social illness that found its final outlet in a horrific act of carnage. While causal links are incapable of providing explanations for the behavior of psychotic and deranged individuals, it won’t stop people from trying to connect the dots. There may well be connections to be made, but those will have to wait for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I posted a short entry and link to the Media & Society facebook page about the heated debate on Rotten Tomatoes about The Dark Knight Rises. The essence of the story, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, is that the comment section of the latest Batman film was out of control with trash … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Another Mass Shooting in Colorado: A Dark Night Indeed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-media-effects","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}