The assertion that the movie "Neighbors" and other films that glorify fraternity life contributed to deceased killer Elliot Rodger's delusions is offensive, according to actor Seth Rogen.
Rogen tweeted Monday that such accusations are "horribly insulting and misinformed," and derided Washington Post writer Ann Hornaday for implying that frat comedies led to Rodger's killing spree.
On May 23, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 13 others after expressing deep-seated feelings of loneliness, sexual frustration, and misogyny in nearly two dozen YouTube videos and a 141-page manifesto.
Hornaday published an article on Sunday stating that "Neighbors" is one of many films that perpetuates misogyny and glorifies college promiscuity.
"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'?" she wrote.
"Neighbors" is a comedy about a married couple (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) with a new baby who have a raucous fraternity house next door. The frat, led by Zac Efron, has wild parties filled with drugs, alcohol, and women, and makes life difficult for their neighbors.
Hornaday, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, said that such films are "escapist fantasies" that "so often revolve around vigilantism and sexual wish-fulfillment (often, if not always, featuring a steady through-line of casual misogyny)."
She also called out comedy writer, producer, and director Judd Apatow—who, by his own admission, likes "immaturity"—for making films in which overweight, unambitious, immature men have attractive and competent female partners.
"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'?" Hornaday asked.
Apatow—known for his films "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," and "Pineapple Express," and other comedies—accused the writer of using a "tragedy to promote herself with idiotic thoughts" in a Twitter post.
One Twitter user asked Apatow, Rogen, and Hornaday, "Why is it always everything but mental illness?"
Apatow answered, "Because that doesn't sell papers."
