(no subject)

[vicarz]

Batman's dark nite and politics. Behind cut for cheap bastards like me who hate spoilers because it's not worth $10 to watch a movie when you can get the dvd in a month or six

The big problem was the huge anti-terrorism, anti-privacy, pro-secret-society-security message that ran throughout the movie. Think I'm crazy?

Check out the symbolism:
1. Joker - he doesn't want money, he just seeds chaos. He tries to draw the worst from people. He's one disheveled person who manages to successfully attack with seemed impunity not only the riteous, but the foul. He's so hard to catch, track, or even understand that he's practically mystical. If he had a beard it would be Bin Laden (in the USian view).
2. Morgan Freeman (magic black man who can't drive) - is the formal government. Not only is he secretly making all the DK's wonderful toys, he is fending off a curious accountant (even the government is accountable), and ultimately takes control of the secret spy cellphone sonar system - grudgingly, because Bin Laden...I mean the joker...is worth the sacrifice of privacy of all USian citizens. He also vows to put it away when the Joker is vanquished, as though there won't be another after this one. Crazy. Guy.
3. Fake batmans - normal people can't help. Only spooky rich guys who inherit money can help. The batman is the republican, the fake ones democrats.
4. Batman - who is he? We can't know - we are USians, and we need to believe there is a spooky agent, be that batman, god, or Reagan, who secretly wanders the streets keeping evil we don't understand (or know about, or actually exists) at bay so we can play with our 2.5 children and dog in our manicured yard. He is EVEN willing to be portrayed as the bad guy, doing bad things, because this evil binladen/joker REQUIRES EVIL to defeat him. Of course, that evil is really the fault of that awful bin-joker because the heart of our white male hero is pure - it only is made to look evil by the real evil doers.
5. In the end, society simply doesn't understand the moral complexity required to keep the terrorists at bay and society safe - it NEEDS TO BE LIED TO so we all have faith in good, enough faith to keep evil at bay both in ourselves and from binladen-jokers.

So let's get this together,
1. A new evil that seeks not money, but societal chaos, has emerged.
2. The government must secretly wage war on this fellow because our own ranks are tainted with the impure money seekers. Privacy is utterly safe in its hands, and as soon as this horrible evil is gone, we'll give you your privacy back.
3. The weak cannot stop this guy.
4. Only the strong can stop this guy, and in so doing they may do evil things (oh I'm sorry, fail to prevent evil things from happening) to both evil and good people.
5. You can't tell the evil from the good, but it's important for society to live a lie because reality is just too deep for USians as a whole.

Go ahead - tell me that isn't the current administration's party line on terrorism, privacy, and government.

SURE IT'S JUST A MOVIE
but I do get creeped out not that this message is out there, but that even our societal fantasies give away our underlying issues. I love to watch the unintentional political and societal views from movies of the 60s and 70s, things that seem so obvious, ludicrous, and wrong...but at the time were so entwined in society's cultural fiber they weren't visible. What messages are in this movie? Why? How will they look in 50 years?

So the batman movie wasn't predictable and for 2.5 hours it moved fast as hell, but it was getting tiresome never knowing who was good or bad, or how much. The love triangle was annoying and not believable. Killing the girl, however, was cool - because USians are totally used to having an impossible situation overcome. USia needs more not-happy endings.