Monday, July 23, 2012

Colorado Movie Massacre: Vicarious Violence Seeps into Reality

Colorado Movie Massacre: Greiving


A shooting rampage.
A demonic gunman.

The new Batman movie.
A massacre inside the movie theater.

People killed.
People injured.

We live in a country that promotes violence.
What kind of people are we becoming?

Families grieving.
A stunned nation.

Violence in America.
© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Usually the poems go on http://newsprintpoetry2012.blogspot.com, but today I did a bonus poem.  I decided to post it on this blog because I wanted to do an extensive comment.

(There's another poem about the Colorado shootings at http://newsprintpoetry2012.blogspot.com/2012/07/terror-unfolds-in-colorado.html )


One of the things I like about my daily poems based on newspaper stories, is giving my opinion on the topic of the story or poem.  Today, I was caught up by these words in the story: “We live in a country that promotes violence. What kind of people are we becoming?

I’ve heard that “The Dark Knight Rises” is an excessively violent movie. Our culture celebrates violence—movies, video-games, World Wide Wrestling, and so on.


It’s vicarious violence.  Nobody really gets hurt, right?  Right, until they do.  If we are suffused with violence, especially young people, eventually that violence is going to seep out into reality.


Don’t buy into the violence culture.  We literally buy into it when we spend our money on it.  If we want to stop the violence, it will take an act of collective will.


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