Don’t blame massacre on pop culture: PM

Violence in pop culture won’t help explain the Colorado movie massacre, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

Speaking at Sydney’s Fox Studios, where the next instalment of the Hollywood blockbuster The Wolverine will be filmed, Ms Gillard said it was simplistic to blame violence in films and video games for Friday’s massacre in Denver.

Cinemagoers at the first midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises were gunned down by presumed gunman James Holmes, who reportedly called himself The Joker, a key villain from earlier Batman films.

“I don’t think we can draw some simple link between movies, whether it is the Batman movie or anything else, and this act of violence,” Ms Gillard told reporters.

“I think we were all shocked when the news first came through that people who were doing something as innocent and familiar as just going and sitting in a movie theatre could be subject to so much violence and so much death.

“Clearly you can’t just draw simple links here about what motivated the young man involved, but our hearts do go out to everybody who is grieving and everybody who would still be suffering a tremendous degree of shock.”

Ms Gillard said the federal government had contributed $12.8 million to secure the filming for Australia and create more than 2000 local jobs.

The last instalment of the Wolverine franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, has been described by UK newspaper the Daily Mail as “pornographically violent”.

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