The Matrix, a violent sci-fi adventure film, has drawn comment by social critics who see it as uncannily representative of the type of amoral entertainment that drives kids to acts of violence like the Columbine High School shootings.
And there is a scene in the Matrix that anyone familiar with the Littleton, Colorado shootings would find disturbing: at one point, the heroes strap weapons and ammunition onto their bodies, dress in black trench coats, and then enter a building where they shoot the hell out of a bunch of bad guys. You hear the shell casings rattle to the floor, the rat-tat-tat of automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire—even a few shotguns, in the hands of the bad guys (who, in this film, are the police). In The Matrix, the shooters are heroes. They were dark glasses so they look cool as they kill. They are fighting evil. You conquer evil by outgunning them, or stylishly beating their faces to a pulp with karate blows.
There is nothing new here: Hollywood has glorified this type of adolescent fantasy for years. Hollywood is getting better at it though: the amount of computing and artistic effort put into these scenes is astounding. The sound effects batter the listener with Dolbyized wall-rattling chunky, acerbic smacks. The walls explode with spattering bullets and ricochets.
A fair number of commentators have tried to draw a link between movies like this and incidents like Padukah and Littleton. They believe that children are influenced by these movies. They watch the carnage and enjoy it. It thrills them. They want to be like the actors in the movie: cool and powerful. They derive a invigorating sense of gratification from seeing the bad guys get blown away.
There is always a conversation with the meanest, baddest, most ruthless of the bad guys, before he is dispatched. It doesn’t matter that such conversations have never taken place anywhere in history: they are a staple of the action-adventure film. Usually, the hero revels for a moment in his triumph, and we glimpse suffering, finally, on the face of the man who inflicted so much suffering on others. We feel the necessity of grudging submission, acknowledgement that we (identified with the hero) are the good guys. Just before we blow their brains out.
But there is another weird convention to these action adventure films: the hero has to suffer too. In almost all of them, the hero himself undergoes a few serious, painful trials, before undertaking his climatic mission. Why? I’ve heard this element rationalized as some kind of test of worthiness that ties into our primitive instincts for sacrificial leaders. Thus when the killer acts just as brutal and ruthless as the enemy, in the end, he appears to be justified, because he has suffered.
To put it in more prosaic terms, the audience can’t enjoy the bloodletting later if they don’t feel that the hero is entitled. The same way they won’t enjoy the murders at the beginning of most trashy thrillers unless the victims are shown to be having sex first. They deserve to die.
I always find these sequences a little squirmy, because they are so close to pure adolescent fantasy, and adolescent fantasy is utterly self-centred and masochistic. Adolescents don’t feel comfortable with their place in the world; they’re always being accused of not suffering enough, or of making bad decisions. So being dominated and victimized plays nicely into their sense of being very worthy individuals who are unjustly persecuted. All the better if a lovely woman, preferably about 18, feels so moved by your suffering that she pleads with you to save yourself. Adolescence. Fantasy. Myth.
Did Dylan Klybold and Eric Harris shoot their class-mates because, though they were otherwise of sound mind and body, they saw films like “The Matrix” (specifically, “Natural Born Killers”), and decided that killing people was so cool they just had to try it themselves? That’s hard to believe. These films do very well at the box office. You would think there would a veritable rash of killings after every showing. The truth is, we don’t have any evidence at all that these films influence anybody to kill. How unlikely is it, after all, that killers would not have seen the most popular films, played the most popular video games, or listened to well-known metal rockers?
As tempting as it is to ascribe a single cause to the Littleton disaster, the truth is probably more complex than that. Klebold and Harris were disaffected youths, marginalized by the nasty jock culture of Columbine High School. They were intelligent and imaginative, too intelligent to not harbor some bitterness about the putdowns they received constantly from the jocks and preppies . They were probably somewhat psychotic. Perhaps Harris, by himself, would merely have committed suicide. The two of them together formed a deadly combination of audaciousness, bitterness, and collective energy. Their uncensored fantasies of revenge and domination came to life in their conversations and acquired an energy of their own.
So how would you prevent future massacres from happening? Again, people are tempted by simple solutions: censor movies or the internet, ban violent games, restrict access to guns. The most idiotic come first: ban trench coats, which is what all high schools in the Denver area and many more nation-wide have done. Ban trench coats? What about gym bags, back packs, suitcases? What about pockets and purses and bulky ski jackets? I’m afraid I don’t have much faith in knee-jerk solutions.
No surprisingly, conservative Republicans, who constantly insist that only a free-market–without the slightest government intervention–can gratify the needs of the human soul, suddenly reverse themselves when it comes to culture and demand stricter censorship and tougher punishments for thought crimes. I don’t understand why the magic of the marketplace is so wonderful when it comes to wages and product liability, but so odious when it comes to movies and rock music. This position is frankly hypocritical. If conservatives really believe in the principles they describe so passionately as they apply to the economy is absurd to think that those same principles shouldn’t also apply to culture. If they don’t like movies like “The Matrix”, tough—the magical marketplace has decided that this is the way to go. Learn to live with it.
Liberals are at least more consistent on the general principles. They advocate a clear role for government in the economy, ensuring minimum wages and protection of the environment, for example, and they urge a role upon the government in preventing and reducing teen violence. The government should make it far, far more difficult for people to obtain guns, especially by changing the exemptions that allow people to buy powerful weapons at gun shows without even a background check or waiting period. And schools should develop programs that attack the roots of alienation and disaffection, and encourage values of tolerance and diversity, so that students like Klebold and Harris are never again as marginalized as they were at Columbine.