Ralph Yarl, Kaylin Gillis, and the Consequences of American Fearmongering

As a plot driver, the traumatic home invasion has long been a staple of both film pulp—movies like Cape Fear, Death Wish, and John Wick—and artier projects like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and Ari Aster’s anxious new Beau Is Afraid. All play into our collective fears of lawless hooligans invading our personal space. But a plot device, as every sane person knows, is simply a tool for the creation of fantasy.

In the space of three days, two individuals more than a thousand miles apart kicked back against innocent young people who, they apparently were convinced, posed a threat to their safety. On April 13, in Kansas City, Mo., 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who is white, shot and seriously wounded 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who is Black, after the teen mistakenly stopped at the wrong house, looking to pick up his twin brothers. In Hebron, N.Y., on April 15, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan shot and killed 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis, a passenger in one of three vehicles that had mistakenly driven up the winding quarter-mile driveway leading to Monahan’s house in a remote wooded area.

These incidents are a warped reflection of a mental state we’ve seen over and over again in fiction: not the castle-protecting knight, but the paranoid loner, certain the world is a more dangerous place than it really is, who spontaneously defends his turf with the gun he just happens to have in his possession. These types have always been with us, but the 21st century has brought us a new variation. Many fears of a civilization gone mad—­particularly when those fears are of a nation of white people under attack—have been stoked by fantasy factories masquerading as news organizations.

Read more: How ‘Stand Your Ground’ and Similar Laws Factor Into the Shooting of Unarmed Black Teen Ralph Yarl

In a CNN interview, Andrew Lester’s grandson described his grand­father as a racist Fox News obsessive, adding that he believes Lester’s views are common among a certain type of older white Christian male. And sure enough, the ballad of the beleaguered white man has been for years the interminable drum solo of the network’s most popular pundit, Tucker Carlson, who was ousted on April 24.

Just how unsafe is the world, exactly? And how does that reality mesh with the public’s perception? In the 1970s, communications professor George Gerbner came up with the phrase mean world syndrome to explain how people’s exposure to depictions of violence in the media can lead them to perceive reality as more dangerous than it is.

Violent crime was indeed rising when Gerbner coined the term. But in the 1990s, both homicides and property-crime rates began to decline steadily, and even with a slight uptick in 2020, those rates have not risen significantly. Still, many people in the U.S. have reinvented the country as their own private Gotham City, overrun with villains who might show up on their doorstep at any time. In March, 54% of Americans told Gallup they personally worry “a great deal” about crime and violence. An additional 29% worried “a fair amount.”

There are shreds of fact within the fictions. More people ages 50 or older are living alone in the U.S. than ever before—nearly 26 million, up from 15 million in 2000. Not everyone living by themselves, and not every aged person, experiences an increase in feelings of isolation and fear. But anxiety can increase with age, and it’s easier than ever to envision a nation of elderly people confining themselves to their homes, believing that the violence reported on television is the reality that may come to their door.

In New York, Kevin Monahan’s lawyer claimed that the vehicles containing Gillis and her friends had raced up Monahan’s driveway noisily, which “certainly caused some level of alarm to an elderly gentleman who had an ­elderly wife.” Aside from the question of whether 65 is elderly, going forward, we’re likely to see more Andrew Lesters and Kevin Monahans than fewer.

Thus a country that has, for good reason, become fixated on the escalation of mass shootings now has something new to worry about: the crime-rate-obsessed fantasist who owns at least one firearm, in a nation with more guns than people. It turns out that the crimes made up by movie and TV writers aren’t nearly as vivid and suggestive as the ones far too many people have been led to believe are going on right outside.

The idea that movie violence causes real-life violence is one of those perfectly prepackaged, unprovable theories that feels so true many have come to believe it is. But movies are now more than 130 years old, and we’ve had a lot of time to think about how they affect us as a society. Guns in movies are inevitable: even if Chekhov’s gun was intended as a metaphor, he also knew the dramatic effect of firing one. But at least the entertainment industry knows where guns belong; it’s people who don’t. And no matter where or how people are getting the wrong idea, their invented reality is the real danger.