Washington Post fim critic, Ann Hornaday, wrote an op-ed on Saturday that basically blames Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow movies for UCSB shooter Elliot Rodgers’ mass murdering rampage througout Isla Vista on Friday. Problem solved everybody.
“How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, “It’s not fair”?...If our cinematic grammar is one of violence, sexual conquest and macho swagger — thanks to male studio executives who green-light projects according to their own pathetic predilections — no one should be surprised when those impulses take luridly literal form in the culture at large.
I realize this op-ed is railing against the patriarchy and the misogyny that is subversively inculcated into men at an early age, but what are you even talking about, bitch? For real. I kinda hope that the irony of a woman making an emotional and illogical leap in trying to tie her own personal narrative into a story that has nothing to do with her with an op-ed piece isn’t lost on you. Look, I’ve seen Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow movies as well, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never killed anyone because Seth Rogen had sex with Katherine Heigl. Wanna know why? As far as I know, I’m not mentally deranged. We want to talk about everything that happened except for what actually happened. Although it’s easy to blame Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow for shitty movies, let’s try maybe another argument when trying to find out why Elliot Rodgers felt the need to slaughter innocent people. An argument like, I don’t know, he was a white, privileged sociopath who needed medication to control the voices in his head because his brain couldn’t understand how the world outside his house didn’t think he was great, so he went on a murderous rampage because he knew we as a society would then give him the attention he so desperately craved after he did. This dude wrote a manifesto and had more selfies than guns, so if you think he spent a lot of time having an existential crisis over a movie, then you clearly don’t understand that white, privileged 22- year old sociopaths (or 22-year olds in general) believe they are the ones defining reality, not movies, because they are so wrapped up in themselves, they really don’t have time for much else. If you took the time to think this through, maybe you would have said that the rampant mental health issues we face in America can be mostly contributed to the culture of paranoia and violence where everybody gets a trophy except those deserve it that we’ve all had a hand in creating, not a chick flick. Or maybe you could write and op-ed about how Sex and The City created a generation of women who ate Top Ramen in Manhattan five times a week in a 6th floor walk up with seven roommates, because they were made to believe that every woman deserves to have their exsitence defined by their own Mr. Big. I’d read that for sure.
