Actor Seth Rogen and his Knocked Up director Judd Apatow took to Twitter to respond to Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday’s essay on the Isla Vista shooter, Elliot Rodger. On Friday and Saturday, Rodger went on a killing spree, stabbing his three roommates to death before shooting and killing three more near the UC Santa Barbara campus.
Rodger had used YouTube to share his thoughts and even announce that he was planning to kill, which worried his parents enough that they did contact police weeks before the shootings. The police did not do anything, as Rodger had removed the videos. However, he posted one more just hours before the shooting.
In her essay, titled “In a final videotaped message, a sad reflection of the sexist stories we so often see on screen,” Hornaday links the Hollywood and entertainment environment that Rodger grew up in with his actions. She specifically called out Rogen’s Neighbors and Apatow’s films.
“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’?” Hornaday wrote. “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’?”
As Us Weekly points out, Rogen and Apatow went to Twitter to respond to Hornaday, who has not responded to them.
“I find your article horribly insulting and misinformed,” Rogen wrote. “how dare you imply that me getting girls in movies caused a lunatic to go on a rampage.”
Apatow turned the tables, suggesting that the media look at how they turn tragedies like these into profit. “Here is how it all works. Anne says something thoughtless. I say it is wrong then CNN asks everyone to debate and it becomes TV,” the director wrote. “I said no. I wonder if Anne can prevent herself from going on and becoming part of how these tragic events become profit centers for media.”
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