Cinema After Newtown

On Friday, December 14th, tragedy struck the small town of Newtown,CT when 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including the gunman who took his own life afterwards. I didn't hear the news until after I walked home from substitute teaching at Merrimack Valley High School. As someone who works in the education field, I was shocked and saddened by the news. No words can ease the pain to the families of those who have suffered a great loss.

In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, film premieres of Jack Reacher and Django Unchained were pushed back out of respect for the events that occurred a week ago. Last night, Dr. Chuck Williams of the University of Pennsylvania went on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program stating that "After what happened on Friday, everybody has to look at what part thay have to play in creating this culture of violence." He continues by  citing the research of Albert Bandura and his "Bobo doll" experiement in which children mimicked the behavior they witnessed on television by hitting an inflatable doll and how today's films show gratuitous violence for the sake of being violent.

The knee-jerk reactions are not uncommon in the wake of such tragedies. Consider the release of Oliver Stone's 1994 film, "Natural Born Killers", which was based on Quentin Tarantino's screenplay; the satire on the supersaturation of mass-media was put on the witness stand by John Grisham and Patsy Byers after a couple of kids allegedly took LSD, watched "Natural Born Killers", and murdered William Savage, a cotton gin manager from Hernando, Mississippi. Warner Bros. and Oliver Stone were sued for being culpable of inciting mass-violence by releasing the film. The case was eventually thrown out in March of 2001.

The same knee-jerk reactions came after the release of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film, "A Clockwork Orange." In 2010, I wrote a research paper for the Eastern Communication Association on the film and pointed out the reactionary measures and rhetoric taken by those persecuting indivuduals for committing violent acts based on the film:

In Vincent LoBrutto’s biography of Stanley Kubrick, the link to the film and violence caused Judge Desmond Baily, who presided over convicting a sixteen year old boy of beating a homeless person to death, stated that “‘We must stamp out this horrible trend of which had been inspired by this wretched film. We appreciate that what you did was inspired by the wicked film, but that does not mean that you are blameworthy’” (LoBrutto 368). When has a judge ever mentioned that they appreciated the actions of one person who killed someone based on a film or a piece of music? In essence, Judge Baily’s words were part of a witch hunt over films that shied away from the traditional merits of cinema by making a subversive film, not the person who committed acts of violence, a menace to society. (Stewart, 26)

It is common for analysts and pundits to point the finger at music, video games, and film as the enablers of violent behavior. However, the expression of violence in the aforementioned mediums comes from holding up a mirror to society and acts as a catharsis to the artists expressing the flaws of society. In conclusion, those guilty of their crimes should be punished for their acts, not the artists who have no control over how their work is perceived by one out of a million people.