But there’s always been and always going to be dark and violent fantasies for the wrong people to obsess on the wrong way. Ever read the un-Disneyfied versions of Grimms Fairy Tales? There’s some messed up junk in them. It would be just as easy for a whack job to obsess on Snow White and start cutting out hearts.
I don’t think they are influential to the masses. Look at that murder rate chart I posted earlier. As violent video games (and violent movies along with them) come out and get more and more popular the violent crime rate drops. Now we all know that correlation is not cause, so I’m not saying the games and movies are why the crime rate dropped, BUT with that rate dropping constantly while these games and movies gain popularity it makes a hard sell that the opposite is true, if they’re making people violent then where’s all the violence? People who go nuts are nuts to start with, we know from all the different things people obsess on (basically everything) that it’s not the thing, it’s the person. The question isn’t will this person with the bad tendencies obsess, it’s what are they going to obsess on. Jarold Laughner managed to get himself violently obsessed without watching movies and TV, some people are just screwed up that way.
This is an important point. I believe it actually is to large swaths of adolescents with their developing cognition/emotions and others with deranged minds. To regular stable adults, not at all, since they can view a film production for what it is. The former groups not so much, so they are more fully impacted by it.
Another, even more malignant manifestation of this problem, is the gansta rap subculture. Would you also deny its immense influence on certain groups? Both the direct effects of those who subscribe to it and the indirect consequences to larger society? Surely not. It compels some to lives of lawlessness and hedonism while promoting racial hatred and misogyny.
I doubt you'd deny the latter but I would anticipate you'd say it's a jump too far to conclude that a movie franchise could be complicit in a mass shooting. Unfortunately it isn't so.