I bawled my eyes out when I saw The Dark Knight Rises this summer.
Not a few tears or a sniffle, but full-on, open sobbing.
To this day, I don’t really know what hit me so hard.
Yes, the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy was grim beyond grim. The film ends with an hourlong gut punch filled with apocalyptic bombast. Armies of men 1,000 strong rumbled in the streets amid pounding music.
And my favorite hero roared off into nuclear oblivion to complete a cycle of triumph, fall, loss and redemption.
But that can’t really explain why I lost it like I did.
This isn’t the only film I’ve ever seen in which people sacrifice everything to protect what they hold dear. This isn’t the only film I’ve seen in which characters are devastated in emotionally complex ways.
Perhaps it was the day I saw it.
On July 20, I woke up, as we all did, to news of the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, at a movie theater during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. In the darkened theater, as people sat to enjoy an entertaining tale of terror and heroic battle, they were assaulted with tear gas and fired upon by automatic weapons. The nightmare became real: 12 people killed, 58 injured.
Despite hearing the news, my wife and I went to a morning show of the movie anyway. Not as if there was any real threat of another attack, because mass shootings are random. But all the same, I walked into that dark theater with senses heightened for danger, only to watch a movie filled with anticipation, fear, danger and death.
Seeing the film amid the just-happened Aurora shootings tapped into my own life, my own triumphs and failures and troubles – both external and self-inflicted – that threatened my life many times over. It was too much in that moment. I broke.
The other night, I was watching The Dark Knight Rises on video at home. And here we are, awash in another mass shooting, this time at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, about 45 miles away from where I live. Six adults and 20 children gunned down. Another mass shooting, on a scale even larger than Aurora, just five months later.
In the few days since the tragedy, there’s been a lot of talk. Gun talk. Mental illness talk. Parenting talk. Religion talk. Violence talk. And sadness and fear. Much, much sadness and fear.
I know that sadness. I know that fear. But this time, I don’t feel them.
And that brings me back to the story of Bruce Wayne, and the legend of Batman.
For what is Batman, but a legend forged in grief and tragedy?
A righteous, monstrous transformation of anger, guilt and fear, turned back on those who prey upon the fearful? And in Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Dark Knight, at the core of Bruce’s tale is a boy fighting against fear and anger, by using fear and anger.
There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises when, after Bruce is thrown into the prison pit, a skeptical voice tells him fear is why he fails to escape. Bruce replies, “I’m not afraid. I’m angry.”
And that’s where I am after Newtown. I’m not sad anymore. I’m not afraid. I’m angry.
Now it is time to use this anger. Because this anger will carry me toward action. I must keep its flame alive, to drive me out of my everyday life and into doing something – anything – to change this situation.
The large majority of mass shootings, despite their randomness of incident, location, perpetrator and victim, share several trends involving guns and mental health.
I’m not sure what path I will take quite yet, but the first steps will involve two things.
The first is to help the Newtown community and the families of the victims.
The second is to improve our public safety concerning guns.
My fictional hero, Batman?
He doesn’t like guns.
My real-life hero, my ex-cop father?
He never liked guns, either. They make it all too easy to kill, and killing should never be an easy thing.
Also easy is the evil of a Bane, compared to the evil of Adam Lanza and James Holmes. Real-world evil, done by those who can control themselves and those who can’t, doesn’t have a square-jawed vigilante soldier to exact vengeance.
If only there were a hero who can solve this problem with a sharp mind and hardened fists.
If only.
But, in a way, there is. The teachers and school personnel who hid children, who stood in the killer’s path and sacrificed themselves so that others may live, they are heroes.
And those of us personally untouched by this tragedy, we can be heroes too. We can comfort. We can donate.
But above all, we can be angry and demand a new day.
I can be that hero. So can you.
So let’s go. The signal is lit; time to change.
