As an avid fan of the Dark Knight trilogy, I decided I'd pick an article that discussed the recent tragedy detailing the shooting in Aurora at The Dark Knight Rises midnight premiere. After digging a little, I finally found an online New York Times article here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/shooting-at-colorado-theater-showing-batman-movie.html?pagewanted=all. The article gives a brief synopsis on the event as well as a few eye-witness accounts. Namely how the shooting occurred, how many people were hurt and/or injured and giving detailed accounts of the scene. Although I didn't think the article was very well written, I picked it because I think that it encompassed a lot of different themes within the article. By using the Aurora shootings as a platform, the author managed to cover many important events, such as the Columbine shooting, the upcoming presidential election, and whether or not there should be stricter gun laws.
But the reason that this article is of extreme interest to me is because it brings to mind the infamous question: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? Though this is one of those "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" questions it occurred to me whilst reading the article that we've seen these sorts of "copycat" tragedies before. Since the killer at the Aurora shootings was said to say something along the lines of "I'm the joker" does he then imitate the art of the Dark Knight or are movies modeled after people like him who kill people in this way ( another example of this copycat killer in the media is in Scream 2 where a member of the audience is imitating the killer in the movie) What do you all think?
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