Whether based on the content of the piece or the actions of the audience, theater and film is a violent enterprise.
As a species, we revel in rage, delight in destruction and derive entertainment from watching violent acts that we know are fake play out on the glamorous silver screen. Acts of violence so gritty and obscene that we are able to remove ourselves from them because, of course, no other person could feasibly commit such egregious offenses. We go to the movies to disconnect from society and have an adventure. We go to the movies to gaze at beautiful dreamscapes filled with images we cannot imagine actually seeing in real life. We go to the movies to escape our hum-drum lives as students, parents, bankers, mechanics, interior decorators or doctors because it's usually the one time in our lives we get to experience something as glamorous and luxurious as it is relaxing. We allow ourselves to simply be viewers, captivated by the idea that other worlds exist, full of hobbits, superheros and villains, and women who find Adam Sandler attractive.
So why has this place of sanctuary been used as a means to kill innocent people? Even before Abraham Lincoln's assassination, people have used the distracting and calming qualities of the the theater against its patrons. In case you've slept through every history class since the third grade, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth during a showing of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater while the president was trying to relax at the closing of the Civil War.
Not only was Lincoln's assassination an abysmal failure at some kind of half-baked notion of social justice, it was a cowardly way to kill someone. It was the lowest and cheapest form of murder, and not just because he was shot in the back of the head, but because he was murdered during a moment when he was completely defenseless, wrapped up in the plot of a play, paying no attention to his actual world. The captivating call of the performance was all he heard that night. He was an easy target, and there is no nobility in taking advantage of that.
Recently, two young women were murdered by John Russel Houser in a Louisiana movie theater. As a young, college-aged woman who has been known to see three movies in two days, I was disgusted. I thought about the all the times I had made plans with friends to see a movie in an attempt to relax and not have to focus on school, work, boys or family problems. I thought about seeing midnight showings of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in high school, or how I waited in line for nearly every "Harry Potter" premiere. These events were often the highlight of my entire month. Once I was inside the theater, all I could think about was the plot of the film. Until the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, by James Holmes, I believed that theaters were a place for imagination and suspended reality. When you choose to victimize people who are not only physically trapped in a room, but are otherwise distracted and invested in another universe, you become utter trash.
There is nothing heroic, cunning or brave about movie theater violence. There is no reason for choosing a theater to act out any kind of murderous plot other than the fact that it's easy. The extreme cowardice that it must take to attack movie-goers in the middle of a film is a level of pathetic that cannot be portrayed by actors or enhanced by special effects. There is no valor, no bravery and no heroic archetype in this kind of criminal. Only cowardice.
