by Eric D.GrahamRipped right out of the pages of the comic books, Echoes of Evil, separated by 13 years and only 14 miles from Columbine, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down 13 people, reign terror again in Colorado at the Century 16 movie theater during the highly anticipated midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora.
It was an eerie scene as the evil doer seemingly "leaped off" the movie screen in to the audience, wearing all black, a gas mask, and a bullet proof vest.
Along with his head to toe body armor, the gunman carried a 12-gauge Remington shot gun, AR-15 assault rifle, and two Glock hand guns, which he fired randomly into a crowd of shocked moviegoers.
When the smoke cleared and the gunshots stopped exploding, the lone gunmen, James Holmes, a white male from San Diego, California, had killed 12 people, while wounding 58 others, which included men, women and children, before surrendering to authorities.
Upon being arrested, Holmes revealed that there were booby traps, trip wires and bombs planted throughout his apartment as the theater he fled from was filled with blood, dead bodies and unanswered cell phones.
LIFE IMITATING ART
For those familiar with the cape crusader, there was a graphic novel in 1986 written by Frank Miller, the creative mind behind Sin City and 300, entitled The Dark Knight Returns, where a "mad-man" named Arnold Crimp opened fire in a pornographic theatre after listening to Led Zeppelin’s classic track 'Stairway to Heaven." Sadly, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Because, the parallel between Holmes midnight massacre and this comic book issue is chilling.
Even more chilling than that, is a recent rap video by rapper Lil Wayne, which features skeletons sitting in a movie theater. Plus, the new movie preview of Gangster Squad, which shows a group of bad guys firing machine guns into a crowded theater.
MASSAGES IN THE MOVIE
With a nation desperately trying make sense of this blood bath, many of the hidden answers "could be" located in the comic book conversations and movie dialogue featured in the previous Dark Knight movie starring Heath Ledger.
Why? Because according to Harvey Dean aka Two-face, "the night is darkest just before dawn."With that said, isn't it ironic, that Aurora is the name of Roman goddess of the dawn? Is it a coincidence that the legend of Batman started outside of a movie theater, where Bruce Wayne saw his own parents ruthlessly murdered?Secondly, for those comic book fanatics, it was the Joker, one of Batman many nemesises that said, “Madness is like gravity; all it needs is a little push."
Unfortunately, now psychiatrists, psychologists, political pundits, news reporters, police officers, and FBI profilers as well as "all of us" have been placed with the difficult burden of trying to figure out what pushed this potential Ph.D candidate in neuroscience to the brink of madness.
NO LAUGHING MATTER
Let's not forget, according to certain reports, with his hair dyed reddish orange, Holmes referred to himself as the "Joker", the paranoid schizophrenic, whom
reign terror in the previous Dark Knight movie. And just like Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, Holmes apparently was on the same drugs, Vicodin, a prescription painkiller, which alters the mental state and produces unusual thoughts that ultimately led to the early death of the actor, before the shooting.
Therefore, is it safe to say that the thoughts of this movie character led Holmes to commit these hellish acts of terror? Let's analyze some of the Joker's dialogue and examine one of his most memorable diatribes during the film. "Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets." proclaimed the Joker. "You know what I noticed; nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that... like a gangbanger will get shot, or that a truck load of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics.Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say, one little mayor will die. Everyone loses their minds" he continued. "Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes CHAOS. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, its fear."
FEAR OF THE FEARFUL
With Holmes' cowardly act of terror, he, in fact, did become an agent of chaos like the Joker, while injecting a little more FEAR into a society that is already plagued with violence. Now, the general public feels, as if, there is no place safe anymore. Not even the movie theaters, where they go to escape from reality, and cheer the very violence, they abrupt. Plus, with over 80% of firearms death occurring in the United States, 1,205 shooting incidents in Chicago, which results to over 275 murders this year, the Reverend Jesse Jackson stated it best,"Until we end violence; violence will end us."
GOTHAM CITY MAYHEM
Now, with fear of a copy cat killer creeping in the psyche of the American people, the United States has sadly become Gotham City, as it desperately looks for Batman to save it from itself. Richard Kim, the executive editor of the Nation.com, brilliantly explains how the world we live-in today is shockingly similar to the one projected in the Dark Knight trilogy. "It's a failed state because the elite are corrupted and the law enforcement is corrupted... (and) the state has lost its monopoly on violence" Kim said on Melissa-Harris Perry Show on MSNBC.
"In that situation, you have vigilantes like Batman, organized crime, and terrorists. And in a failed state, it is very hard to tell what is just and unjust violence. You look at America, now, it is not to far a stretch to say in those horrific moment in Aurora we have approached a failed state when someone can buy that kind of ammunition and weapons on-line." he continued.
"No competent police force can get there and have a monopoly on violence in that moment. When you have people like George Zimmerman, due to police cuts encouraged to vigilantism. You have a failed state."
Even though Holmes' act of terrorism was heart breaking, there were several heroic acts and deeds performed by individuals like Dorell Brooks and Eric Hunter, which proved that good always prevail over evil.
With that said, all of us are responsible for reducing the levels of violence in our own communities, by becoming the very heroes, which we worship on the silver screen.
