Hollywood actor Seth Rogen and his director pal Judd Apatow have hit out at claims from a film critic that their movies are partly to blame for the latest mass shooting in America. Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday claims that some comedy films are part of a culture that breeds violence like Elliot Rodger’s killing spree, in which he shot and ran over a number of people last week.
Rogen posted some angry tweets in response to an opinion piece by Ann Hornaday, who claimed that films like Rogen’s current hit Bad Neighbours could encourage killings like the ones perpetrated by Elliot Rodger. In videos posted online before the crimes, he said he was being driven to violence thanks to being rejected by women.
“How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like Neighbors and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of ‘sex and fun and pleasure’? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, ‘It’s not fair’?”
Rogen, the ‘shlubby arrested adolescent’ one presumes she was referring to, responded on Twitter, saying “I find your article horribly insulting and misinformed” and “how dare you imply that me getting girls in movies caused a lunatic to go on a rampage.”
Judd Apatow, who Hornaday named in her article, then retweeted Rogen and added “She uses tragedy to promote herself with idiotic thoughts.” Apatow also asked his followers not to promote her or engage with her as it would only add fuel to the fire.
Elliot Rodger made no direct reference to any films as inspirations for his killings, blaming instead the loneliness and rejection he felt from women in general.
(Images and source – Twitter, Guardian)
