The Role of Hollywood in Copycat Crime

It’s only a matter of time before a lawsuit brought against a movie (or TV show) for inspiring real-life copycat violence is won. And time may well be running out for “Natural Born Killers” whose even more violent “director’s cut” was recently released (“In All Its Gory Glory” Calendar July 30).

This movie is not the first to demonstrate that life imitates art, but it is the one now charged with inspiring the most worldwide copycat crime ever recorded, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. One victim, left paralyzed after being shot by a woman on a killing spree with her boyfriend--just like the lead characters Mickey and Mallory in “Natural Born Killers”--is Patsy Byers, a Louisiana store clerk who is suing director Oliver Stone. In a voice weakened by gunshot wounds, Byers recently told radio listeners on a show I conduct on KYPA, “The look that she gave me when I asked for help up . . . resembled the lady character [Mallory] . . . like I was nothing. . . . Hollywood has to . . . take responsibility for the garbage they’re putting out.” (Stone and Vidmark Entertainment declined my invitations to speak on the same show.)

As society becomes increasingly obsessed with celebrities and fame, and as technology develops increasingly powerful media forms, the line between reality and fantasy blurs to alarming proportions. And to the extent we can still distinguish reality from fantasy, this distinction seems irrelevant and irritating as we become seduced and trapped by the quicksand of surrealism. Yet nobody wants to admit that media’s influence is out of control.

Commercials, product placement and tie-ins rely upon the unconscious influence on potential consumers that their market researchers eagerly predict; but market researchers are ill-equipped to predict the more psychologically complex copycat behaviors that occur in response to movies, TV shows, songs and books.

Nonetheless, it’s less risky for Hollywood to concede that fashion, dance styles and other pop culture trends are the result of media messages than to acknowledge more malevolent behavior as a reflection of malevolent media messages.

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Real people whose lives have been affected--fortuitously or tragically--by copycat behavior don’t doubt the overwhelming impact of reel images. Ask Medieval Times, whose restaurant business has boomed since it was featured in “The Cable Guy,” or the Iowa farmer whose property has become the latest tourist attraction after being used as a “Twister” location.

But a greater number of people can attest to the credibility of copycat behavior because of the consequent death and destruction that affected their lives. For 10 years, I have collected news clippings and broadcast accounts of alleged copycat crimes for research purposes. My collection, which grows at an ever-increasing rate, includes items such as these:

After seeing “Fatal Attraction,” spurned lovers vengefully cooked their former partner’s pets. Clint Eastwood’s “Magnum Force” provided the fatal Drano recipe that victims were forced to drink. Bloodsucking became irresistible to some after watching “Interview With the Vampire.” The movies cited as inspirational for subsequent sinister acts are too numerous to mention here, but some of the “classics” include: “Taxi Driver,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Child’s Play 3,” “The Deer Hunter” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”

I personally have been told several tragic tales by people such as Darcy Burk, the mother of the boy who set a fire that killed his sister after watching fire-setting-made-cool on “Beavis and Butt-head,” and friends of Nathan Martinez, who killed his stepmother and half-sister after becoming obsessed with “Natural Born Killers.”

Not only have movies and TV shows been implicated as progenitors of copycat violence, but songs--from the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” to Ice-T’s “Cop Killer”--have been linked to listeners loyally following the lyrics. Books, from Goethe’s “Sorrows of Young Werther” to Conrad’s “The Secret Agent,” have had their plots acted out by devoted readers.

All mere coincidences, despite the often painstaking details that are alike? I don’t think so. These copycats are unconsciously identifying with the glamorized characters of movies, TV shows, songs and books and want to feel the ecstatic rush they are portrayed as getting from violence, especially when it’s eroticized.

If lawyers are finally able to succeed with arguments of negligence, intent to incite or product liability to convince a judge and jury that a movie is at least partially responsible for a violent crime, a good many Hollywood cameras may come to a grinding halt as movie-makers are forced to reflect upon the new boundaries of their responsibility. It would behoove Oliver Stone and the distributors of “Natural Born Killers” to begin reflecting upon this possibility now, instead of defiantly releasing more ammunition as the death count and lawsuits continue to rise.

For those who too automatically assert that an “artiste” need not concern himself with the mundane concept of responsibility, it’s important to remember that self-indulgence has never been considered “art”--nor has a creation made by a committee of corporate strategists and market researchers.