NEW YORK — It was a year ago this week that the sickening sound of gunfire rang out at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo. The mass shooting reverberated painfully in Hollywood, and how could it not? It happened at the movies.
Five months later, the horrific massacre of first-graders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., launched yet more reflection — about gun control, certainly, but also about entertainment content, particularly violent video games said to be favored by the killer.
And yet, in the year since Aurora, seemingly little has overtly changed in the area of violence in entertainment, save the notable musings of actor Jim Carrey, who tweeted misgivings about his latest film, "Kick-Ass 2," after Newtown: "Now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence," he wrote.
And some ask: If nothing changes now, will it ever?
"My fear is that we have such a short attention span," says Chuck Williams, a youth violence expert at Drexel University who's especially troubled by movies that depict "stylized" violence. "And as a society, we don't like being on a diet. We want to consume what we want, when we want it."
Certainly, screen violence is a complex issue. Studies have not shown clear links with real-world violence; in video games, which have undergone the most scrutiny lately, many researchers say the evidence just isn't there.
There's also the specter of censorship and infringement on artistic freedom, something that raises hackles instantly in the entertainment industry. And, of course, there's the issue of gun control. Many in Hollywood say that's where the focus should be, while the gun lobby has suggested violent images in entertainment and games are more to blame than access to guns.
"The issue makes a lot of people uncomfortable in Hollywood — they don't really want to deal with it," says Janice Min, editor of The Hollywood Reporter trade publication. She notes that after Aurora, producer Harvey Weinstein called for a summit of filmmakers to discuss screen violence — but it never happened.