Hello all.
So here we then, the last of the 3 part ‘made me do it’ series. I’m glad to have got to this point as when I originally wrote them I never planned them to actually go up nor did I expect them to take so long. Still here we are, tomorrow normal blogs will return so I hope you enjoy….
This last one is going to be about violent movies & the claim that they can damage people & can cause them to commit crimes.
Bear in mind that I am no expert & that the information is taken from research from the internet & personal knowledge. As a man who grew up listening to heavy metal, playing all types of games & watching horror/violent movies I find any accusation levelled at these forms of entertainment hard to swallow. I make no claims about each persons innocence or guilt, that’s up to you too decide.
I’m not suggesting that a disturbed individual couldn’t have been affected by a certain movie, that is all too possible but the important word there is ‘disturbed’. For someone to be influenced by a movie to such an extent that they commit a crime they are already having serious problems. So rather then blaming the movie they really should be looking at the root cause of this person’s problem.
A ludicrous statement in its own right, this movie made me go out & kill this person or people. It’s the kind of thing that should be laughed at but sadly is taken all too seriously. Normally it is the media who starts such idiocy off, they find out so-and-so kid had a poster of on the wall or just happened to have a similar style outfit & suddenly the headlines scream “movie inspired killer”.
If the movies cited below were the case of such crimes why have we not got thousands upon thousands of killers or does it take a special kind of person?
One of the more high profile cases concerns
Oliver Stone’s classic
Natural Born Killers which has caused a crazy amount controversy over the years, all of it unfound.
It has been linked with 8 murders so far. This is a quote from the opinion of the
Daily Mail (a Brit tabloid) & it referred to NBK as simply "evil". "If ever a film deserved to be banned," it concluded, "this is it."
Pathetic statement. How can a movie be evil? What does evil even mean? Is it not a religious definition? The are the same who suggest a child can be
born evil. How good of them to take such a high moral stance for us.
A number of lawsuits have been brought against the movie’s creator with one claiming that it encourages ‘
imminent lawless activity’. Thankfully sense ruled with this case & the lawsuit was
dismissed.
Sadly this is not the only case that was brought against NBK & rather then list them all I found this well written timeline,
check it out...It’s disappointing that so many people & forms of media were drawn into believing NBK was some sort encouragement for a generation of youth to go on a murderous rampage.
Child’s Play 3 was cited as a
possible encouragement for the murder of
James Bulger.
The connection? Blue paint which the doll
Chucky is splashed with in
Child’s Play 3 & the victim was splashed with it before being killed.
Neither boy had ever seen the movie.....
The Sun newspaper, better use as toilet paper.
Child’s Play also came under fire because of one
Martin Bryant, however the Australian media was heavily criticised for
altering images of the suspected killer to make his eyes look more deranged. If you wanted to read a much more sensible view on what may have cause Martin Bryant’s murder’s then I suggest you read this
well-written article.
How about
Barry Loukaitis then? He is responsible for the
Frontier Middle School shooting which was linked to
Natural Born Killers again,
The Basketball Diaries,
Pearl Jam &
Stephen King! That is a scary amount of influences but of course it was all fabricated lies that ignored the real truth that he was a bullied child & was struggling to deal with his parents split.
His mother even told her son she planned to kill herself!
So definitely the movies fault right?
One that I did not know about but have just found out is the link between
The Matrix & murders including the
Columbine High School Massacre. It has been suggested that because the two killers wore trench coats they modelled themselves on the main character from The Matrix,
Neo...... but I used to have a trench coat (not leather – excuse me) & I didn’t think I was Neo.
Well yeah, it turns out the movie has been linked with several murders,
see here.
The Matrix.... really? I mean, really?
OK, what about
Scream?
Surely no-one would blame a film about kids who copycat film killings right?
Wrong. It’s mentioned in that article but not often enough for my liking that these boys took drugs, a lot of them. Surely that could maybe have cause a certain level of paranoia & behavioural issues or is that too difficult to solve?
The last one I am going to mention concerns
Nathanael White who claimed his first murder was inspired by the movie
Robocop. He said this “The first girl I killed was from a 'Robocop' movie... I seen him cut somebody’s throat then take the knife and slit down the chest to the stomach and left the body in a certain position. With the first person I killed I did exactly what I saw in the movie”.
That he was up for the murder of 6 people while on parole & his case was cited by a New York governor in a push to get the death penalty reintroduced played a huge part in his insanity plea. The reality is when an insanity plea is entered there has to be proof, what better way then claiming a film influenced you? Or perhaps that he was a drug and alcohol abuser who had been imprisoned for robbery and then violated his parole by using an open razor to abduct a 16-year-old girl he met in a bar in 1991 helped shape these murders? The
parole system was to blame here not a movie.
A lot of the above cases are all American based but don’t forget we in Britain had our own controversy surrounding movies that might do a person harm....
The Video Recordings Act 1984 or as it’s better known
The Video Nasty ScareI won’t go into much detail as I have done so in a blogs before (I am filled with rage over such a foolish act & I have made it my life’s mission to see every single one the banned) which I will link below. Suffice to say banning a film just makes it more sought after especially by younger people. Why has it been banned? It might damage me? Cool!
We should be so proud – here is
the link relating specifically to the act.
So what have I pointed out here? That movies are no more so to blame then video games & heavy metal is. That an insanity plea is a far too easy way out of claiming responsibility for your actions. That in our society the media seems to encourage this thought process rather then dig deeper into a person’s past. That a man was a heavy drug user, had a history of mental illness is far less interesting then ‘zombie films made me eat my neighbor’.
The sad thing is we live in 2012 & the culture of not accepting blame for your own actions continues to grow. You only have to look at the huge number of direct claim firms that exist now asking to call them to sue someone after you walked into a wall that shouldn’t have been there. Now that is crazy....
I hope you enjoyed this series. I know what I wanted to say, sorry if it hasn’t come across properly but I am trying to not be dismissive of claims without a good reason & I’m trying to be respectful of the dead.
I’ll end with this: I love horror movies & would consider myself obsessed with zombie flicks. I love heavy metal & listen to very violent lyrics sometimes. I love video games particularly ones that involve me killing something.....
I turned out ok.
