The following excerpt taken from Slate.com’s article “In the Aurora Theater the Men Protected the Women. What Does That Mean?” *
At
least three of the 12 victims of the [Aurora movie theater] shooting
died because they were physically protecting the women they came to the
movie with. Alex Teves, 24, used his body as a shield to cover his
girlfriend. He was shot, and she survived. Matthew Robert McQuinn threw
his body in front of his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler. He too was killed,
and she was pulled to safety by her brother, Nick Yowler. Jonathan
Blunk, 26, pushed his girlfriend, Jansen Young, under a seat. Again, he
was killed, and she got out after the shooting was over.
...Papers
have described what happened in the theater as "chivalry." But it's not
really that. Chivalry is a code of conduct connected to social
propriety. Throwing your body in front of your girlfriend when people
all around you are getting shot is an instinct that's basic, and deeper.
It’s the same reason these Batman and Spider-Man franchises endure:
Because whatever else is fading away, women still seem to want their
superhero, and men still seem to want to be him.
_____________________________________________________
Christopher
Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises is honest,
painful, triumphant, tragic. It shows the difference a few good people
can make against an overwhelming onslaught of evil, and that those good
people are just as flawed as the rest of us - Commissioner Gordon
lives a lie for 8 years, Bruce Wayne hurts Alfred again and again
through his selfish acts, Selina Kyle has a dark past she just can’t
shake. Nobody good is perfect, and nothing evil is undefeatable. Rises
is intense and painful without the manic brutality of the second movie
in this series, and real enough to make you stop and think “what if?”
The
weekend after the Aurora shooting I read many, many news articles
detailing the attack and aftermath. I had read that the attacker entered
the theater and set off his gas bombs just as two bombs exploded
on-screen. I saw the movie on Monday night, and as that scene approached
I found myself tensely watching the exits at either corner of the
screen. I told myself nothing would happen...but at the same time, I
couldn’t be sure.
Later
in the film Bane sets off a massive explosion in a crowded arena and
his thugs swarm the stands, preventing anyone from fleeing. I cringed
and tensed because even amid the fantastical elements of a superhero
story, it felt real. A very similar event had just happened; on a
smaller scale, yes, but a masked stranger has burst in without warning
and taken lives. The real-life attacker didn’t bring down a city, but he did enough. What
was entertainment before had become a reminder of real life.
Many
themes in The Dark Knight Rises mirror those in Charles Dickens’ French
Revolution classic A Tale of Two Cities, and at one point a main
character even quotes the book’s heroic closing passage. The lines he
reads are the last words spoken by a man about to die, a man who has
taken the place of another at the guillotine. For a large section of the
film the citizens of Gotham must provide their own protection, their
hero missing. One police officer hides behind closed doors as an epic
battle approaches, yet ultimately chooses to join the valiant men he had
led before, during times of peace. A reviewer
from Relevant Magazine’s website** remarked that The Dark Knight Rises
is “a morality tale and a mortality tale,” which I believe sums it up
very well.
If
the men in the Aurora theater had time to think at all, something
inside each of them must have said, “if you do this, you could die,” and
they did it anyway. They protected their girlfriends. Their wives.
Their children.
They
didn’t have time to plan. It wasn’t part of a script they had
rehearsed. When given the split-second choice to save themselves or
protect the ones they loved, they chose the latter. They weren’t wearing
armor and had no special powers, but they were superheroes, plain and
simple.
*http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/07/23/aurora_dark_knight_shooting_the_men_protected_the_women.html
**http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/dark-knight-rises
