The worst mass shooting in American history.
Maybe that’s crazy, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, or the way it was marketed, or its art house pretensions. And maybe I’m the only one who felt this way, but it’s the reason I didn’t see it.
I rarely go to opening weekends for movies I want to see, but I’d been anticipatingBladerunner 2049 for weeks. I loved the original, and knew Denis Villeneuve was the perfect director for the sequel. All of his movies have been great; intellectually provocative and entertaining, like the best directors. I was trying to round up friends to go with me; most of them didn’t have the sentimental association with the original I had, but were willing to give it a go.
Then I woke up to the news that Monday. Some psycho had murdered 58 people and injured hundreds more by shooting into a crowd of concertgoers. I was rocked to my core. One of our fellow human beings, our fellow Americans, stored up weapons and ammo for months so he could fire into a crowd of people just out enjoying life, and we’ll probably never know what drove him to do it.
It’s been a stressful decade for many of us. The economic collapse, the housing crisis, the election, the fragmentation of our social fabric, the profound political divides and the hysterical way they’re expressed, the intense pressure of technological change and awareness of existential threats to our civilized existence.
I think it’s taking its toll on us. I know it is on me. This is an Age of Anxiety.
And every week, at least, some fringe case finally snaps, and for reasons none of us can truly explain, goes on a murderous rampage, killing innocent people. Killing innocent children. It’s sickening. And we feel powerless to stop it or anticipate the next one, which we know will be coming.
There was a time when the massacre at the church in Sutherland Springs, TX, would have rocked our collective psyches. Coming as it did after the Las Vegas shooting, it barely registered. We were numb. There was no shock left in us, other than a mild raise of the eyebrows. This fuckwad shot children point blank with an assault rifle, and I could barely register surprise.
There’s only been a few mass shootings that made me feel numb enough, and depressed enough, to where I couldn’t shake the effects off for weeks. Columbine. The Aurora theater shooting. The Virginia Tech shootings. The Sandy Hook shootings, of course. And finally the Las Vegas massacre. All of these instances of spectacle and theater, where the gunman is aiming for maximum shock value.
When these things happen, I don’t want to distract myself with entertainment. I want to hole up and absorb the ramifications. Remember the months after 9/11? They called it the End of Irony. But it only lasts awhile.
There is some perverse force working its way into the thread of our social fabric. There are genuine explanations for it. Sebastian Junger, I think, has it right. Alienation and medication are making people bend, and then snap, like dry twigs.
So maybe this was just me, but I just couldn’t go to the movies. I couldn’t just sit there and be entertained.
I especially couldn’t see a movie that was expressive of precisely those ills that are applying such psychological pressure on us. I didn’t want to escape that weekend, I wanted to think and be contemplative. I wanted to grab hold of the experience of our society apparently coming apart at the seams, with our most vulnerable nut-jobs the canary in the coal mine; snapping, going ballistic, then taking out their misplaced rage on innocent men, women, and children.
It’s completely nuts, and we’re living it.
I realize that’s just me, though. There may be other reasons Bladerunner 2049didn’t perform at the box office. Marketing, property awareness, sequelitis, running time too long, you name it.
Me, I just couldn’t stomach being entertained that weekend. Or the weekend after. Or the one after.
By the time I’d recovered, Bladerunner 2049 was out of theaters.
I’ll definitely see it on Blu-Ray, though.
I’m already starting to forget Las Vegas.