Cinema Paradiso

 The illusion I wished to create
was that of reality
--Heinrick Ibsen, on Emperor and Galilean 

 Half the work that is done in this world
is to make things appear what they are not
--E.R. Beadle

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Hear my regards to soul and romance
They always did the best they could 
--Human, The Killers 

Freedom is the freedom to say
that "2 + 2 = 4" 
--1984, George Orwell
__________________

The shooting last month at a Florida CineBistro matinee showing of the war film "The Lone Survivor" reveals many of our current problems in stark outline, sans distractions of race, economic status, etc.

The two men involved were both paragons of society: One, a retired Police Captain; the other, a Desert Storm Veteran. Both men are white, attending a matinee of a war film at an upscale suburban theater. An altercation ensues; one man is left dead.

How did this happen? The local news reports the theater has a "zero tolerance policy" for "weapons of any kind" on the property as well as "use of cell phone (including talking and/or texting) or other electronic devices while inside the auditorium." Both men were in violation of those rules.

It is easy to say the presence of the gun caused the murder, but a gun merely makes it easier to kill. A soldier and a cop both know how to deliver killing blows, sans gun, so why were they "fighting mad"? Let us look at the context to see how the tragic outcome was reached.


1) The retired Police Captain had his "Falling Down" moment, combined with that of the castrated male figure in the film "American Beauty". He is reported to have risen to anger when a women was texting the previous week during another film screening. The theater had rules against texting, and a policeman spends his life enforcing the rules, yet no one was obeying or enforcing them. He had reached his breaking point.

In the first instance, the transgressor was a woman. The Police Captain is a large male, and it would be against his instinct to strong arm such an individual. In the "Lone Survivor" scenario, the texter was a 6'4" 230 lb. man, a more fit adversary and someone who probably resembled the "punks" that Captain had dealt with over his career.

The shooter had gone out to the lobby to find an usher to ask the man to turn off his device. He returned to the theater alone, and piqued. The man did not cease from texting after two warnings on the screen, nor after having being asked to do so by the retired Captain. In fact, the man stood up and confronted the man behind him who wanted him to stop, throwing popcorn at him, his last act before being shot.

The Captain was operating in a mash-up mode of the Michael Douglas Falling Down character and Dirty Harry Callahan. He was both being disdained, and using the maximum power at his disposal.


2) The younger veteran was doing what so many of his cohort does, namely, staying wired 24/7. Texting is a way of living. He lived in his bubble of connectivity, and he can dial-up his virtual connections whenever he wants. His fellows see the requests to turn off devices are mere token gestures, and he does not have to relocate to the lobby as the world is his living room.

It was reported that he was texting his two-year-old daughter or her babysitter, supposedly to check on her wellness as she was suffering a cold. He was said to be a fanatical Facebooker when it came to his daughter. The press reports used this fact to garner sympathy for the victim.


3) The men were preparing to view a film on a puffed-up failed U.S. mission, Operation Redwings, in which 20 U.S. Soldiers were killed. In author Marcus Luttrell's hero set piece "The Lone Survivor", the audience is asked to believe that what should have been an aborted mission, was instead viable.

It feels like the revulsion we experience when the brain-dead Texan woman's body was recently forced to stay alive by the State as a placental medium for her "seriously malformed" fetus. We know it's not right to use humans as sacrificial breathing machines; we would not want it to happen to us.

So it is with "Lone Survivor" scenario. Keeping a blighted mission alive runs contrary to our notions of decency and wellness. The mission was sunk from the get-go, yet it is as though through exposure and good publicity, the malformation will morph into a good. Surely the vet and the former policeman could identify a beaten zone when they saw one.

Yet ... they were both willing to pay money, eat popcorn and share in the delusion and illusion. However, on some level, this must grate.


4) On guns: My friends remember walking through their respective downtowns 40 years ago toting rifles openly after school to go hunting in the woods, They recall their parents sometimes had a weapon in the car but there was never a thought to use it in a random episode of road rage, or any rage. Depending on the size and toughness of their neighborhood, fights would be resolved via fisticuffs or crude weapons like pipes or bats. Somehow, guns later became a go-to option for addressing matters of entitlement, disrespect, frustration and anger.


5) On disrespect: We no longer respect age, or anybody, really. People believe they have a right and perhaps even a responsibility to stay wired 24/7. With the advent of the cell phone and all that has followed, intimacy has been lost, and public space becomes our living room. The addition of televisions to most public venues adds to that perception.

As example of this disrespect, I was horrified by the disrespect of audience members at a Project Trio chamber performance last week. The standard warnings about turning off devices reduced the number of texters, but the awful part was the wailing children midway through the performance whom the parents did not take out to the lobby. Most of them were located near the back of the theatre and I presumed that was so they could beat a hasty retreat, but I was wrong.

Twice during the performance the musicians paused to thank the audience members for their "respect and interest" in attending a "non-amplified" performance -- in other words, please keep it down -- but to no avail. Amazingly, there was no oversight to ask these parents to leave the theater; this was a rude distraction for the last half of the performance. It was selfish on behalf of the parents, who din't want their experience interrupted.


6) On ego: On leaving the performance, two elderly patrons noted that the two girls behind them never stopped talking. What is it about our experience of life today that demands we constantly be commenting upon it? It seems that many experience a thing only once they document it.

Why even go to an event if you will only spend your time linking up with others remotely, or transmitting it in situ, like some unpaid newspaper intern? Interactivity is soulless when it is between you and an electronic device. We are like skittering amobas mindlessly engulfing - digesting - excreting all that we encounter.

Texting is not a killing offense, and if the officer had not had a gun, he could not have shot the man; these are givens. But what do you think about the context from which grew such ire? 

Are there any solutions, besides the predictable calls for gun control?

The Last Picture Show

Garbage. All I've been thinking about
all week is garbage.
I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it. 
--Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989)

 There's a dark and a troubled side of life
There's a bright, there's a sunny side, too 
--Keep on the Sunny Side, The Whites

you’ve got to ask yourself one question:
"Do I feel lucky?"
Well, do ya, punk? 
--Dirty Harry (1971)
_____________________ 

The liberal New York press had a heyday deriding Florida's most recent unnecessary shooting at a theater in Wesley Chapel, a town with a name that sounds like a sanctuary. How soon they forget their own subway vigilante, Berrnard Goetz (found guilty after shooting four black teens for attempting to mug him, was found guilty of only one charge -- carrying an unlicensed firearm.)

The latest absurd shooting was committed by a retired police captain against a fellow moviegoer who did not cease from texting upon his request that he do so. There are so many aspects to this tragic event which could have headed it off at the pass.

The film was "The Lone Survivor", about a violent engagement that took place in Afghanistan in 2005 (Operation Red Wings.) What is the audience for such a film? Not that films are going to become gentle morality tales anytime soon, but perhaps violence breeds violence?

Despite Luttrell's denial, movies like "The Lone Survivor" apotheosize the fighter and romanticize the fight. Survivor Luttrell was telling a tale of standing one's ground, even when that ground is not exactly one's own.

It can be confusing to differentiate the good kind of standing one's ground from the bad (unnecessary) kind. The book/film depicts an ultimately failed attempt to stand one's ground, and a thoughtful viewer might wonder if surrender might be a better choice than fighting when one is outgunned and out-manned. But surrenders don't make glamorous movies, do they.

Films like this entrench the "Us-versus-Them" mentality. Hence, the guy texting and throwing popcorn is operating outside of the rules, and a larger threat is required to subdue him. So effectively has our society conflated the Unreal Reality Show mindset with real life that many may find it hard to differentiate the rules which bind us a participant in a society versus being a participant in a "reality" construct of it, as in film or video games. We now accept violence as a viable reaction to any irritating situation.

Further, what is the wisdom behind allowing older retired cops to carry a firearm, carte blanche? Retired police should have to pass the same licensure as any other citizen. The 71-year-old retired police captain who fired the shot showed he was not in control of his emotions.

As in Terror incidents, the shooter threw off indicators of his instability weeks earlier when he went off on another texter in the same theater. Why didn't the theater management alert the local police of the initial incident, and why was the perpetrator not identified on his next trip to the theater? There should be an armed guard in movie houses, as there is a sky marshal on air flights. In addition, ushers should patrol the aisles (as in the past), to report any nascent or evolving incidents.

These, and more, are questions we must ask as society before the next movie shootout in the aisles.

We will address related issues next. The retired police Captain was not Adam Lanza, nor was his victim, an Afghan veteran. Our society has a problem, and the shootings are evidence of that.

Forgetting the coldness in the statement, but the number of casualties resulting from movie theater killings pales in comparison to say, annual deaths by auto accident or medical mistakes, but still: One goes to the theater as respite and refuge. It should NOT be a threat environment.

So what gives?

--Jim and Lisa