We’re living in a horror film fueled by ignorance. Here’s why there’s no easy end in sight – AZCentral

Watching the news the last couple of months reading the papers, scrolling through social media at times it has felt like watching a horror movie.

And not necessarily Contagion, the film comparison everyone leaned into at first. Understandable, since were in the midst of a global pandemic, with more than 100,000 dead in the U.S. alone. To me it was more like a bad zombie movie, where events move so fast the people in charge cant or wont keep up with the developing crisis. The audience watches them flail, knowing things are only going to get worse.

Now its like adding in Do the Right Thing, with some of The Dead Zone mixed in, as well. Do the Right Thing is perhaps obvious; its Spike Lees greatest film, and tells the story of simmering racial tensions that explode in a New York neighborhood. As protests mount nightly across the nation in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, the parallels are unmistakable. If you want to understand the anger, this film is not a badplace to start.

(As for The Dead Zone, the film is based on the Stephen King novel that includes a sleazy, corrupt politician who, if dire action isnt taken, will become a disastrous president of the United States. Draw your own conclusions.)

What is happening in the worldnow, right down to our individual cities and towns, our very homes, is of course real life. Theres no intention to denigrate or belittle anyones experience with a breezy comparison. Instead its an attempt to figure out a way to comprehend it.

Any story needs a hero and a villain. There is no shortage of heroes in what were watching the biggest being the protesters loudly yet peacefully venting their righteous anger, finally finding an outlet for centuries of mistreatment at the least. Now is their time. But also media members telling thestories in the face of increasing resistance from law enforcement and angry emboldened throngs who have been told repeatedly journalists are the "enemy of the people;"the community members who volunteer to clean up the morning after things turn violent.

Of course we need villains, too. And weve got plenty of them;at times it seems like an endless supply. But without resorting to individual people, there are larger, overarching forces of villainy at work behind all this.

Systemic racism is a big one, obviously, a blight that has finally exploded in our faces to the surprise of many, evidently. But why be surprised? Who knows why Floyds death was the final straw; we certainly dont lack for other examples. But it is a catalyst for a long-delayed reaction.

But the Big Bad in this story is willful ignorance. It's what fuels everything else. Its growth in the past three and a half years has been rapid and increasingly harmful; at first it was dangerous. Now its deadly.

Yes. Dont let that slip by. Willful ignorance is killing people. A certain segment of people look at facts legitimately presented and decide nope, theyre not for them. Why wear a mask? Why social distance? As if standing on the corner draped in a flag screaming about your freedom to infect makes you some sort of patriot.

It doesnt.

Ignorance of the systemic racism that has poisoned us is also now deadly. To look at the videos we have seen, to hear the stories to simply open our eyes to the world around us is to see the inequality, if we are willing to look. Looking away, or pretending the problem doesnt exist because it doesnt affect you personally, is another type of willful ignorance, an avoidance of facts that's coming back to haunt us.

The thing about horror movies and novels is that they're notoriously difficult to bring to a close. The buildup is what draws an audience in. That buildup is easy; the endings are hard. And here again, in real life, as we look at a crumbling economy, massive unemployment, a deadly pandemic and protests fueled by an anger that cannot be contained, theres no easy ending to any of it in sight.

And thats whats really terrifying.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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We're living in a horror film fueled by ignorance. Here's why there's no easy end in sight - AZCentral