Oldboy Vs. Psycho Killers

I knew it! It seems that after any tragedy, it becomes very important to the American public to lay blame somewhere besides with the perpetrator. And, recently at least, it's either video games, TV, movies or rock music that get the blame, and those are in some kind of a line because this time it's video games, next time it's TV and then it's movies turn. Well, after the horror at Virginia Tech, it's the movies turn people! And the movie, my friends, is Oldboy!



Now, please don't think I'm defending anything but the movie. The blame here, clearly, lies with this psycho, Cho, and no one else. No one put the guns in his hands, no one spurred him on, this was one very sick man, acting alone. But, I've seen that the media has noticed that one pose on the 'multi-media manifesto' matched one scene in the movie...and it's off to the races!

If you've seen Oldboy, and I have yet to meet someone around here who has, you know that this is a dark revenge story, but it has little resemblance to anything that happened on April 16th. The story in Oldboy is about Dae-Su, a man who's been imprisoned for 15 years for reasons he doesn't know. When he suddenly finds himself released, he's told to find the people responsible and take his revenge by a mysterious man. As the story unfolds, Dae-Su realizes that he's being manipulated in some very unsavory ways by this man and in the end, the man wins! It's a dark, disturbing movie that deals with themes that most movies won't touch.

I simply hate the fact that we have to find something that made him do that insane things that he did. I understand the need to want to know what would make anyone do something this insane, but it's all internal. Cho was obviously wired wrong from the start, and anything that he did stems from that. The fact that he watched a certain movie, or listened to a certain song, or played a certain game is totally secondary to the fact that this was someone who was inevitably going to travel this darkest of paths!

So, if we need to lay the blame, and I understand that need, let's blame the person who did this. What made him do it? His insanity! Any external influences seem to be completely secondary to his mental illness to me.

So, now that I've vented here a little, my thoughts are with those who lost friends and loved ones in this tragedy, I understand that after the loss of someone close you need to have some kind of reason behind it and that it's easy to blame anyone around, police, school administration, even the media, but let's place the blame where it deserves to be, with the perpetrator!