I think we’re at the hairsplitting stage now. Nobody asserted that he was a Batman fan to the exclusion of all other things or comic books or that he had no interests outside of Batman. There is an indication - not concrete proof, but an indication - that he picked the movie for a reason, and I think that’s all it should be seen as.
You can’t know that based on the quote.
Again, you’re inferring something that is not clear based on the quote. The question could have been as simple as “What did the voicemail message sound like?” I agree it sounds like the Joker connection is something that has just occurred to the speaker and which didn’t cross his mind at the time; I think it’s unlikely that someone hearing it without knowing the source would think of the Joker unless there were some movie references in there.
What I find oddly scary about the whole thing and others find fascinating is that being driven to do horrible things because you’re a psycho is very Joker-like. Since we don’t know much yet the rational thing to do is wait but it’s a scenario apt to letting the mind race and fill in scary details.
If someone dressed up like Darth Vader and shot up a Star Wars showing it’d be much easier to see him as the psycho he is - Darth Vader isn’t supposed to be psycho. Or if we learned Holmes was ordered by god to kill devils, he’d become his own psycho.
But with no information except that he’s a crazy person who kills innocent people and the connection to Batman, it just makes him seem very Joker-like. As an extremely casual batman fan I find it creepy to think of there being a real life Joker. Not to say any of that is rational or accurate, but I think it’s natural.
The Joker wouldn’t do anything as pedestrian as shoot up a movie theater, but I understand what you’re saying. Even people who are seriously mentally ill don’t usually do things like this, and it’s horrible to think of someone bringing this kind of character to life. It’s hard avoid the idea even if we don’t know that’s what happened.
The thing that might be worth mentioning is that a typical journalist (myself included) knows, very approximately, bugger all about comic books. Does the Joker have red hair?* It sounds right. The Joker’s basically like an Evil Clown, right? Clowns can have red hair.
Journalists do not have the time to go and start looking through endless wikis or discussion boards to work out if a comic book and movie character generally has red hair or not.
When you’re on super-urgent-violating-the-laws-of-time-&-physics deadline and something as newsworthy as that event has taken place, it’s really not a huge stretch for the suspect reportedly saying “I am the Joker” to police, having dyed hair, and having done something heinous to translate (for the journalist) as:* “The Joker is the crazy evil bad guy in those Batman movies and comics they joke about on the Big Bang Theory, right? Perhaps The Joker did wear full Kevlar and shoot up a movie theatre in one of them. It sounds like something the villain in a superhero movie/comic would do. Right, need to get this story written and filed pretty much nowish…”* which is one possible explanation for how the “Dressed as The Joker” thing got started.
And once one media outlet’s reported it, the others pick up on it (look for phrases like “reportedly” or “was reported to”; this means the person writing the story is acknowleding the information came from another media story), and that’s how you end up with the sort of thing being discussed in this thread.
Also, journalists are usually working on more than one thing at a time. I’d suggest for most journalists involved, the “Crazy Guy Shoots Up Movie Theatre; Claims To Be Batman’s Nemesis” story is one of the possibly dozen or more other stories they’re working on that week.
So, with that in mind, fact-checking the hair colour of the antagonist in a pop-culture series which has multiple incarnations isn’t priority number one (or even in the top 20, I’d suggest) for most of the journalists filing stories on the subject. Disappointing to a lot of people? Possibly. But that’s just how things work, unfortunately.
Not to pick on the person Loach was responding to here, but this is a valid point. To the average person (not SDMB members), comic books are extremely nerdy and generally read only by geeks who still live with their parents, socially maladjusted oddballs like the cast of The Big Bang Theory, or (maybe) kids. They’re not something “normal” people obsess about, in other words.
I’d be willing to be the journalists writing those stories are thinking “For Fuck’s Sake, who the fuck cares whether or not The Joker actually has red hair? Someone shot up a movie theatre full of people at a Batman screening and claimed to be The Joker” every time some comic book fan contacts them and says “FYI, The Joker has green hair, not red. Just sayin’.”
Rhetorical question; I do actually know the answer
2008’s The Dark Knight made eleventy gillion dollars at the box office. The Avengers made eleventy gillion and one dollars earlier this year. The Dark Knight Rises is on its way to making a similar total to both of them.
The average person loves comic book characters (some love the comics themselves, but everyone loves the characters). Pretending they’re still for nerds is the last refuge of a “cool class” that doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone’s a geek today.
If it’s relevant to the story, they have time to get it right. This isn’t really a matter of factual dispute here: the Joker’s hair is green. There is one scene in The Dark Knight where he wears a red wig, which may or may not have anything at all to do with the shooter’s getup. And it’s not like there are zero journalists who are into comic books. Certainly I would not expect a news story to contain a digression about the Joker’s hair, but saying Holmes’ hair is red like the character’s is inaccurate.
Based on a little random Googling, I see some reports that Holmes’ hair is red *like * the Joker’s and others that just say he identified himself as the Joker and that his hair is red. The first is not accurate and the second one is. (Unless you doubt the whole “Joker” thing in the first place, which I do.) This may also be Ray Kelly’s fault:
Also, “painted?” His hair is dyed. But Kelly appears to be drawing a connection between the red hair and the Joker thing even though there may not be one. I think a lot of reporters have relied on that.
You’ll note I said “Comic books”, not “Comic book characters”. I think pretty much everyone agrees that Batman, Superman, Spiderman et al are both cool and awesome. But there’s still a stigma, at least IMHO, against people who are seriously into the comics.
Firstly, no they don’t, unfortunately, especially if it’s not a core element to the story (core element of the story is "Crazy person allegedly claiming to be The Joker shoots dozens of people in a movie theatre.
As I understand it, there’s a huge number of “alternate universes” within the various comic book franchises and it would seem extraordinarily reasonable to me that, in one of them, The Joker has red hair. And possibly dons Kevlar and shoots up a movie theatre. I’m saying that journalists don’t have time to go and look for this sort of stuff.
Obviously it’s not zero, but it’s a pretty low number. And it doesn’t mean a great deal if those journalists aren’t in a position to use that knowledge effectively.
I’m not arguing it’s inaccurate, but I’m saying that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a big deal considering the main focus of the news story is someone shooting up a movie theatre.
There’s a stigma against people who are seriously into anything. Coins, stamps, baseball cards, baseball, sports in general, cars, tech gadgets, you name it. Anyone who is too into fandom of any kind is looked down as a loser by somebody else.
But beyond that, we’re discussing the character of The Joker, which is totally divorced from his comic book origins. Holmes grew up in a world with Batman: The Animated Series, which every kid during his childhood watched religiously. It was followed by a string of Justice League cartoons in which Batman played a huge role. And then there’s Batman Begins/Dark Knight/Rises. Even if he never read a single comic book, The Joker (and the whole Batman mythos) is familiar to him and the public at large.
Just think how embarrassed Holmes must be to get this glaring detail wrong!
Seriously, whether or not he thought he was the Joker, or was looking to just shoot up a large public crowd and chose The Dark Knight Rises on happenstance is besides the point. The media connecting his primary-hair color to the Joker-like massacre at a Batman film screening is just too tantalizing to ignore, wrong color or not.
Also, whether or not the theater employees thought he was just a über fan in costume, with fake gear, or they noticed he was carrying real weapons, other then create pandemonium or get shot themselves, I doubt it would’ve changed the outcome much.
I don’t give a shit if theaters start banning costumes, but i know some do for fun or whatever; most just want to not look silly or be uncomfortable, wearing casual clothes and enjoy the damn movie.
Either way, if some psycho wants to shoot up a theater, a mall, a comicon, or a McDonalds, chances are very likely he’ll succeed. And depending on circumstances, or very tenuous connections exaggerated by handwringing zealots, there’ll be no shortage of soapboxes.
Had he shot up a midnight screening of Brave, Pixar fans would start screaming he got the gender wrong. And ninnies and parents from all over would be lamenting about the girl wielding a bow and arrow, despite his use of an assault rifle, demanding animated or family films should ban depicting weapon use.
They do, and while it’s not a core element of the story, the shooting was also more than a week ago. They don’t need to explain the Joker’s hair color, but any comment to the effect of ‘he has red hair like the Joker’ is wrong. Even a brief glance at a film still or a biography of the character would resolve that. Nobody’s demanding they start leafing through back issues of obscure Batman titles. I think the error here is attributable to Kelly, who did not say flat-out that Holmes dyed his hair like the Joker, but who implied it.
Who cares if it seems reasonable? We’re talking about what the case is, not what it might be.
They found the connection between Homles’ movie theater shooting and a similar scene in the 1986 The Dark Knight Returns comic within a couple of hours.
No, it’s not a big deal. I think the only thing that matters to the people covering this story is that they can attribute the “I am the Joker” claim and the red hair thing to a source - Ray Kelly. If Kelly said those things (which he sort of did), that’s good enough. However from a factual standpoint they’re wrong and I think that eventually we’ll find it’s not clear that Holmes ever called himself the Joker. So if he didn’t dye his hair like the Joker and didn’t call himself the Joker, there’s no link between Holmes and the character.
Well, if the Joker looked like you expected him to look he wouldn’t be a very good Joker would he?
A couple of other things — apparently he didn’t have body armor, just a vest with pockets for ammo. Also, he didn’t enter the theater in full regalia but left and propped the door open or had someone let him back in. So in that case the costume ban would have no real effect.
When he was taken into custody they put evidence bags over his hands to preserve any gunshot residue. He reportedly used them as hand-puppets and made them talk to each other. He also is supposedly acting like he remembers none of what happened and is asking why he is in jail. All of the jailors think he is pretending but those actions seem sort of Jokeresque. As do the bombs he planted around his apartment. I am not a big fan but didn’t the Joker plant a lot of bombs in his last movie? I think it is fairly unusual for someone who goes on a shooting spree to also rig his apartment to explode. It may have happened in the past but I don’t recall it.
So yeah the evidence is weak but the only part that matters is if Holmes really said he was the Joker. He is crazy, but he is also the world’s most renowned authority on what James Holmes is thinking at any point in time so who ya gonna believe?
Oh, and it is conceivable he just came up with the Joker comment on the spot seeing as how the movie that was on at the time suggested it to him. He may not have planned things with that specific movie in mind. Given he didn’t know how long any of this would take and had been preparing for months that might not be too far out of the realm of plausibility even if he made the comment.
We’re now leaving fact land. The guy either looked like the Joker or he didn’t and the answer appears to be that he didn’t.
Wikipedia says he had “wore a gas mask, a load-bearing vest, a ballistic helmet, bullet resistant leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector and tactical gloves.” I am not sure if those load bearing vests are bullet resistant, but from my layman’s perspective that sounds like more than enough to be described as body armor.
Once you know he’s homicidal and crazy, any crazy thing he does seems “Jokeresque.” He’ll be examined by psychiatrists eventually. Everybody else is just speculating.
And we don’t know that he did. Ray Kelly says he did, but he got the information secondhand at best. The Aurora police haven’t confirmed it. If the statement is discussed during his trial we may find that it was not all that clear-cut.
This is why people don’t trust “traditional” news media. If accuracy in the details isn’t a big deal, why should I trust you about things that are a big deal? And frankly, this is a big deal. for over a week, people have been discussing the possible motives of a mass murder, based in large part on this faulty piece of reporting. Major social campaigns have been launched regularly in the past to put a stop to violent video games, television shows, comic books, etc., often on the basis of such reporting, and these things in total have an enormous impact on the culture. On a blog or a website not owned by a news dinosaur, these errors get picked up on and corrected almost immediately, but the old-school media just reporting on themselves in a massive “Chinese whispers” game. Here’s a radical suggestion for the media: if you don’t have time to fact-check whether the perp was actually dressed like the Joker, don’t report that he was. If all you know is that he had red hair and said something about the Joker, then that’s all you report.
“You’ll never understand, Bat-Brain! He dyed his hair red so when he ran from the cops, they wouldn’t chase him because they’d be waiting for his hair to turn green. Hahahahahahah!”
Much of what you say is true. I can’t comment too specifically on the way the US media works because I’m not involved with it (and I’m not following the Aurora case too closely because I’ve got news closer to this corner of the world I need to be focusing on), but I would say that I don’t believe the general public understand the pressures journalists work under - and/or journalism is one of those careers where random people quite frequently try to tell you how to do your job.
Personally - and I stress the personally aspect of this - I don’t put anything in a story I can’t either attribute to someone on the record, another established media outlet or that I’ve satisfied myself through research is correct to the best of my knowledge. Obviously it’s impossible to be 100% right 100% of the time but that’s what I aim for.
I guess the point I’m making (quite possibly badly, from the looks of it) is that I completely understand how “Crazy person with dyed red hair reportedly shoots up a movie theatre during a Batman film screening” + “Reportedly claims to be The Joker when apprehended” = “The suspect has ‘Red hair like The Joker’” reporting. I don’t agree with the fact it’s happened, but I do think someone needs to say “Look, it’s not an deliberate plot by The Media™ to malign the things you like or purposefully misrepresent the facts, OK?”
I don’t think anyone thinks it is a plot by the media, or is even really confused about how it happened. It was sloppy, lazy reporting by people who think that it isn’t a big deal whether the things they report are accurate or not. We seem to agree on that, you just happen to also agree with the reporters that it isn’t a big deal.
Sure there is a bit of personal concern that what I like isn’t being taken seriously by the media, but that’s no different than scientists getting upset at how science is nearly always misreported. Everyone wants their interests to be reported on accurately, and the media should strive to report everything accurately. Saying a piece of misreporting is not a big deal not only insults the people who take the thing being reported on seriously, it insults journalists by implying that they just can’t do a better job.
