Though supportive of their goals, the Hollywood Reporter columnist (and gun owner) argues that survivors of shootings are targeting the wrong film with the wrong strategy, “setting a bad precedent for all activist groups.”
In Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker justifies his psychopathic behavior by philosophizing that every human being is just “one bad day away” from rejecting the polite veneer of civilization’s morality in the face of an indifferent universe. To him, we are all amoral sleeper agents awaiting the secret code word to awaken us to selfish violence.
Yet, even if the universe is indifferent, most people are not.
We share each other’s grief and try to lighten each other’s burdens caused by that “one bad day.” And so we continue to grieve with and support the survivors and victims’ families like those of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. But, while their campaign against opens in a new window Joker and Warner Bros. may evoke our sympathies, it is counterproductive to their goal as it sets a bad precedent for activist groups trying to define the boundaries between free speech, hate speech and violence-promoting speech.
The Aurora group, Survivors Empowered, have made it clear that they aren’t asking the studio not to release the film, nor are they promoting a boycott. Instead, they opens in a new windowasked Warner Bros. to donate to groups that help victims of gun violence, to “end political contributions to candidates who take money from the NRA and vote against gun reform,” and to “use your political clout and leverage in Congress to actively lobby for gun reform.” Despite being a gun owner myself, I fully support the Aurora group’s goals of promoting aggressive gun reform by pressuring the members of Congress who are generous with “thoughts and prayers” but miserly with actions that might actually curtail the epidemic of mass shootings — especially when they’re getting millions of dollars in political contributions from the NRA and gun manufacturers.
One can only imagine the intensity of the anger and frustration of the Aurora people to see seven years pass with very little change except the body count. So far in 2019 alone, as of Sept. 24, there have been 334 mass shootings (1.24 per day) with 377 dead and 1,347 injured. In just nine months.
Read full article at opens in a new windowhollywoodreporter.com