I went to the theater last Thursday night to watch a movie I had been waiting to see for four long years.
I watched it, enjoyed it and went back home to my apartment, where I turned on the news and realized that other people trying to do the same thing as me were not so lucky.
I am of course referring to the awful events that happened in Aurora, Colo. that night, when a gunman opened fire in a crowded midnight screening of the highly-anticipated Batman film.
During my lifetime, there have been a few of these kind of mass spree killings. Virginia Tech is one that comes immediately to mind.
During that event, the killer sent packages to various news outlets giving his “manifesto” and pictures of himself. At that time, I was horrified and constantly reading updates on what was going on in the killer’s head and what he had to say. The massacre was so awful, I felt like I had to understand how and why someone could do this.
With this recent murder spree, I have started to understand what makes people like this do the things they do.
They do it to get a reaction because they know they will get a reaction. The killer’s idiotic red hair and creepy face has been plastered all over every newspaper and news channel for the past few days, and we won’t stop hearing about him for weeks.
Every single bit of information about his past will turn up, old videos of him will surface, and people from his neighborhood will be interviewed and more.
Why do we feel the need to turn these people into the media celebrities they so desperately want to be?
This guy planned this murder spree for the night of the biggest movie of the year. He painted his hair a different color, and he trip-wired his apartment with handmade explosives.
He even started calling himself “the Joker.”
Clearly he wants to be made into some kind of villain with his face all over newspapers and magazines, and that’s exactly what we gave him.
The only reason he knew with such certainty that he would be turned into an infamous media figure is because the media reacts this way every time.
They are now talking about cancelling midnight showings of movies, editing future films for content that might seem offensive and other drastic measures.
Spree-killers get off on disrupting peoples’ normal routines with violence. Allowing our normal lives to be disrupted by this event is simply giving him what he wants.
The best way to take away his power is to focus the news on remembering the victims and survivors of this event, instead of focusing all of the news on the killer.
I haven’t mentioned his name once because I don’t think it matters. Don’t give his name and face any power, and don’t read his statements or look up information of his past.
None of that matters, because in the end he was just some idiot with a gun who gave up on life and was too much of a coward to make a name for himself in any other way.
Instead, read a story about a man taking a bullet for his wife, a boyfriend saving his girlfriend or Christian Bale coming to visit the wounded survivors.
Those are the stories that matter, and those are the names that should be remembered.
As for the people not seeing “The Dark Knight Rises” because of this event, don’t worry.
Clearly this guy has never even seen a Batman film if he thinks the Joker has red hair. That’s just one more thing that proves he’s a moron.
Matt Grippi is a senior journalism major and the diversions editor for the Daily 49er.
