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Editorial: The Aurora Massacre

The Dark Knight Rises
© Warner Bros/Robert Trate

This is not about Batman.

When tragedy strikes, we naturally look for answers, and the simpler the answer, the more readily we want to embrace it. A simple answer means a simple solution, which means we need never worry about senseless nightmares like the massacre in Aurora, Colorado ever again. It’s the Republicans. It’s the Democrats. It’s the President. It’s rock music. It’s gun control. It’s a movie about a vigilante who dresses up as a bat. Get rid of “it” and the problem goes away.

We accept those answers because they’re preferable to reality: that this landed among us without rhyme or reason, and that it could do so again at any time.

Pundits have been careful not to blame the killings on the movie being shown, at least so far. They’ve focused on the lives lost, the killer’s insanity, and the horror of an exciting evening out turning into a bloodbath. But even in the initial reports, we’ve sensed the media’s desire to link the two. The gunman (whose name I will not mention in this article) dressed in a mask and a combat vest like Bane. The shots began during a fight scene. The audience thought it was part of the show at first. Fans have expressed similar worries about Batman becoming a scapegoat for these attacks. “Was the killer one of us?” “Did he have comics in his apartment?” “Did he ever dress as the Joker for Halloween?”  All of them circle around the same easy lie: the movie was to blame for all of this. As the news cycle continues and the talking heads posit easy demons for us to vanquish, that whisper will likely grow louder.

This is not about Batman.

The irony, of course, is that the character all those people came to see speaks profoundly to the horrors they endured. Bruce Wayne watched a man with a gun take everything that mattered to him, and dedicated his life to erasing a wound that can never truly heal. His only rule was the one the Aurora killer cheerfully broke for reasons we will never comprehend – no guns, no killing – and the importance of that rule now echoes in our collective repulsion and sadness. Batman is fiction of course, and what happened in Aurora is all too frighteningly real. But he speaks to us because of horrible realities like this, and he endures because deep down at his core, he knows he will never find the answers he’s looking for… answers we’re all now seeking as feverishly and desperately as he.

Christopher Nolan understood that as few other artists have, which is why his trilogy resonated so deeply with us. He tied Batman’s pain to our own, and to the monsters we can become when we do battle with it. His films sometimes troubled people because, as in life, they offered no easy answers. Salon’s Dark Knight Rises review (posted several days ago) referred to it as an “evil masterpiece,” balancing the critics’ admiration for the filmmaking prowess against his anger at its perceived politics… politics fueled by the critic himself more than Nolan or his team.

This is not about Batman.

Nolan no doubt mourns along with the rest of the world – he is a sensitive and deeply compassionate person, which countless readily available interviews make clear.  As a long-standing admirer of his work, I would plead with him not to question his film or why he made it. He made it in an effort to illustrate our own monstrosities. He made it to remind us how easily we can be governed by fear, and how senseless tragedies can goad us into a self-inflicted abyss. But he also made it to show us how we can transcend those horrors: how we can turn dark deeds into righteous purpose and heed the better angels of our nature when things look their worst. Nolan’s films told us in no uncertain terms how tough that path is: long and painful and full of the messy, horrid complexities that life throws at us seemingly at random. But they also told us that the battle is worth it… that in the end, we can rise above the terrifying injuries created by evil men and the inner demons that they gleefully exploit.

This is not about Batman...  or at least, not the way the pundits want it to be. This is about us, about how we react to acts of darkness, and about whether we succumb to horror and despair, or find a way to become better than we were. Better people, better neighbors, better fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. A better country. A better world. And perhaps – if we struggle and fight and find the strength within ourselves the way those make-believe shadows did on the screen that night – a world where such nightmares happen a little less often.

The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Mania go out to the victims of the Aurora massacre.