The Matrix defense

The Boston Globe ^ | 11/9/2003 | Mark Schone

[Radix]

JOSH COOKE DOESN'T REMEMBER what he was thinking at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 17, when he went up to his room after eating dinner with his parents. He remembers what he was listening to on his headphones -- "Bodies," by metal drones Drowning Pool -- and what he did. "I just kinda looked over at my `Matrix' poster," he says, "and then I looked over at my gun."

The 19-year-old donned combat boots and a black jacket -- like Neo, the hero of the 1999 movie and its sequels. He filled his pockets with shotgun shells. Then he picked up the 12-gauge he'd bought because it looked like the one in the poster of his favorite movie, and he marched downstairs. "I guess you know the rest," he says.

When the police arrived at the house on Adel Road in Oakton, Va., just south of D.C., they found Cooke's parents dead in the basement and Cooke waiting calmly in the driveway. And when Cooke was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder, he became the third killer in the United States since the release of the original movie to consider pleading not guilty by reason of "The Matrix."

A few months before last Wednesday's release of the final installment of the trilogy, "The Matrix Revolutions," Warner Bros. Pictures issued a statement denying any tie between real-world violence and the virtual violence of the "Matrix" movies: "Any attempt to link these crimes with a motion picture . . . is disturbing and irresponsible."

[Radix]

The most famous "Matrix" fan, Lee Malvo, lives downstairs from Cooke in the Fairfax Detention Center.

Malvo was good at first-person shooter games

[Clinging Bitterly]

I don't get it, how seeing a movie or playing a video game makes people do these things. Are these people not being taught the difference between "real" and "not real"?

I suppose it makes sense. There are any number of Democrat talking heads we see every day who never learned, or have forgotten, the difference.

Must be the drugs. Yeah that's it, the drugs.

[Clinging Bitterly]

Ka-boom

[WackyKat]

I don't get it, how seeing a movie or playing a video game makes people do these things

It doesn't- it's just a convenient excuse after the fact.

[irv]

Are these people not being taught the difference between "real" and "not real"?

Of course they were taught the difference. But they'd rather live in the not real. Think of it as a feedback loop. They like the game or the movie or the drugs more than the real world. So that's where they live. The more they live there, the more normal it seems and the harder it is to get used to reality. So they go back to the other.

[Terpfen]

I'm good at first-person shooters, as well as third-person shooters, RPGs, fighters, and turn-based strategy games. I enjoyed the first Matrix film, althoug I have yet to see Reloaded or Revolutions. I'm also 19 years old. Does this make me a potential parent killer?

[Cicero]

I'll bet he popped Twinkies while watching "The Matrix."

[Shooter 2.5]

The first one was a good easy to understand shoot-em-up. The second introduced a large amount of psycho-babble.

I still need someone to explain the third's ending to me. In fact, I think they should have stopped the movie before the ending and had a fourth so they could have wrapped up some of the loose ends.

[Mayhem]

Never before have I wanted one of the good guys to just 'hurry up and die already'. Trinity just kinda dragged it out.

[Prodigal Son]

Hmmm. The article tries to draw a connection between the Columbine Killings and the Matrix but that's kind of weak. Klebold and Harris had been planning their shooting spree for a long time- months and months at least. The Matrix had only been released a few weeks before the shootings. I seriously doubt it was the deciding factor.

[Abe Froman]

My favorite video game, and the one I have spent more time playing than probably every other game in my life combined, is the first-person shooting game "Counter-Strike". In this game, one of the weapons you can use is the exact same gun that I have next to me on the headboard of my bed, while I'm playing the game----a loaded Heckler and Koch USP.

I've NEVER felt like picking it up and shooting my roommate after a marathon session of Counter-Strike. Nor will I ever. Kids that end up doing this kind of thing, frankly, have a screw or two loose. The job of teaching them right from wrong wasn't done completely, or wasn't done right. Playing video games does not, in and of itself, promote violent behavior. Only when combined with negligent parenting and possible psychosis or mental illness of some sort does it contribute to these incidents.