The Portable Henry Rollins - Henry Rollins (1997)

My first exposure to Henry Rollins came in March of 2001, when I went to New Orleans with a couple friends and we saw that he was playing at the House of Blues there.  We considered going, but none of us were really fans.  About a year later, I was watching a rerun of SNL with a few friends in my NYU dorm room.  Rollins was the musical guest, and he gyrated in place like a maniac with his shirt off.  We all laughed at the performance.  He seemed like a show-off.

A year or two after that, I read Our Band Could Be Your Life for the first time, and a couple years after that, I started listening to Black Flag.  I guess it took me so long because I never really identified with the "message" of their music until I finished college and realized how much life sucks as an adult.  This may sound weird because they seem more like a band that appeals to teenagers - but I believe one can only fully appreciate Black Flag if they have experienced personal rejection so many times that they have abandoned hope for a better result.  Of course you can be a depressed teenager and listen to Black Flag, but eventually you may grow into a happy and successful person.  Only after going through a prolonged period of psychological pain may a person fully understand the gravity of their music.  Perhaps this makes the prospect of appreciating Black Flag an unpleasant idea.  Certainly, their recent iterations are a joke, and while I'm sure Greg Ginn still has his number of demons to exorcise, the band has never been the same without Henry.  He's not the type of person to be in it for the money (and he kind of reminds me of Morrissey in this regard) but if he ever did reunite with them and played small clubs (such as Reggie's Rock Club, where Black Flag recently played a show for children), no one would complain.  Keith Morris has shown that age should not be a factor in the type of music you play, but I have to believe that Rollins has stopped recording and performing music because he no longer enjoys it.  Or because he has seen and done everything.

There are a lot of problems with The Portable Henry Rollins, and the primary one may be the author's personality.  This book is a collection of excerpts from many others books that Rollins has published through his own literary press 2/13/61, and they often read like diary entries.  I am not sure of the exact length of the longest excerpt, but it is probably the first of the three "previously unreleased" short stories that conclude the book--and that is about three pages long.  The book is a compilation of fits and starts, and while a few of them get at the kind of truth found in the best literary fiction or poetry, it is much more often "miss" than "hit."  It is very repetitive and Rollins mostly comes off as a jerk who hates everyone (except Joe Cole and Ian Mackaye), including himself.  I hate a lot of people and have written my fair share of depressing prose, but I always try to end on something very vaguely life-affirming.  I highly doubt that reading this book will give you a more positive outlook on anything other than the idea of suicide.

It is ironic, then, that Rollins has most recently been in the news for his op-eds in the L.A. Weekly criticizing Robin Williams for ending his own life.  In the first essay blithely titled "Fuck Suicide," Rollins wrote that Williams had performed for troops overseas at some of the same events as himself, and that he considered him a talented and good man.  But he had just proved himself to be the biggest coward in the world because he had abandoned his family and failed to become a master over himself.  Many readers took issue and wrote angry letters to Rollins, and his second essay effectively recanted the first, admitting that he could not defend the views he expressed.

Personally, I agree with his statement that once you have children, you waive your right to take your own life, and that your utmost goal should be not to traumatize them.  After that statement, I can understand where he is coming from, excoriating the weak individuals that would rather die than deal with their problems--but it is a very fine distinction, and miles away from the tenor of the writings collected in this book.  Rollins writes about suicide a lot in these pages (and he does reference Robin Williams once in the late 1980's, oddly connecting him to the fashion choices of a yuppie college town coffee house crowd), and it almost always sounds preferable to the depressing chaos of existence.

This book is Controversial.  Rollins flirts with misogyny, then unabashedly adopts it.  2014 readers will find this aspect of the book troubling and unacceptable.  Perhaps the balance will be struck by his overt hatred of police officers.  But I don't think so.  Rollins wasn't writing this material to impress anyone, and the vast majority of readers will probably make it through the first 50 pages before putting it down.  Most of this was written when he was maybe somewhere between the ages of 17 and 25, and it shows: this is really personal, unedited stuff.  I am reminded of the Kurt Cobain coffee table book of diary entries that I never read.  Except this doesn't carry the mystique of the "voice from beyond the grave."  Rollins may have disavowed a lot of this writing, but I don't know for sure.  At the end of the day, it is completely honest, and it shows that the world inside his mind is a dark, dark place.  For this act of bravery--boldly admitting that he is a completely twisted motherfucker--he deserves praise.  But as a book that really adds nothing new to his oeuvre, and appears to serve as a mere "sampler" to casual fans considering a deeper dive, it comes off like a money grab--a greatest hits collection that lacks the immediacy and punch of an original release.

Probably the most valuable portion is the excerpt from Get in the Van, which is a book of diary entries Rollins wrote while on tour with Black Flag in the early-to-mid 1980's.  I have wanted to read Get in the Van in the past, and have unsuccessfully searched for it in various public library systems.  My current office roommate gave me his copy to borrow, along with a number of spoken word albums by Rollins.  Get in the Van, the album, was one of them.  I do think this is the most succinct and entertaining portion of the collection, and I think the entire book would make a good read.  I have mixed feelings about the album, mainly the way Rollins reads so fast that you really can't be distracted while listening, and also the way it is only broken up into two long tracks (disc 1 and disc 2).  It's all about your preferred mode of consumption, as I don't believe the album encompasses the entirety of the text, but as a part of the collection, the parts from Get in the Van are probably the most essential.  I would also like to add that my office roommate is a police officer.  He would not be the type of "pig" that Rollins loves to hate, but then again Rollins seems to want to make the blanket statement that he hates all pigs.  It's a pretty immature viewpoint, though obviously at least partially a result of the many Black Flag shows that were shut down by the police, and I would be curious to know if Rollins took a less drastically hateful view once he got into his 30's:

"After the show I'm sitting in a place eating and a woman sits down and tells me that she likes what I do but the only thing she didn't like was what I said about pigs.  She's a pig herself, and she says that she's an individual.  I tell the pig cunt that when she puts a uniform on she loses all individuality.  I told her that I party down when I hear that a pig has gotten wasted.  I hope she goes out and gets shot in the knees by some low-rent motherfucker who laughs in her face.  She really thought that she was a human being.  I don't know how they brainwash these shitheads into being so self-righteous about being a bag of shit that should be taken out and shot in the face.  Fuck these people.  You never know when they are pigs in disguise.  Fuck you, you stupid pig bitch.  I hope you get Magic Johnson disease and die in some ward.  I wonder how long I have left with this shit."  (167)

Perhaps the vitriol was at its peak, as Rollins had just witnessed the murder of his best friend and roommate Joe Cole.  This entry comes from Now Watch Him Die and is dated June 30 in Columbia, MO.  One presumes it was June 30, 1992.  Maybe this female cop had a certain attitude that really rubbed him the wrong way, but from the way it's written, Rollins appears to be the more inhuman party.  And he would never deny that he is inhuman, which is a frustrating part of the book.  He doesn't make apologies or rationalize his thought process, and it can be a bit alienating for the reader.

The death of Joe Cole looms large throughout these pages, and I wish that Rollins had written a more formal essay about their friendship and maybe how he went on Unsolved Mysteries to try to find the shooter.  But his writings on the subject are more impressionistic:

"The detectives went through my house for hours
I was at the pig station
I didn't know until later
They went through the food in the kitchen
I got back to the house and all kinds of shit was turned over
My best friend's blood was all over the front walk
They're looking for something to bust us for
The pieces of shit even went through the attic
They were curious as to why I had so many tapes
He talks to me and makes me think he's my friend
I look at him and know he thinks I'm scum
If I give these pieces of shit the time of day then they win
You know
There's so many pieces of shit in the world
It's amazing anyone gets by
The pigs asked if me and Joe were faggots
They were so relieved when they found out we weren't
Fuck you pig
Like I have to prove myself to you
I can't think of a more fucked-up situation
I have to talk to these shitheads all the time now
They still ask other people about me
Like I might have been up to something
I'm some kind of suspect?
Nah, but you sure are some kind of pig." (148-149)

Ultimately, it may appear that I really didn't like this book.  And truthfully, on the whole, I'll take Lexicon Devil or The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club over it.  But as mentioned, occasionally Rollins will bust out with a few sentences of truth, and the power of such moments cannot be denied:

"Reality has become a fear trip.  Something to choke on.  One in every three women in America will be raped.  This is science friction.  I see it from all sides.  I see the direction of the infection.  The facts are stacked and packed into your head.  You need the two-hour vacation twelve times a day.  Spark the joint and park the car.  Look up at the stars.  Think about it, you're in the hot seat.  You're in a huge shark tank.  If you want to beat them, you have to join them somehow.  The bad guys kill the bad guys.  The bad guys kill the good guys.  If you want to survive the bad guys, you have to have some bad in you--a lot, actually.  You have to know what they know." (230)

And there is also the occasional bit of indie celebrity gossip that will titillate scenesters:

"November 1. Chicago, IL:...Steve Albini is at the show tonight hanging out with the opening band I guess.  I never met the guy before but once read an article he wrote that put me down.  I am considering breaking his face up for him, but when I move in on him I see that he's just a skinny punk.  It wouldn't have been a good kill, so I let it slide.  He'll never know how close he came to getting his face fucked up in front of his friends." (177)

I doubt Henry will ever read this, see me, or recognize me, but on the off chance that it happens, I hope he wants to have a constructive conversation about writing (and not want to introduce his fist to my face).  I like some of his work very much, but this collection is so random that it left me feeling cold.

85A - Kyle Thomas Smith (2010)

I have mixed feelings about 85A.  On the one hand I want to recommend it because it is about as vivid a portrait of Chicago circa 1989 as you will find in a book.  It's also a pretty good coming-of-age story and a decent primer on how to live a "punk rock lifestyle."  On the other hand I can't quite call it an undiscovered masterpiece because...I don't know...it just seems to be missing something.

My friend gave me 85A sometime in November of last year.  He had gotten it from Center on Halsted, which is a non-profit organization that has a community space in Lakeview.  They were doing a weekly reading series called "Read All about It" in one of the youth groups and he was offered a copy.

COH provides crisis management services for LGBTQ individuals and have a number of youth support groups.  It is not surprising that my friend got this book from there, because it seems like the sort of place at which the main character of the novel, Seamus O'Grady, should have been a regular visitor.  Unfortunately it opened about 18 years too late.

The story takes place on January 23, 1989, and begins with Seamus waiting for the eponymous CTA bus to take him from his home in Jarvis Park to the El to his Catholic high school on the south side of the city.  I can't quite figure out the route--since apparently he takes the Blue Line (then known as the O'Hare-Congress line) and it doesn't seem to go near Ashland Ave. and Blue Island Ave., which is an intersection near his school.  But I am getting wrapped up in travel details.  I have to say I really liked the description of the escalator at the Logan Square stop because it is my home stop.

He lives in an upper middle class community and his parents are religious.  He does not seem to have any friends at his school.  He really only seems to have two friends: Tressa and Dr. Strykeroth.  The former is an artsy biracial girl who rescues him from a group of skinheads that jump him at the corner of Belmont and Clark near the "Punkin' Donuts" (this is one of my favorite moments in the novel because that Dunkin' Donuts is still there and it may be one of the famous fast food branches ever because of it); he also later loses his virginity with her.  The latter is his psychiatrist with whom he apparently has a sexual relationship.

This is a slight problem for me--not because it's sick or whatever, but because it's teased out like the reader isn't supposed to be clear on what's going on.  Like, does Seamus just go to visit him and cry on his shoulder and ask to be held?  Or are they having various kinds of sex?  Of course, a graphic description might be off-putting, but the scene with Tressa is pretty graphic, so I don't understand why Seamus doesn't blatantly tell the reader what is happening in that office.  In a sense, this makes the novel like Try by Dennis Cooper.  I say that the because the main character is gay but also has sex with a girl in it.  But obviously, Try is going for something quite different than 85A.  Still, it just seems tame by comparison.  If you're going to write about transgressive subject matter, I don't think you should beat around the bush, basically.

This book also reminds me of Crossing California.  Together, these books paint a wonderful portrait of Chicago in the 1980's.  I like this better than Crossing California because it's more compact, and less of an "award-winning novel" (i.e. like those movies that are made to win Oscars), but I like it less because it's not as intricately constructed--or at least doesn't appear to be.

Still, I read this book not long after beginning my recent stint at the CTA, and I found it very entertaining for its topicality.  I daresay this may be the ultimate "CTA Novel" though it is certainly not a history of the transit system.  Certainly there cannot be many other books named after bus routes.  Many, many people ride the CTA everyday.  I am sure that many of them would find this book to be at least of passing interest.  At the very least it would be the most ironic book ever to read while on the bus.

But I also take issue with an early scene:

"Finally!  The 85A's rounding Touhy Avenue.  Just when my thighs are freezer burnt and my balls have turned to dry ice.
Last time I asked the driver, 'What took you so fuckin' long?' he ordered me off the bus.  Refused to move til I got off.  Everyone's screaming at me.  He threatened to call the cops, so I got off.  Had to wait for the next bus.  Ended up thirty-five minutes late for school.  Got JUG.  Had to write out the St. Xavier Norms of Conduct twice and the tardiness policy three times.  It's the same asshole bus driver every morning.  So now, no matter how late he is, I have to just suck it up, flash my Student ID, deposit my token and fifteen cents and take my seat like a good little cunt." (11)

Maybe things are different today than they were in 1989, but if Seamus had reported the bus driver for ordering him off the bus, I believe that bus driver would be disciplined.  Bus drivers, like cops, are essentially public servants that are expected to put up with their share of bad behavior.  I read a case about a bus driver who was fired because she pushed an older man who had confronted her physically and had also been loudly directing racial comments at her.  She said she was wrongfully discharged but the arbitrator said you can never have a bus driver hit a passenger.  Now, Seamus is not getting hit, but that sort of behavior (stopping the bus and ordering him off) is unacceptable and I don't believe it's realistic.

Which is my main issue with this book.  My big criticism.  I just don't think it's realistic.  I'm sorry.  Some of it is absolutely wonderful and clearly drawn from true life.  But other details just seem too ridiculous to be taken seriously.  In particular, I do not believe that Seamus's father and brother would beat him as mercilessly as they do, and treat him with such cruelty.  It seems like everyone is a villain in Seamus's life and he has nobody on his side.

Now, I have to admit, I would be pretty mean to Seamus too, because he is kind of annoying.  He clearly is smart but he fails all of his classes anyways.  He doesn't want to have any kind of job but to write.  He has vague ideas about living in London and New York as a quasi-homeless artist who can get by on the kindness of others and he doesn't want to conform to any kind of "normal" life.  This is all well and good--I was like this too, and I am sometimes still like this.  But he does not have very many redeeming qualities apart from having a fair dose of artistic talent.  So that is another problem I have with the novel: cannot identify with the narrator.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the Sex Pistols and PiL.  I love Sid and Nancy.  I love all the musical references in this book.  But Seamus is just like Johnny Rotten in a way: a "fashion item."  He dresses and acts the part, but the book sort of highlights the vacuity of so-called "punk rockers."  Maybe this is just because Seamus doesn't hang out with a group of them, so you don't get the sense of the lifestyle like you might from reading Our Band Could Be Your Life or Lexicon Devil.  85A is basically a lot of posing done by Seamus.

Still, this book has a lot of heart, and would make a good movie.  It reads pretty nicely, though I think Seamus relies too heavily on the word "fuck."  The Wolf of Wall Street supposedly set a record with the number of f-bombs there are in it.  But that is a three-hour movie too.  This book might set a similar sort of record.  I understand he's a teenager but I couldn't help but feel the writing was sort of, I don't know, lazy because of it.

I don't understand the narrative "moment" either--I suppose it takes place at the final scene in the story.  But Seamus doesn't appear to be writing a memoir, or telling it to somebody.  I just don't get who the novel is addressing.  Clearly, the key referent for this book is The Catcher in the Rye.  This is basically the same novel, 50 years later, in Chicago instead of New York, and with a Catholic high school rather than a boarding school.  But Catcher is an adventure story of sorts--it's about 3 days in New York, and that's the plot.  My friend that gave me 85A said the problem with it is that it doesn't really have a plot.  At least until the end.

And the ending is great.  The last fifty pages are the best part of the book.  And the rest of the book isn't too bad, but it just feels random and sometimes (I hate to say this) cliched.  So I think I've adequately summed up my feelings at this point.  But a couple more passages:

"When I was a little kid, I used to go into a deep fuckin' freeze whenever I thought about death and being stuck in a casket some undertaker drops in the ground.  It scared the living shit out of me that buried dead might be the same as buried alive--and it'd be for-fuckin'-ever, just you and your lonely little corpse, stuck in one place under thick wood and mounds of immovable dirt, until the end of time, until the Second Coming--whenever that shit was supposed to happen.  Later, when I was about seven, I found out you could get cremated instead, so I went and told Mom I want to be cremated, have my ashes scattered to the four winds so I can at least get some elbow room when this trip is over.  She said Catholics can't.  Man, Catholics can't do shit, can they?  I think it's after she told me that that I first started checking apartment listings in the Sunday Trib, thinking I should move out.  Seven years after my cremation chat with Mom, I found myself right where I didn't want to be: flat on my fuckin' back in the afterlife, in a dark place, unable to move a muscle, probably for-fuckin'-ever." (37-38)

This is a nice example of Smith's ability to write very well, i.e. to explain a feeling that most of us have felt at one time or another and put it perfectly into words.

The other part of the novel I really like is Seamus's obsession with a boy named Colby that he met on the El.  There is a passage that was very similar to one part of my second novel S/M, and made me feel like a similar feeling was at work, i.e. writing about somebody and hoping they would one day read it and know they were the character and find you years later:

"It's been well over a year now.  Colby still hasn't called.  Not that I'm waiting by the phone anymore.  And I haven't seen him around since that night either, not even at the fuckin' Murphy's Law concert, where my eyes were peeled out of their fuckin' sockets for him.  And I've been back to the video room time and again and he never turned up.  He wasn't even at Medusa's when Ministry played.  Fuckin' everyone who's anyone was there!  Not him, though.  Who knows, maybe he moved.  God, I fuckin' hope not.  I so want to see him again.
I never told Tressa about the night I met Colby.  Never told her what happened with Narc.  Never told her about my attempts at a cockney accent and a new story.  But I did ask her if the name Colby rang a bell.  She said it didn't and asked me why I asked.  I said somebody told me some story about somebody on Belmont named Colby but I couldn't remember how it went.  I could tell she could tell I was lying.  I remembered the story.  Knew it fuckin' chapter and verse.  I was its author.  'Colby's coming with me to London': I nursed the story all last year.  I nurse it now, but not so much now that a year has gone by and the phone hasn't rung.  Yet my London Plans still stand if he ever wants to hear my pitch, if I ever see him on the L again, if we ever become friends.  I'll keep watching out for him at Irving Park station.  But I won't do a cockney accent next time.  That was just fuckin' stupid." (104-105)

In summary, 85A is a bumpy ride, but it is one that you may be glad you took.  This is a really good book for young adults, even though the language is very vulgar.  I know things are different in 2014 than they were in 1989, but there are still kids out there like Seamus who feel like nobody could ever understand them.  This book will show them that everything they're feeling is totally normal, and that they shouldn't give up hope that their lives will get better.  It's not a perfect book by any means, but it's a pretty good debut for Smith, and I would be interested to read his other books if and when they are published.

Special Comment: Batman in Aurora

While this was intended as Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #14, my co-editors at BLS Advocate did not feel that it was appropriate for the site. They did not know where I was headed with this, and they felt that some of it might be offensive due to the nature of the shootings. This is totally understandable as nobody wants to touch this topic unless they accept "one-dimensional thinking" as an appropriate analytic process. Also, I fully admit this article jumps from idea to idea with little apparent "connection," but believe that within the totality of the piece, a meaning arises. While it is upsetting that BLS Advocate is not interested in the piece (for I believe it is one of the best I have ever written), and my audience will therefore be smaller, I am glad I do not need to edit out all of the seemingly irrelevant details. For BLS Advocate purposes, whatever I write next will be NIED #14, and this will remain simply a "Special Comment":

Batman in Aurora
by Christopher J. Knorps
On July 20, 2008, I went to see The Dark Knight at the movie theater at CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood with my two friends Mike and Molly.

On July 21, 2012, I called my friend Emily. I told her that, while Mike and Molly’s wedding was surely going to be a beautiful occasion, I was a tad upset that I would have to miss seeing The Dark Knight Rises during its opening weekend, given that Mike, Molly and I had done it four years previous. Emily responded that I should be happy that I hadn’t gone to a midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado, as a massacre had taken place there the previous night.

This was the first news I heard of it, and the last for a few days. The wedding took place in Big Sur, CA, and the majority of its attendees did not have cell phone reception or internet access. When I got back to Chicago and put the final touches on my ACA Analysis, I saw that far more releases had been posted on the www.whitehouse.gov website in regards to this massacre than in regards to the passage of the ACA. Clearly this is no small matter.

For those of you that do not already know, I am filming a shot-by-shot remake of the 1989 Tim Burton version of Batman, which will be titled Batman in Brooklyn. While I do not care to get into the particulars of my inspiration here, I will note that Charles Hynes has tentatively agreed to play himself (in the analogous role of D.A. Harvey Dent) and we will be needing student volunteers to play extras in one or two of his scenes, so please stay tuned.

Only July 27, 2012, my friend Joe texted me. Joe has recently taken a job in Albany, NY and is leaving Astoria. His text read as follows:

“Jack, i know this is late, but i think this whole shooting Colorado thing just made what you are trying to create all that more incredibly prescient and important. I know i cant be around for your production. Can i shoot some b-roll or secondary stock footage for your movie....”

He went onto describe the cobblestone paths of Albany, but I have since deleted the texts. Regardless, many people doubt my ability to pull this off next year since it will be such an incredibly busy one, but this has become a personal mission. As soon as Hynes became involved, I could not let the project peter out. Now that a mass-murderer (whose name I will not even deign to learn) has taken the “corporate opportunity” provided by a multi-billion dollar franchise to immortalize himself with a heinous act, Batman has undoubtedly become the most notorious comic book superhero of all time. And another Batman remake must be filmed.

Batman’s moral compass is not at issue here, though it is a subject of frequent debate amongst his fans. Superman is essentially a government tool (and probably a Republican if one takes Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns as his “true story”) and Spiderman is a nerdy kid whose morality is rarely, if ever questioned. It is unlikely that this killer was a fan of Batman, but more likely a fan of the Joker (I have seen his hair). 

In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger cemented his status in the pantheon of American cinema with an iconic performance of that role and led many to write-off Jack Nicholson’s virtuoso accomplishment (which also made him the highest paid actor of his time) as nothing more than a footnote. But Ledger’s performance was seriously dark, the type of thing to spur imitation (in contrast to Nicholson’s--which was much funnier, and more inimitable). He also made it seem “cool” to be criminally insane. He supposedly took inspiration from Sid Vicious in the similar way that Johnny Depp took inspiration from Keith Richards for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean films. Sid Vicious died young of a heroin overdose; Keith Richards lives on; Heath Ledger died young of an “accidental” overdose; Johnny Depp has been a Hollywood heart-throb for the past thirty years (and worked with Tim Burton more than any other actor); Jack Nicholson lounges in Los Angeles, and goes to far less Lakers games.

Kurt Cobain once said, “Punk rock is freedom.” Sid Vicious is a more popular figure in punk culture than Johnny Rotten because Johnny Rotten lives on, lounging in Los Angeles, collecting on the commodity he helped to create by branding himself an “anarchist.” Kurt Cobain also died young of a heroin overdose.  

It’s no secret that “living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse” has been a mantra of the counterculture for the past sixty years, and while it is doubtful that this massacre will prevent similar future acts of self-destruction, it reinforces the “Columbine” issue, raised some thirteen years ago, raised on the campuses of Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech more recently, and now in the national spotlight again.  

Do video games make people more violent?  Do films make people more violent?  Can we blame a film for the deaths of 14 innocent people?  Should Warner Brothers pay for their funerals?  Does Christian Bale have a duty to visit the injured victims in a hospital?  

No. In Video Software Dealer’s Ass’n v. Schwarzenegger, the 9th Circuit held that California did not have a compelling interest in preventing psychological or neurological harm to minors allegedly caused by violent video games and that even if it had a compelling interest in preventing psychological or neurological harm allegedly caused to minors by violent video games, the law was not narrowly tailored to further that interest.  John Hinckley tried to shoot President Reagan to impress Jodie Foster, but no one goes around trying to be like Patrick Bateman (because he is a “dork”). Warner Brothers doesn’t have to pay for the funerals, but the movie theater showing the film offered to do so. And Christian Bale is not required to visit the victims, but he did because he knew it would mean a lot to them, and it probably did. It was the right thing to do.

This murderer was clearly imitating the Joker (the Ledger version) but his regime is over. The murderer will not escape from prison, or a home for the criminally-insane in Colorado (one of which incidentally housed my younger brother’s assailant after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, after being previously tried for attempted murder, and allowed to work in the school cafeteria). The Dark Knight Rises will still be an enormously successful film. Batman will remain as popular a figure as ever, and Batman in Brooklyn will be shot this Fall and Spring.

I will be playing the Joker in Batman in Brooklyn. And to me, there is a fine line between Batman and the Joker. Batman does not hate the Joker, and does not want to kill him, but feels that he must for the good of Gotham City. The Joker kills hundreds of innocent people.  Batman’s fans hate it when Batman kills, but he only kills when he has good reason to do so. Perhaps an analogy can be made to cops who shoot when presented with a threat to bodily injury, but Batman is never overzealous in his defensive measures. The fine line comes in where writers draw psychological parallels, namely, childhood trauma as a cause, and violence as an effect.  

The Joker, this murderer, the Columbine shooters, et. al. have been traumatized (as have many others who alternatively make positive contributions to society). The Joker has been disfigured by Batman. The Columbine shooters were bullied. And I don’t know about this murderer except I think he was getting his PHD in something and that he told his psychiatrist that he was planning some kind of “big event” (while graduate degrees may not be considered traumatizing, I think everyone at BLS knows earning one can drive you at least a little bit insane).

The interesting legal issue that arises to me is not gun control (which will be debated until the end of American history) but tort liability. Nobody had a duty to anyone in this case, except perhaps the psychiatrist. And while Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California held that a psychiatrist has a duty to report to the police if their patient expresses a desire to inflict harm upon a particular person, a potential civil action may arise in this case which may extend that policy to generalized groups of people. This is now certain to be a moral dilemma for psychiatrists: at what point does the patient cross the line that demands notification of the authorities?  

As the Joker states in The Killing Joke, an excellent story by Alan Moore, all it takes is one bad day to cross that line. Whatever it is that drives these people to violence may be one small remark (a stray gay joke, a slight regarding choice of clothing), or something more major (being forced to assist the Mob with an inside job after you’ve just learned of the deaths of your wife and unborn child), but it can be enough decimate hundreds of people’’s lives.  

Very few lessons, if any, can be learned from this tragedy. But I can think of one: we all need to be more sensitive to the needs of others. Hate breeds hate and if these people were happy, if they never had their “one bad day,” then they might have lived to help improve society, rather than harm individuals within it. It is entirely possible that The Dark Knight glorifies criminal violence and insanity, but the attraction towards that glorification is felt most strongly by the disaffected, the outcasts, the losers. This is not to say that any semblance of a glorification of violence should be purged from every film. The catharses that art can provide are every bit as valuable as the laughs derived from a stand-up comedy routine.

The solution is not to stop telling stories with morally ambiguous characters, but to ensure that people treat one another with love and respect. We are all on this bumpy ride together and we are all going to die anyways, and we shouldn’t be mocking people that have problems: we should be looking out for them and trying to improve the conditions for happiness across society as a whole. Once the most disaffected among us have the opportunity to attain happiness, senseless crimes will subside.  

            On August 5, 2012, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises in downtown Chicago at a 9:00 PM showing.  There was no security checkpoint, as I feared, nor any inappropriate jokes shouted near the opening.  There was only applause at the end.  A full review should be posted here in the next couple of days.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School.  He enjoys studying bankruptcy law.