Should We Give the Devil His Due?

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Should We Give the Devil His Due?
By Philip Schweier
July 24, 2012 - 10:37

Clint Eastwood and Patricia Clarkson in The Dead Pool

There is a scene in The Dead Pool (1988), in which a man named Gus Wheeler (played by Louis Giambalvo) douses himself with gasoline and threatens to set himself afire unless he can speak with a TV reporter. Samantha Walker (Patricia Clarkson) arrives with boyfriend Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) posing as her cameraman.

Wheeler proceeds to explain that all his life he’s been a nobody, but when people see what he’s about to do, people will remember him. Samantha Walker assures him they won’t. She then shuts down the camera, promising Wheeler that no one will see him kill himself. If he’s determined to kill himself, she can only do so much to prevent it, but she has no obligation to broadcast it just to satisfy Wheeler ’s misguided sense of self-importance.

John Hinckley Jr.'s mugshot

I’m no authority, but it seems to me people bent on destruction often have one of two agendas: either they want to be perpetrators of a spectacle, and thereby require an audience; or as, Michael Caine put it in The Dark Knight, “Some people just want to watch the world burn.”

For those seeking an audience for their misdeeds, it seems too often the media is willing to oblige them. Back in 1981, before the age of 24-hour news networks, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and in the days and weeks that followed the footage was recycled endlessly on television.

There’s no denying the recent tragedy in Aurora, CO., was a newsworthy event, nor do I have any desire to diminish the lives of the people who fell victim to the massacre. But the perpetrator of the massacre deserves no publicity; merely a quick and speedy trial and an equally quick and speedy sentence, so that he may be soon forgotten.

Regretfully, the consequences of his actions can never be forgotten. Lives were shattered by what he did, and the repercussions of his actions will be felt for years to come by those who lost loved ones.

I heard one television news pundit suggest that because the crime was Batman-related, comic books might be at the root of the problem. I find that thinking incredibly flawed. Yes, it was Batman-related. It was also movie-related. It was also Colorado-related.

It’s only natural to seek answers or some form of understanding in the aftermath of senseless tragedy. In this instance, I think it boils down to a sad, evil person seeking the wrong form of attention, and regretfully, the public and the media are obliging him.

Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? E-mail me at philip@comicbookbin.com