Note: I didn't really organize my thoughts here. I just can't seem to make my mind make sense today and focus, so I apologize if none of this makes sense or seems to be composed weird.
Many of you know that at the midnight premier of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, a gunman entered through the emergency exit of the theater and opened fire. 12 people were killed and many others injured.
Immediately after the events came to light I saw an outpouring of grief, fear, love, and even a little hope. After all, such a tragedy could happen to anyone, anywhere, and maybe a little bit of our perceived safety net was taken away. However, following tumblr, pinterest, facebook, reddit, and other major internet strongholds I realized something - people were coming together in the spirit of Batman. Some were using his anti-gun stance as a call for stricter gun control, others were posting ribbons with the famous Bat signal emblem on them, but many were talking it out about how the tragedy affected them personally. I don't necessarily mean personally as in they were there or had loved ones involved - but they may as well have. Who can't empathize with victims who were excited to view a long awaited film, a time of great anticipation and joy and almost serenity. This is a tragedy that tugs the heart strings of every film lover, every fan of any kind, every human being simply because of the senselessness of the action. My brother, Andrew, wrote a very eloquent post about that aspect - what the movie-going experience means to him (and many others) and how that magic being turned into the unimaginable is something that strikes us all. I watched on tv last night Anderson Cooper interviewing some of the people who were in the theater as well as some family members of the victims. It was important to all of them that the victims should be remembered and not the man who killed them (whose name I won't mention here as well). Anything less is inappropriate. It is also inappropriate to ignore the people who helped one another out in the midst of the chaos - One man even took a bullet for his girlfriend. That is Level Batman bravery and badass-ery.
Personally, I'm heartbroken for the victims and their families but I don't fear public spaces any moreso. When I was blossoming into a teenager I had a lot of irrational anxieties - one time, while on vacation with the family, we saw the Phantom Menace in theaters. For some reason I was really scared that the theater was going to blow up. I thought about that yesterday. Although that fear doesn't seem so irrational given the circumstances, I've come to terms with something since. There will always be risks. There will always be danger, and we will never be certain if we're completely safe or not - no matter how many metal detectors or measures we take. There will always be psychos out there who plan on hurting people. I'm not saying this to be some kind of depressing realist, but because it means we have to balance our fear with rationality. Statistical probability versus situational empathy.We can't cower behind extensive security measures because in doing so we give up a little of our freedom; to privacy, to live as we please, to live confidently with the knowledge that yes, something bad might happen, but that shouldn't stop us from living and loving.
There's an odd but fitting parallel in this tragedy. Like Anderson Cooper, I don't want to dwell on the crazy guy who did this...but I find it strange that this man would make his point, or take his mental break-down out, or whatever, during a Batman film. It's terrifying to think that he planned such an opportune moment to open fire and instill such chaos and fear in a packed theater on a night that was much awaited. Today people are afraid. I've seen several people post how uneasy they are in public spaces, how we need more gun control, less gun control, how nowhere is safe anywhere. This is where the parallel comes in, but first I want to speak my mind on Batman himself.
I'm just going to go right out and say it; I don't really care for Nolan's Batman trilogy. I don't dislike it, but I don't think it's the end-all be-all trilogy (I found myself realizing that the Dark Knight was dragging on as I kept checking the time, whereas I still find myself swept up completely in other movies with similar runtimes, for instance). I like the movies but don't get the hype. There is nothing wrong with that and it isn't necessarily relevant to this post - I just figured I should get that out of the way in case my points contradict Bale's brooding motives and people want to nerd fight over it. Personally I preferred Burton's take on Batman, where Gotham was a weird, almost whimsical place with a grim reality at its core. It made the ridiculousness of the villains and a grown man in bat suit more appropriate. It doesn't matter which version of the story I prefer because bottom line I still love Batman. He was always my preferred superhero because he represented ingenuity, not god-given talent, to influence his environment. Of course the massive inheritance helps his endeavor, but even unlike Tony Stark who was, to an extent, born a genius Bruce Wayne must train and work and build through trial and error and drive. Depending on how grimdark you want to delve into the psyche of Batman, you could also say a sick obsession with vengeance drives him. I'm going to ignore that point and focus on campy Batman (the one who hangs out with Superman a lot and makes unintentional double entendres at Robin). Batman is a human being who feels a lot of hate and angst but chooses to be brave instead. The character in spirit, why we love him and connect with him, isn't because of his call for vigilante justice - but a call for bravery in the face of cowardice, teamwork in the face of loneliness, and small but important victories in the face of a seemingly endless internal war.
Gotham City is a place filled with chaos and fear. Its very citizens are slaves to the reality that psychos crawl among them, manifesting their sick and twisted desires in the most flamboyant and deadly manner. It is a grim, strange place where sometimes nothing makes sense. Batman fights to change all that; of course he has his own tragedies and his own flaws, but at the end of the day Batman represents a notion that we shouldn't live in absolute fear, that we can be repressed just as much by our fear as we are by the villains who instill it and that we don't have to be that way. Batman looks at cowardice and fights back. There are lessons to be learned from this tragedy. If we give in to fearing every possible situation at every moment in time, then the villains of the world win.
The man who shot up the theater thought of himself as the Joker. Let's all be Batman.
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