The Movies Made Me Do It

Be careful out on the streets this weekend, lest someone dressed like Strong Bad jumps you from behind and pulls a tope or a guillotina on you.

With the release of Jack Black’s Nacho Libre, hordes of teenagers will be donning costumes and performing Mexican wrestling moves on unsuspecting passers-by. Expect cracked heads and maybe some broken limbs, all caused by kids who personify “monkey-see, monkey-do.”

Seems unlikely, but that’s exactly the kind of thing being expected from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Police just outside of Toronto are placing officers around theatres playing the film to watch for “erratic driving coming out of these type of theatres… People come out — if I can use the expression — revved up after these types of movies,” Chief La Barge told globeandmail.com. “We have a perennial problem with street racing in our community and these types of glorification movies don't help the cause at all.”

It’s true that there has been a lot of deadly street racing in and around Toronto and I don’t want to make light of that, but I don’t think any entertainment drives anyone to do anything, let alone commit crimes. Last January a Toronto cabbie was killed by two idiot kids who slammed into his cab while racing. On one of their seats was a copy of Need for Speed, a racing game. The two were quickly connected.

Does anyone remember when heavy metal was causing kids to commit suicide? How about when Dungeons and Dragons was leading people to Devil worship and murder? After the Columbine shootings, some said the shooters were emulating scenes from The Matrix. There will always be people, especially teenagers, willing to do stupid things and there will always be some pop culture phenom to blame it on. But saying they are connected doesn’t make it so, no matter how much easier it makes things appear.