Musings on "Zodiac"

On Friday, I went to see Jake Gyllenhaal's new movie "Zodiac." Have you heard of it? Maybe not, it's not getting much media attention yet, though it should be. It's the true story of the Zodiac killer, a Northern California serial killer from the late 60s/early 70s. The movie is based on the book by Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist who became utterly obsessed by the Zodiac, so much so that he eventually (according to the movie at least) dedicated most of his time to solving the mystery. I was pretty excited for this movie--I love a good crime mystery, and I love Jake Gyllenhaal. I was completely satisfied with the movie and will recommend it to all of you in a heartbeat(go see it! now! go!) but what I didn't expect was to find myself thinking about class concepts while watching the movie...crazy!

While I was watching this, all I could think of for awhile was how much it fit into the media myth of "Wisdom of the Rustic" in a really strange way. Now, Robert Graysmith was not a rustic man. But he also wasn't trained to be a criminologist--he was a cartoonist. Yet he eventually ended up coming closer than anyone else to solving this crime. Many of the early scenes focus on the editors of the newspaper Graysmith worked at puzzling over the Zodiac letters, trying to come to any sort of conclusion. (The Zodiac killer was obsessed with gaining media attention, and thus sent tons of letters to the newspapers about himself. He also sent codes that contained clues as to who he was and why he was murdering.) Graysmith lurked in the background, wide eyed and fascinated, until someone would inevitably notice him and say scathingly, "Don't you have a cartoon to draw?" He would scamper off, and the "experts" would go back to puzzling. Then we would see Graysmith running into his house with an armful of books on code breaking from the library. He hunched over the desk, puzzling through the codes. Eventually, he solved them. As he explained to his colleagues what they meant and how he solved them, his coworkers looked at him, mystified.
"How did you figure this out?"
"Well, I went to the library. I like puzzles."

and so on and so forth.

Is it any surprise that long after the "experts" gave up, Graysmith continued to puzzle away at this case, until eventually he had a conclusion? It's the classic story--the person no one expects to save the day does. The cartoonist breaks the Zodiac codes and eventually figures out who the Zodiac is. Meanwhile, all of the educated people sit around, scratching their heads and eventually giving up. Ta da.

Ironic, isn't it, that this story is actually based on real events? Does this mean that the media myths we all have grown to love are infiltrating themselves into reality? Strange stuff.

Well, I guess that's it. Go see Zodiac. You probably won't be disappointed.