The web was abuzz with chatter about Jim Carrey, who stars in Kick-Ass2, coming out in non-support of the film which, by the comic book author’s own admission has, “a high body count.” Said Carrey:
“I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. I meant to say my apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”
At the same time, the New York Times Michael Cieply quietly posted a story with this headline, “Hollywood’s Passion for Guns Remains Undimmed.”
On the one hand, if you’re Jim Carrey, you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself. He’s made enough fuck-you money that no one in the press or Hollywood can tell him what to do or what to say. On the other hand, if you weren’t somehow changed by the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School you might need to do some soul-searching to figure out why. The liberals blame guns. The gun owners blame drugs and unchecked mental illness. Some think the first person shooter games are breeding a generation of well trained, isolated violence junkies whose high can only be satisfied, ultimately, by a real world body count. Only a few are willing to blame Hollywood. Perhaps it isn’t any one thing. Perhaps the combination of easy access to weapons, unchecked mental illness, celebrity culture and our continuing lust with cinematic gun violence has brought us to the point where a young man can take a semi-automatic weapon into an elementary school and mass murder tiny children.
After Sandy Hook nothing changed. No major laws were passed. The cowards in Washington were cowed by the NRA into inaction. No one wants to live in a country where decisions are made for you: no more violent games. No more violent movies. No more sexy billboard with guns next to powerful movie stars. No more movies with high body counts. We all still want to be “free.” That ultimately leaves it up to the individual. If one movie star refused to smoke cigarettes in a movie in the 90s because they knew cigarettes caused cancer that might mean other movie stars would refuse and before you knew it, movies didn’t feature sexy movie stars smoking cigarettes, without anyone having to order them to do so. It was public perception that changed.
So now Jim Carrey has drawn a line. He still did the movie, Kick-Ass2, but he’s come out publicly against it. One movie isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. But maybe it signals in a change in the way people think, whether they can still get off on violence the way they used to. I guess we’ll find out in the next ten years.
