Fictional Violence vs. Real Life Tragedy

How do we enjoy The Dark Knight Rises after the shooting in Aurora?

It’s an open question. I don’t have an answer, only gut reactions from watching the movie less than a day after 12 people were killed and 50 wounded by a psycho. Last night, James Holmes turned the premiere of TDKR into a massacre when he walked into a theatre and started shooting during one of the movie’s many gunfire scenes. At first, people outside couldn’t distinguish between the real gunfire and the movie; some inside thought the gun sounded like “popping balloons.”

For me, I couldn’t enjoy it. TDKR is a technically great movie; the plot is engaging, the acting incredible, and the world building extraordinary. But it is also an incredibly dark film, and the violence not only explicit but casual. Because of the extreme realism, each death is visceral and painful. With Aurora still fresh in my mind, it was too real.

I watched the theatre hallway during the shooting scenes. I was jumped once a few years ago, and now I’m paranoid enough that I can all too easily picture random acts of violence. Between the realism, Aurora, and my own experience, watching TDKR was an extremely uncomfortable experience.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for a movie like this. I’m not even saying it’s too violent. But I am saying that watching the movie after a real life tragedy felt more than a little tone-deaf, and I couldn’t put an appropriate distance between what was fiction and what could be only too real. I didn’t need Bain as a symbol of evil; I already had that in Holmes.

I’m open to other interpretations. It may be that in a few years I would enjoy the film for what it is, a great work of fiction. Maybe I just need the time to inure me to what the fictional deaths would be in reality. Maybe TDKR is a peacetime movie, and it’s good that many people have little enough experience with violence that the movie doesn’t bother them. But right now I can’t do it.

Does anyone else have other thoughts?