Saturday, 21 July 2012

You Will Never Feel Safe in a Movie Theater Again

"Good morning, shooters," came the tweet from @NRA_Rifleman. "Happy Friday! Weekend plans?"

Funny you should ask.

The tweet was soon deleted by whoever maintains the National Rifle Association-affiliated Twitter account, likely (but unofficially) the reaction to an outpouring of protest over the insensitivity of such a query mere hours after James Holmes allegedly opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado, multiplex, killing 12 and wounding 50. Moreover, it was a stupid question because we know everybody's weekend plans, curled up with the cultural imperative to "process" the event: To blame, to pray, to reflect, to understand. Was it linked to The Dark Knight Rises, whose feverish midnight showing served as the flashpoint of the massacre? Was it an outgrowth of generations of mediated violence — a gory cocktail of TV shows, video games and shoot-'em-up blockbusters? Was it just a 24-year-old nutjob wanting to hurt, maim and kill for no other reason than to simply do it?

Whatever. It's all those things and more and none of them all at once, because it doesn't really matter.

Not if we're being honest with ourselves. The victims don't matter. The shooter doesn't matter. The motive doesn't matter. All that matters is us, sitting here wringing our hands over the same nightmare we've seen and "processed" again and again and that has finally hit us where we always knew it would: At the movies. A confined space comprising hundreds of strangers in the dark, all vulnerable, oblivious to their surroundings. A literal sitting target in a nation where the National Rifle Association cheerfully greets 16,000 Twitter followers on the same morning that an actual, real-life American Rifleman murdered a dozen compatriots, injured 50 others and got…

Source: http://www.celebrities.com/celebrities-gossip/you-will-never-feel-safe-in-a-movie-theater-again/

Emma Watson

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