[Drizzt]

US killers blame 'The Matrix' for shootings
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
19 May 2003


Call it the Matrix Defence. WhileThe Matrix Reloaded, the second installment of the hit science fiction series, is breaking box office records around the world, lawyers around the United States are starting to use a novel excuse for people – especially young, mentally disturbed people – who commit murder.

Essentially the line is: I can't be guilty, because this isn't reality and we live in a computer-simulated world just like the one depicted in the film.

It is being used by Josh Cooke, 19, from Virginia, who calmly shot his parents in their family basement in February and then phoned police to say what he had done. In two other recent cases, one in Ohio and the other in San Francisco, defendants have been found not guilty by reason of insanity after claiming they thought they were living in the Matrix.

It is not unusual for violent criminals to identify with popular culture – bank robbers often take inspiration from heist movies like Point Blank, and there is evidence that the destroyers of the World Trade Centre were fans of Independence Day – but The Matrix appears to have a special hold.

The Matrix Reloaded took $93.3m (£59m) in the US in its opening weekend, the biggest to date for an R-certificate film – which requires an adult to accompany under-17s. It opens in Britain tomorrow.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=407532

[Coronach]

Lets see Hollywood get behind a ban on this topic...

Mike ;)

[Skibane]

this isn't reality and we live in a computer-simulated world

Some of the world's major religions have a similar theme: The physical world is illusionary and temporary, while the spirtual world is the true reality. Of course, most religions also include a "commmit murder and go to Hell" clause that helps thwart this kind of defense...

[Telperion]

Essentially the line is: I can't be guilty, because this isn't reality and we live in a computer-simulated world just like the one depicted in the film.

I'm sure he'll enjoy his computer-simulated cell then... :rolleyes:

[rock jock]

Some of the world's major religions have a similar theme: The physical world is illusionary and temporary, while the spirtual world is the true reality
As far as Christianity is concerned, the physical world may be described as temporary, but never "illusionary". The Matrix, however, does have a religious ring to it. It is a quite intriguing story, but a story nonetheless. I wonder at what point these dimwits realize that.

[Justin]

Essentially the line is: I can't be guilty, because this isn't reality and we live in a computer-simulated world just like the one depicted in the film.I will personally buy a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for anyone who can prove this in a court of law.

:rolleyes:

What a load of unmitigated, stinking crap!

[12.7x99mm]

:scrutiny:

[general]

I will personally buy a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for anyone who can prove this in a court of law.
this isn't reality and we live in a computer-simulated world In a REAL world court of law or.........
MMMMMM donuts...:p

[tyme]

It is not unusual for violent criminals to identify with popular culture – bank robbers often take inspiration from heist movies like Point Blank...
Uhh... was Point Blank about bank robberies? I've never seen either "Point Blank" movie, but I think he means Point Break.

[Mk VII]

in a bygone age they would have said "the Devil made me do it". Now that no one believes in God or the Devil anymore they have to find something else.

[TarpleyG]

rock jock,

I don't think Christianity was the religion being referred to there. Probably one of the eastern religions.

GT

[KPersimmon]

I don't think Christianity was the religion being referred to there. Probably one of the eastern religions.


From what I've read, the Matrix is supposed to have a "Buddhistic" theme, although true Buddhism has always had a strong moral/ethical base in addition to its spirituality. (This means it has nothing in common with Hollywood! :rolleyes: )

If you think about it, The Matrix might refer to the illusory/fantasy world generated by the motion picture industry, and "The One" could easily refer to the Ultimate Movie Superhero who is able to dodge bullets and fight equally imaginary baddies like a one-man Marine platoon. So, IMO, the joke is on those silly few who might think The Matrix actually has some sort of "spiritual" theme, when it's nothing more than multi-million-dollar-making entertainment.

As to the "Matrix Defense," are we really surprised when publicity-hungry attorneys use such lame excuses in defending sociopaths, who are never going to admit responsibility for their criminal actions anyway?

[Greg L]

I will personally buy a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for anyone who can prove this in a court of law.

Is this an offshoot of the Twinkie defense? :D

Greg

[rock jock]

Oh.

On another note, I always wondered why the Wachoski Bros. used so many Biblical names in the Matrix series. Anyway, my opinion is that people this far removed from rational thought were gonna go off the deep end eventually anyway. The Matrix just provided a convenient backdrop for their delusional break.

[Soap]

Why don't criminals ever say, "I did it all because of reading Paradise Lost and I thought we were in a war with Heaven and Hell!"

[Feanaro]

Zen, which is considered a religion by some, holds that this world is pretty much a "dream". And that any other world, reality or plane of existance is also but a dream.

Anyways, I've heard much better insanity excuses.

[braindead0]

All forms of Buddhism (that I'm aware of, Mahayana, Theravada, Zen, Hinayana) and most offshoots (and I believe Hinduism as well) believe that the real world (samsara) is illusory yet it has a purpose in perfecting your (spirit, morals, soul, whatever you want to call it). Whatever karma you generated via deeds in 'the real world' will be used to judge you in the bardos (limbo, afterlife..etc).

So yeah, you can do anything you want but there are consequences.. You'd probably be reborn as that which you hate the most ;-)

[Justin]

Mmmm...Twinkies...

The Matrix movies are rife with religious and philosophical references ranging from Christianity, to Buddhism, to Socrates. To say that The Matrix movies are 'just another action flick' is kind of like saying that a McClaren F1 is 'just another car.'

[Mute]

Well then, we're not really executing the POS either. It's all an illusion so he's only being fried in the Matrix. :fire:

[Feanaro]

Good point. ;)

[Dannyboy]

Why don't criminals ever say, "I did it all because of reading Paradise Lost and I thought we were in a war with Heaven and Hell!"
This is easy. It's because they all missed out on the Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can't Read Good...and Stuff. And besides, it's soooo much easier to watch a movie than to go and do something like read.

[bobs1066]

Didn't Steven Wright say one time that he was worried because someone had broken into his house and replaced everything he owned with exact duplicates?

[Skunkabilly]

When he's sitting in his simulated cell, I wonder if he can have people download Pong to him to pass the time.

[Standing Wolf]

It's always somebody else's fault.

[El Tejon]

That's it! Cancel tonight I'm going right now! Betcha I don't hurt anyone tomorrow either.

[TexasVet]

I believe the correct statement would be "the McCLaren is just another OVERPRICED car.":D

[Drizzt]

Escape 'The Matrix,' Go Directly to Jail
Some Defendants in Slaying Cases Make Reference to Hit Movie

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 17, 2003; Page A01


Josh Cooke wasn't merely a fan of the hit movie "The Matrix." He believed he lived inside The Matrix, his lawyers say.

The 19-year-old had a huge movie poster hanging in his Oakton bedroom and a trench coat like the one worn by Neo, Keanu Reeves's character. He bought a 12-gauge shotgun, similar to one of the weapons Neo uses to fight the "agents" in the movie.

And on Feb. 17, Fairfax County police say, he walked into his family's basement and shot his father seven times with the shotgun and his mother twice. He then called the police -- twice -- to calmly report the killings.

Cooke's fascination with the movie is shared by others who also have been charged with murder. Some high-profile crimes since the movie's 1999 release have allegedly been committed without any obvious motive other than attempts to escape The Matrix.

It is not uncommon for slaying suspects, especially those who are mentally unstable, to raise whatever is hot in popular culture in their defense or in interviews with police. And experts agree that one film alone is unlikely to spark that kind of violence. But to the vulnerable psyches of those who may be mentally ill, films with suggestions of hidden evil and uncertain reality can reinforce paranoia and fear by helping unhealthy fantasy worlds to flourish, the experts say.

The cases in which "The Matrix" has emerged as a central theme span the country. Even last fall's sniper shootings in the Washington region have overtones from the popular science-fiction film, which posits that computers have taken over the world.

"Free yourself of the matrix," sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, wrote in his jail cell. "You are a slave to the matrix 'control.' "

Just this week, in Ohio, a woman who told police that she lived in The Matrix and that "they commit a lot of crimes in The Matrix" was found not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of killing her landlord.

And in San Francisco, a man who believes he was sucked into The Matrix also was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges that he killed his landlord.

Warner Bros. Pictures, which released the sequel to "The Matrix" this week, said there is no connection between the movie and the killings. In a statement, the studio expressed condolences to the victims of violent crimes. "However," the statement said, "any attempt to link these crimes with a motion picture or any other art form is disturbing and irresponsible."

But many lawyers are continuing to search for any links between art and actuality to defend their clients.

"The Matrix" has developed a huge following in the years since its release, enchanting fans with dazzling special effects and a storyline incorporating aspects of doomsday, man-vs.-machine and biblical allegory. The premise is that in the late 20th century, once man perfected artificial intelligence in computers, the computers took over the Earth, which was mostly destroyed. But the computers continued to "harvest" humans to provide energy, and those harvested humans live in a computer-simulated world: The Matrix.

"He's just obsessed with it," said Rachel M. Fierro, the attorney defending Josh Cooke against charges that he murdered his parents, Paul C. Cooke, 51, and Margaret Ruffin Cooke, 56. "I don't know why he's obsessed. . . . That's one of the reasons we've requested a neutral, independent psychiatrist -- to determine whether he was sane and knew the difference between right and wrong."

A psychiatrist was appointed by Fairfax Circuit Court to examine Cooke after Fierro said in a motion last month that Cooke "harbored a bona fide belief that he was living in the virtual reality of 'The Matrix' at the time of the alleged offenses."

Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. did not oppose the motion and said it was the first time he had heard of any connection to "The Matrix."

But, he added, "I don't think the movie causes violence. Millions and millions of people have seen it and not killed anybody."

Even experts who have studied the effects of violence in the media do not generally think that one film or one television show can launch such a violent impulse. But they believe that the cumulative effect of media violence in movies such as "The Matrix" can lead to actual crime, particularly in younger people and those already susceptible.

"When somebody commits a violent crime, you can't point to just one cause," said Joanne Cantor, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin who has studied the effects of television and movie violence. But, she added, "I think these things can have really devastating effects on really vulnerable people. . . . If people are saying they were influenced by that movie, that movie was probably on their mind when they were planning these things."

When "The Matrix" was released, Cooke was 15 and Malvo was 14. Daphne White, head of the Lion and Lamb Project in Bethesda, which advocates against the marketing of media violence to children, said recent research shows that during adolescence, the brain goes through important developmental stages.

"We are selling young children, whose minds are still developing, ever more violent items from ever younger ages," she said. "Even though it's not 'The Matrix' that makes anybody kill, it's the compilation of all the images we're stuffing into children's brains at younger ages."

Psychiatrists have been appointed to examine Malvo, charged in Fairfax with the Oct. 14 killing of Linda Franklin, 47, in the Seven Corners area. Malvo also faces murder charges in Maryland, the District and elsewhere in Virginia in nine other slayings that occurred in a three-week span last fall.

When Malvo was brought to Fairfax on Nov. 7, he was questioned by June Boyle, a Fairfax homicide detective, and Brad Garrett, an FBI agent. Boyle testified recently that she made small talk with Malvo for nearly 90 minutes while they waited for his dinner. A summary of notes made by another detective shows that she asked him what movies he watched.

"Malvo responded he loves 'The Matrix,' " the summary states.

In January, while sitting in his cell in the Fairfax jail, Malvo made drawings and wrote notes around them. In two pages obtained by The Washington Post, he wrote: "Wake up! Free your mind, you are a slave to the matrix 'control.' . . . The outside force has arrived. Free yourself of the matrix 'control.' Free first your mind. Trust me!! The body will follow. Remove fear, doubt, distrust, watch the change then."

Malvo's attorneys declined to comment. They have not indicated whether they plan to argue that Malvo was mentally ill at the time of the sniper shootings.

Such a claim has recently been accepted in two other cases involving "The Matrix." On Tuesday in Butler County, Ohio, Tonda Lynn Ansley, 37, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the July shooting death of Sherry Lee Corbett, 55, a popular Miami University professor who rented a house to Ansley. Ansley was arrested moments after she shot Corbett in broad daylight in front of several witnesses, and in a statement to detectives, she said, "I started having dreams that I've found out aren't really dreams."

Reeves's character in "The Matrix" believes his initial experience with The Matrix is a dream.

Ansley told police, "That's where you go to sleep at night and they drug you and take you somewhere else and then they bring you back and put you in bed and when you wake up, you think that it's a bad dream."

Craig Hedric, the Butler County prosecutor who handled the case, said that, "in her warped perception," the movie did have a role in the killing. "But I think that's only because she was suffering from a mental illness. I don't think some rational soul is going to be influenced to do that," he said.

Similarly, in San Francisco in April 2000, Vadim Mieseges, 27, killed and dismembered his landlord, Ella Wong, 47, without provocation. In September, a judge accepted his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was sent to a hospital for treatment.

In his confession, Mieseges "did make reference to being sucked into The Matrix," said Inspector Kelly Carroll, who interviewed him. "He seemed to have stepped through the looking glass," Carroll said, invoking the surrealism of "Alice in Wonderland," adding: "And The Matrix was a real thing to him."

[geekWithA.45]

The world of "The Matrix" is a modern manifestation of an intuition that is probably as old as humanity.

(It's not necessarily the best manifestation IMO, but it's probably the most referencable for most)

It is the intuition that there is simply "something more" than the obvious things that we can see and taste and touch, that there is some "deeper level" of reality that isn't ordinarily accessible.

Couple that with a Campbellian "heroes journey" to gather the power, and you've got a modern telling of an age old myth.


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Another interpretation is that "the matrix" is the web of information, the truth and lies that define our collective history, and to some extend, our reality.

As beleaguered gunowners, we're probably closer to this interpretation than the previous one. We see it every time we click on CNN and see how evil fully automatic child mangling nun blasting weapons are.

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As for a criminal defense, I'm not even slightly surprised. Schizophrenia is characterized by a "distinct break" with reality, wherein the sufferer can not distinguish what is real from what isn't. Normally, such people are harmless, but sometimes, they aren't. To hear it expressed in popular terms is common. I once met a patient who literally believed he was a T-100 class terminator type of robot underneath his skin, and had to be kept away from sharp objects, on the fear he would try to prove it.

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[StLGlocker]

I happen to be a big fan of the Matrix movies. The action sequences rock, and the religious/philosophical subtexts are intriguing, inasmuch as they parallel with and borrow from older ideas like Plato's allegory of the cave.

I also happen to own both a 12-gauge shotgun and one of those evil, awful black AR-15's, similar to the guns Cooke and Malvo used.

But you know, I've never come to believe that I'm actually living out a virtual existence inside an elaborate computerized illusion, nor have I ever felt the urge to kill my parents, or drive around shooting random people I see on the street.

I realize that I'm preaching to the choir, talking about it in this forum. But the notion that a killer's preoccupation with particular movies, music, books or video games being partly to blame strikes me as being in the same vein as holding gun manufacturers liable for the criminal misuse of their products.

You'd think some of the liberals in Hollyweird would see the parallel. Or, then again, maybe you wouldn't. :banghead:

The bottom line is there are crazy people living in the world. The particular delusion that prompts them into action is irrelevant.

[Beorn]

I'm sure he'll enjoy his computer-simulated cell then...

Heh heh, heh heh! Funny!

Maybe we can get a digitally-created "Bubba" to share a cell with him.

"Do you think that's pain you're feeling now?":D

[Mark Tyson]

This raises an interesting question. If we assume for the moment that the movie does inspire people to kill, will the Brady Bunch and the VPC et al. go after Hollywood and the movie industry?

[Fly Navy]

Ok, this "I'm in the Matrix" crap is....crap. Let's drop down to their level for a second. It is well established that if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life, because it was established that the body can't live without the mind. Therefore, they should have known they were killing for real.

Sorry, couldn't resist.