The Dark Knight Chechen

Manuel F. writes:

Loren,
Don't know if anyone left you with this sync, but here goes...
Yesterday I was thinking about this "dark night" period we're living in. Then my mind jumped to Dark Knight and something was connected.
You saw the infamous Dark Knight movie (the one with Heath Ledger). Remember the scene where the Joker burns the mountain of money?
The gangster he double crosses is called "The Chechen."
The Joker says he will retrieve their money from the money launderer and then burns it and feed "The Chechen" to the "pooches."
Seems like the fountain of syncs never gets dry with the Batman trilogy. You do more dot connecting (you're good at it)! I just wanted to leave this idea.
Greetings

Enki writes:

Tsarnaev contains the root tsar (also spelled czar, csar, or tzar) - a Russian emperor. A villain in the Batman universe, Mr. Hammer, has a tattoo which reads: "Joker The Tzar" in Russian.

Mister Hammer and his brother Sickle were conjoined, orphan twins who performed in a russian circus, developing a reputaton for brutality which attracted the attention of the Joker. Joker sent his cohort Harley Quinn to recruit the twins, but the circus manager refused, however he subsequently turned up with a Glasglow smile carved into his face, and the twins were recruited into Joker's gang. During a fight between the Abramovici's and Batman, Joker had an ingenius idea to separate the brothers, and acquired the help of Dr. Thomas Elliot to perform the surgery and cut the twins in two. After the surgery was completed, Joker favorably chose Mr. Hammer to be his "right-hand man" and left Sickle for the Penguin, who hired the twin to be apart of his gang. Ever since, the Abramovici's operated alone in Gotham, and later Arkham City, however Sickle always had a disliking for Joker for separating him from his brother. Source.
Here we have twins again, as well as the theme of brothers separated violently.
Also, in Batman Confidential, Batman works to prevent a massacre by a bomb-packing villain called The Tsar. Source.

The site Merovee mentions a further link to the Dark Knight and Aurora, beyond the early one widely noted that "Dzhokhar" sounds like "Joker." That site points out that the the Boston police released the number plate of a car connected with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – 116 GC7.

Merovee writes that "116 is a number which is closely connected with The Joker – Century 16 (116) at Aurora, as well as being a mirror of 911. As well, there is the compulsory 7/7. G=7. 116 7 C 7."  

(Personally, I don't understand the "7" numerology being "compulsory.")

 Century 16 in Aurora, Colorado.

Aurora building, Shanghai, in Skyfall.

There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was named after Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudaev (Chechen: Dudin Musa-khant Dʒouxar/Дудин Муса-кIант Жовхар; Russian: Джохар Мусаевич Дудаев), who was a Soviet Air Force general and Chechen leader, the first President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He was born February 15, 1944, and reportedly killed by "two laser-guided missiles when he was using a satellite phone, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call," on April 21, 1996.

Recent postings of the Boston Marathon/Patriots' Day Bombings and aftermath are:

* The Dark Knight Chechen

* Name Game: The Brothers Tsarnaev

* "Terrorists": Suspect #1 Has Been Killed; Suspect #2 At Large

* What Logos Are On Boston Marathon Suspects' Caps?

* Mapping The Tragedy: Boston Bombs Set On Symbolic Sites

* Targeting Patriots' Day Is Significant for Boston Marathon Bombing 

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Victor Hugo, The Joker, and Joker Copycats

February 26, 2013 is Victor Hugo's birthday. He would have been 211 years old.

The Oscars presented a large singing production of Les Misérables actors, from the movie based on the musical inspired by Hugo's popular 1862 novel. Perhaps it would be worthy of noting, on Hugo's birthday, that his writings are the source of some intriguing synchrocinematic moments.

For example, few realize that Victor Hugo is the inspiration for the Joker, make famous in recent years by the late Heather Ledger's character Joker in The Dark Knight.

The link is due to The Man Who Laughs (also published under the original working title By Order of the King), a novel by Victor Hugo, first published in April 1869.

Hugo's Romantic novel The Man Who Laughs places its narrative in 17th century England, where the relationships between the bourgeoisie and aristocracy are complicated by continual distancing from the lower class. Hugo's protagonist, Gwynplaine (a physically transgressive figure, something of a monster) transgresses these societal spheres by being reinstated from the lower class into the aristocracy—a movement which enabled Hugo to critique construction of social identity based upon class status.

The main character Gwynplaine in Hugo's The Man Who Laughs, whose face was disfigured into a laughing mask as a child, falls in love with a blind girl named Dea.

The 1928 film (including the anachronistic Ferris wheel) The Man Who Laughs serves as important link to the modern representations, a direct precursor of the Joker.

In 1940, comic book artist Jerry Robinson used Gwynplaine's lanky physique and grotesque grin as the visual inspiration for the Joker, Batman's archenemy. There the similarity ends, however; Gwynplaine is an embittered hero, while the Joker is a psychopathic criminal.

In the 1970s, Bob Kane acknowledged the inspiration for the Joker, and it was later explicitly referenced in the graphic novel, Batman: The Man Who Laughs. Comic book artist Brian Bolland said that watching The Man Who Laughs was one of his inspirations for drawing the graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988). In the 2003 "Wild Cards" episode of the Justice League animated series, The Joker infiltrated a TV station by using the alias "Gwynplaine Entertainment". (Other copycats, see here.)

All of the recent Jokers trace back to Victor Hugo.

Also, according to a French blog, a David Fincher movie has a shared fate of his Se7en character played by actress Gwyneth Paltrow (whose first name resembles Hugo’s Gwynplaine, and was often slated as a Catwoman candidate), eerily echoes the not-so-happy ending of Blanche, the secret daughter of Verdi's Rigoletto (also inspired by Hugo). Source.

 For more, see also here.

James Ellroy, in his novel the Black Dahlia, published in 1987, specifically mentions Victor Hugo in regards to the facial mutilation on Beth Short's mouth (cut to form a gruesome grin). She did have this facial mutilation, as autopsy photos show. (More on the Black Dahlia and Frank Lloyd Wright, see here.)

Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, there is news of the trial of a Joker copycat killer.

There is little denying that the 2009 Dendermonde Joker is a Heath Ledger/Joker copycat from the 2008 film The Dark Knight. (The "Dendermonde case" is code for the 2009 event involving the daycare nursery killer, Kim de Gelder, the Dendermonde Joker. I've web logged several entries about the subject, for example, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Now for an update.

An artist's impression of Kim De Gelder on the first day of his trial at Gent's courthouse on February 22, 2013. A nursery killer disguised as Batman villain The Joker told a court he was left "no choice" but to stab to death two toddlers and their caregiver at a Belgian creche -- despite saying he knew murder was wrong. Source.

De Gelder is charged with killing the two infants and their 54-year-old carer in an attack on the Fable Land nursery in the town of Dendermonde in January 2009, as well as the attempted murder of 22 others at the creche -- including 16 babies and toddlers. De Gelder is further charged with murdering an elderly woman in a separate attack a week earlier.

Just after the release of cult 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight, De Gelder entered the nursery with his hair dyed red and his face painted white with black around his eyes -- like the film's villain The Joker, as played by the late Australian actor Heath Ledger.

In the Aurora shooting, on July 20, 2012, James Holmes (dressed as the Joker wearing Bane-like protective wear) stands accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 in a cinema screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

Please also see Joker Copycats, 2008-2012, and the immediate Aurora Copycats, which included some Joker Copycats.

Thanks to Theo Paijmans for the Victor Hugo-Black Dahlia info.

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Oklahoma "Red" Suicide: Dressed As Batman's Two Face

Breaking News: Cade Poulos, September 26th's suicide, was dressed as the Batman supervillain Two-Face (Harvey Dent), for his school's "Super Hero Day." This appears to be in the realm of a copycat and continues the outcome we are seeing issuing from the "Bane/Joker" red dawn event in the wake of the Aurora shooting (July 20, 2012), allegedly carried out by James Eagan Holmes.

The comment from the Joker character that I quoted at the beginning of a recent posting, here, was delivered to Harvey Dent/Two Face in The Dark Knight (2008). There is a direct link from Bane/Joker to Harvey Dent/Two Face, Aurora to Stillwater, from Colorado to Oklahoma, from The Dark Knight Rises to The Dark Knight. The duality here is deadly obvious. We are sad to see that Cade Poulos' metaphoric flipping of the Harvey Dent/Two Face coin, to determine his own fate, landed on this tragic side.

The Daily Mail notes:

Several students told KOCO that Cade had gone to school dressed as the fictional character Two-Face, also known as Harvey Dent, for the day of costumes as part of Breast Cancer Awareness week.
***
Approximately 750 to 760 students attend the junior high school with students in grades eight and nine, according to Stillwater Superintendent Ann Caine.
The school sent a statement to parents saying there had been a 'single shooting incident' at the school and that staff and students – eighth and ninth graders – had been moved to a safe location. Parents were told to pick up their children at a nearby shopping center.
With Cade allegedly dressed as a popular Batman villain, the scene may have painted a grisly reminder of this summer's shootings at the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre where accused gunman James Holmes shot and killed 12 while dressed as the Joker.
'Everyone thought it was a joke at first,' ninth-grader Ashlyn Lundholm told the Stillwater NewsPress. 'Then I heard people screaming. Then we went to lockdown for 35 to 40 minutes.'

Cade Poulos

###

The Dark Knight character of Alfred Pennyworth (on right), Bruce Wayne's butler, was played by Michael Caine, in all three Christopher Nolan Batman films. 

Stillwater Superintendent Ann Caine is shown at the September 26th news conference, waiting to answer a question about the costumed Batman Harvey Dent/Two Face suicide event.

Earlier news:

Word has been received (early this a.m.) from the Red Dirt Report in Oklahoma that there's been a death in a school in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The victim of a fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound at Stillwater Junior High School is a student and the shooting occurred at 7:50 a.m. on Wednesday, September 26, 2012. The suicide victim took his own life in a hallway as the school day was beginning.

The dead youth has been identified as Cade Poulos, 13, a natural redhead, who some have compared to the recent images of the "Joker."

According to one legend, Stillwater, Oklahoma got its name because local Native American tribes, the Ponca, Kiowa, Osage, and Pawnee, called the creek “Still Water” because the water was always still. "[H]e leadeth me beside the still waters" (Psalm 23:2b).

The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people. Choctaw Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government regarding the use of Indian Territory, in which he envisioned an all-Indian state controlled by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe the Native American race as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after the area was opened to white settlers. ~ Wikipedia

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Thanks AWG, AM, MB and CC.

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Post-Aurora Lexilinking

By the pricking of my thumbs, 

Something wicked this way comes. 

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth.

You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

~ The Joker, in The Dark Knight (2008), written by Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, characters created by Bob Kane.

There are many ways to read the Joker's statement.

It is with some simplicity that academic thoughts may consider this summer's mass shootings as distractions from facing deeper societial issues. Harvard student Heather L. Pickerell did write, recently, comparing the 52 wounded and 12 killed in Aurora on July 20th with Iraqi causalities: "Did you know that 82 people were killed and 180 wounded by car bombs in Iraq on the same day as the shootings?"

While tragic and unfortunate, of course, she misses part of the bigger picture herself.

Wars, warzone deaths, systematic civil war causalities, and inner city gang shootings have become background noise in a culture that does experience violence closer to home in raw moments of stark realities. But in a broader context, before the latest homegrown wave of shootings dies down (sincerely, no pun intended), many other people will die, many others will be scarred, emotionally and physically, for life. Mass violence deaths, whether in Aurora, Columbine, and VA Tech, or in lesser remembered locations like Oak Creek, Bailey, and Nickel Mines, are as real, week to week, as the deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Believe it or not, the major difference is that the human psyche appears to consider it more understandable, even more rational, to conceptualize the loss of lives in national, regional, and turf wars. It is less within our frames of reference to figure out what is happening within the landscape of the human mind that leads to mass shootings. But both are equally awful.

Part of the rationale for a deeper examination of the copycat effect, an investigation of the behavior contagion among mass killers and spree shooters, has been to find a key to opening that door or window to the comprehension of things like the summer of shootings we have just experienced.

Often, it requires thinking outside the box. Therefore, one avenue of pursuit I have traveled down is seriously noting if lexilinking could be a factor. Let me explain.

First, what is "lexilinking" (for those of you who have never heard the word before)?

Several writers, like myself, began using "lexi-links" or "lexilinks" within articles we wrote for Fortean Times and other publications in the 1970s. 

Bob Rickard reminded me that "lexilink" was coined by Anthony J. Bell in his article, "Lexi-Links: Nature's Play on Words" in Fortean Times 17 (August 1976), pages 5-7.

Bell specifically looked at a new concept, lexilinks, and defined them this way:

Bell examined the "frequency of certain words" to attempt to decode what might be happening. He found that the "phenomenon of link-words" in articles and books is often "mirrored by link-words of events in the physical world." These incidents were, he surmised, related to "various violent events and no doubt have some sort of sociological significance," as he penned in that initial 1976 contribution.

Anthony J. Bell, who penned his letters with a northern English cadence, turned out to be a mysterious figure himself, with a mysterious name (see Bell). He ended up quietly appearing in Fortean Times twice after that. Bell wrote only one other article which developed the theme of puns and lexilinks in "Precession of the Gracious - Fallout of the Damned," in Fortean Times 20 (February 1977), on pages 14-17. He also sent in a brief letter on crop circles, which appeared in Fortean Times 58 (July 1991), in which he accurately predicted that crop circles would increase in complexity from their early simple designs.

Editor Bob Rickard wrote me in September 2012 that after the 1991 letter, at Fortean Times, "We never heard from him again."

Lexilink, as a word, has not actually entered any formal dictionaries. Wikipedia, indirectly, has apparently (in the past?) defined it vaguely this way: "A lexilink is a lexical link. This can be based on etymology, translations from other languages, and Anglicizations and other similar transformations."

Venturing into making some debunking comments related to "lexilinks," we then find this: "Lexilinks can be ascribed to coincidence, hoaxes, and some kind of conspiracy."

Not exactly a well-formed definition, it has vanished from the formal Wikipedia site, but the attempt lives on at Academic Kids.

Lexilinks are used in the twilight language analysis of events, frequently. Let's look at the Summer of the Gun's lexilinks, discovered in conjunction with the Aurora and post-Aurora world of 2012. Finding them brings up the usual questions. 

Are the coincidences found in the lexilinking being mined after Colorado's Aurora red dawn event, in some inexplicable way, part of the copycat effect? In other words, do what we are discovering synchromystically, as "coincidences" and "synchronicities," are variables in these cases that serve as cosmic triggers or programmed stimuli to the individuals involved? Do the shooters suddenly sense they are engaged in some form of theater reinforced by the lexilinking they find themselves in the midst of? Do the "coincidential" lexilinks act as risk factors pushing them over the edge?

The lexilinks found in the Aurora case and the shootings and related incidents that followed have been rather mind-blowing. The visual copycat effect experienced through repeating imagery of colorfully-haired Jokers and body-armored Banes is easier to understand. But the appearance of names in the stories, one linked to the other, is more difficult for the human brain to compute.

Take, for example, the visual linking that may have been overlooked, even though I mentioned it briefly before. The first verbal and written reports of the shooter - before any photographs were published of James Eagan Holmes - told of the Aurora killer having a goatee (even though this apparently did not turn out to be true, we are told). For example, moviegoer Corbin Dates, 23, who was sitting in the second row for the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, told television news reporters of a man sporting a goatee who, before the film started, answered a cell phone call, then got up and propped open an emergency exit door.

Guess what "look" appeared over and over in the first wave of Aurora copycats? Yes, most of these copycats had scruffy beards and goatees:

 

Let's look, therefore, beyond the visual, at a few of the specific word lexilinks that have popped up related to the Aurora events. (BTW, this rendering is not comprehensive, but it shows some highlights. Please pass along more, via comments, below.)

During the spring of 2012, the area around Denver, Colorado was swept by wildfires.

The political news was filled with presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Bain (= bones, death, white) Capital involvements.

Excitement was building on the horizon for the release of The Dark Knight Rises: A Fire Will Rise, a film by Christopher Nolan starring Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Tom Hardy as the super-villian Bane (= bones, death, white).

At the July 20, 2012, midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Century 16's Theater 9, a man dressed in a gas mask, body armor, and with automatic weapons - dressed as Bane - opened fire on the movie audience in Colorado (= red), in Aurora (= dawn). The suspect then takes off his Bane costume to reveal himself to have orange hair, and declared himself, "I am the Joker."

The suspect was arrested. His name is James Eagan (= fiery) Holmes. He killed 12, and wounded 52 others.

Several copycat incidents occurred, some reflecting the Aurora incident, alluded to being Jokers or Banes.

For example, one of them on July 31, 2012, resulted the arrest of Thomas Michael Casper for a report of loud music ended up taking Casper making repeated references to "the Joker" and the Colorado theater shooting, telling police he understood the shooter's motives and would embark on his own rampage. The lexilink that became quite obvious was that this incident occurred in Eagan, Minnesota, a town with the same middle name as James Eagan Holmes, the Aurora suspect.

The Sikh Temple shooting took place on August 4, 2012, at Oak Creek, Wisconsin, resulting in seven dead, including the shooter Wade Michael Page (who lived on Holmes Avenue in nearby Cuhady, Wisconsin) and use to live in Littleton, Colorado (location of Columbine). Page, it has been pointed out, is the squire of a knight, and Wade Michael Page, as a neo-Nazi envisioned himself a Dark Knight. On July 20, 2012, a misidentification occurred when another James Holmes living in Littleton, Colorado had his Facebook page flooded with comments.

On the night of September 4, 2012, a gunman shot and killed one person during the Parti Québécois victory rally in Montreal, Quebe, Canada. Guards whisked PQ leader Pauline Marois off the stage as handlers informed the partisan crowd there had been gunfire and an arson fire had been set in the back of the Metropolis concert venue.

The suspect arrested was named Richard Henry Bain, and he owned Les Activités Rick Activities, a fishing camp on Lake Wade in La Conception, near the resort of Mont-Tremblant.

Richard Henry Bain, above, and Bane, the villian, below.

On September 5, 2012, police arrested a man wearing "Joker" makeup at a Florida movie theater after someone reported the man acting suspiciously, the Melbourne Police Department said. When police arrived at the Premiere Theatre, they found 21-year-old Christopher Alex Sides with his face painted like the Joker from the Batman movies and his hair dyed pink (or orange in some lighting). What was soon discovered was his intriguing address.

CHRISTOPHER ALEX SIDES W/M DOB: 05/07/91 ARREST DATE: 09/05/12 ARRESTING AGENCY: BCSO FAILURE TO APPEAR (Booking Photograph)

An earlier arrest is part of the recent public record: "Christopher Alex Sides, 19, of 1802 Aurora Park Circle, Melbourne, was charged April 17 with felony violation of conditional pre-trial release." "Police Report - Melbourne, Brevard County Sheriff's Office," Hometown News, April 29, 2011.

That's right. Sides lived in a trailer at the Aurora Park.

Enough for now. The lexilinks abound.

Oh yes, be alert next summer.

The new Superman film, Man of Steel, is due to be released on June 14, 2013 (Flag Day in the USA).

Oral tradition passed on through multiple generations holds that on June 14, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt was dining outside Philadelphia, when he noticed a man wiping his nose with what he thought was the American Flag. In outrage, Roosevelt picked up a small wooden rod and began to whip the man for "defacing the symbol of America." After about five or six strong whacks, he noticed that the man was not wiping his nose with a flag, but with a blue handkerchief with white stars. Upon realization of this, he apologized to the man, but hit him once more for making him "riled up with national pride." Source.

Man of Steel covertly staged part of their film pre-production and production work from a trailer near the International House of Pancakes, the IHOP, in Aurora, Illinois (pictured), at Orchard Road and Interstate 88, on July 27, 2012.

The production company did some filming later in August 2012, in Illinois, in Plano (the same name of a town in Texas directly associated with waves of suicide clusters and suburban heroin overdoses).

Man of Steel is from Warner Brothers, as are the three The Dark Knight films. The fear of the Superman curse appears to be a cause for concern among a few Warner executives. The hex has haunted Superman films and television programs for decades.

The Dark Knight trilogy's Christopher Nolan produced and cowrote (with David S. Goyer) Man of Steel, which is the first part of an 8-hour long trilogy. The director is
Zack Snyder, whose films, Dawn of the Dead (2004), 300 (2007), Watchmen (2009), and Sucker Punch (2011), are well-known for their graphic-novel-like violence.

American trailer: Kevin Costner narrates.

   

International trailer: Russell Crowe narrates.

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