Just stop it

Every time you get a school shooting in the States that makes big news you get the Jack Thompson and worse “media experts” coming out of their swamps to opine on how video games/violent movies/role-playing games/comic books/the Internet/Satan caused the incident instead of the guy that fired the gun. This always seems to me to be a bit of an overreaction.

The current blame target in development is Chan-Wook Park’s brilliant “Oldboy“, a Korean thriller that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes a few years ago and remains one of the best films I’ve seen at a film festival. Apparently since one of the photographs in said guy’s dossier resembles a promotional image for the film, that means the film must be responsible – never mind that he apparently doesn’t mention it anywhere else. This is on the AP newswire. This has been referred to by the New York Times.

And they haven’t seen the damned movie. The entire point of “Oldboy” is that violence doesn’t help anyone – it simply screws both the perpetrator and victim, which is demonstrated throughout the film. It is not a Steven Seagal movie for the arthouse crowd, it’s much more than that. But because most people seem to think that a film with subtitles isn’t worth watching for themselves, they’ll believe whatever their media outlets tell them about it, which is why they should actually be responsible. However, with outlets like Fox out there, that doesn’t seem to be very likely:

Not a Photoshop. Real. Including the bit about how he was probably possessed by the devil. Wow, that’s really responsible reporting right there, although I think Fox is aiming at the wrong target – we all know from Mark Kermode (a truly reliable source) that the only thing that actually is possessed by the devil is Marlon Wayans’ Little Man.

No. Just stop it. Surely we can’t be that thick. Surely. Happily, most of the commenters on Fark are shredding the “Oldboy did it” crapola with relish – if only we can say the same for the rest of the population.