To the U.K.’s Telegraph, it’s the “Batman cinema shooting trial.”
The convergence of a Hollywood movie title with real American violence that left 12 people dead and dozens more injured seems irresistible to the global media.
The Times (London) regularly affixes the term “Batman killer” to the shooter’s name.
From abroad, the interest in this trial is exceptional, highlighting a particular aspect of the case: to some it appears an all-American atrocity.
America’s “gun disease” has long been observed by foreign nations as an oddity of our culture. Gun violence “makes the country seem less like a model and more like a basket case,” a Guardian editor wrote.
Adding to the global interest in America’s gun pathology is interest in America as the biggest creator of mass entertainment, some of it admittedly violent. And unlike some previous instances of globally televised disaster, the Aurora theater shooting centers on a homegrown villain and coincidentally American superhero movie.
There was no foreign terrorist involved; instead the incident involved the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster (“The Dark Knight Rises” worldwide box office drew $1.08 billion — nearly 60 percent of that in foreign ticket sales).
“It is a story that is probably more memorable even to a German audience than many others,” Annette Brieger, senior producer with ZDF German TV based in the Washington, D.C., bureau, said via e-mail.
Brieger observed the reasons the story “hits home”: the Hollywood angle (the world is well aware of “Dark Knight”); the number of deaths; ordinary people getting killed when they are in a theater watching a movie.
“In general it is very difficult for most Germans to understand the debate about guns and gun control in the U.S. There are horrific examples of gun violence like Sandy Hook, Columbine and the Aurora theater, proof — in the eyes of many Germans — of the destructive power of guns in modern society,” she said. “The struggle at the center of the debate in the U.S. — Second Amendment vs. public safety — is something that few Germans understand and even less would agree with.”
Global attention to the proliferation of guns in America and the spike in mass shootings here accompanies every instance of mass violence, from Columbine to Sandy Hook.
When a gunman killed 12 at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Foreigners say they are no longer surprised by U.S. gun violence.” It read, in part:
“As seen from abroad, the mass shooting, apparently by a lone gunman, appeared part of a new American normal, a byproduct of a treasured gun culture that largely mystifies those living beyond U.S. borders.”
From the New Zealand Herald (“Colorado theater gunman’s stoic behavior at heart of trial”) to China’s official outlet, X inhua News Agency, networks and publications are issuing regular reports on the trial. For foreign news outlets, America’s most influential export, movies, are a key piece of the story.
Xinhua noted “a stark contrast was drawn Wednesday between the extreme excitement and ebullient expectations that preceded the midnight Batman premiere showing, and the ‘unfathomable horror’ that reversed those emotions within seconds.”
England’s BBC, Germany’s ZDF and other global news networks are relaying reports on major developments in the case, although not daily throughout the legal proceedings.
Hendrik Sybrandy, a former Denver TV news reporter who now works for China’s CCTV America, has been filing updates on the trial. His editors in Washington, D.C., and Beijing are interested in the mass shooting story for a number of reasons, he said. While there may be an element of “schadenfreude,” he said, “I’m not seeing an agenda.”
There may be no agenda, but it’s difficult to escape the suspicion that foreign readers and TV viewers shake their heads at America’s culture.
Anyone watching from overseas must suspect the superpower is suffering an illness of recurring violence, or as the Guardian editorial noted, that the U.S. is “afflicted by a pathology other nations strive to avoid.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
