(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.

Comments

More or less, yeah... except for one thing...

[american-arcane.livejournal.com]

Batman isn't part of the system. He works outside of the system.

Dent and Gordon are the system--the government, if you will--and they play by pretty strict rules. The key here is that playing by the normal "Good Guy" rules (of which both Dent and Gordon are wonderful examples) isn't enough. Which is why both are willing to look the other way while someone else crosses all sorts of lines and bends all sorts of rules to reach into the corners they can't get to.

Batman is the backscratcher of justice--getting to those spots you just can't reach otherwise.

Once he gives the real good guys enough of an edge, there isn't a place for him in the society any more and he would, inevitably, become a target of the system he's been helping.

So the message isn't that the big bad scary government is the only thing that can protect us. The message is that the government is good and pure... but sometimes deals with people who do bad things in order to protect us. But don't worry, because we'll go after them. Eventually. Really we will.

Which, in a way, is a slightly scarier message than what you've proposed.

[empressmiaka.livejournal.com]

lol I give you credit for this, because it does make sense.

Except that most of that story came out in the 80's in the comics. =P So I guess the enemy wouldn't be bin laden at that point, since he was on the government payroll...so Ruskies instead? lol

[pastor-saturn.livejournal.com]

I see your point, but Batman is still essentially a vigilante. Therefore, he's able to operate outside the rules imposed by yer local governing bodies. For that reason, he's useful to the "system" (because he doesn't have to follow their rules, just his own, thereby keeping their hands clean), but he's not of the system.

Of course, if the system were truly functional, we wouldn't need Batman, even as a movie/comic character. Right?

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Like the foreign countries we hire to use torture on suspects, right?

[pastor-saturn.livejournal.com]

(Edited) I misread your response, so I didn't understand your meaning. Went back and re-read...ah, I see.

Re torture by proxy, pretty sure the current administration isn't the first one to find a use for that particular...uh...form of persuasion? Besides, Batman isn't being compelled or even paid off by the Gotham City gov't to torture criminals. He's more a capture-and-subdue guy.

The Joker certainly isn't the first chaotic-evil figure ever to be featured as a villain. Inspiring panic in your victims is a very old trick. Those who engineer terrorist attacks didn't invent chaos, they're just using it to their own ends.

The problem with just taking the Batman movie and trying to mold its themes to suit a particular argument is that hero tales like this take classic types and themes, then reweave them and retell the same story over and over again, with current cultural underpinnings. So, yes, I do agree with your larger point that movies and pop culture tend to mirror the zeitgeist, but I'm having trouble with your argument that Batman is a pro-Bush propaganda tool for sedating our flabby 'merican minds.

OR MAYBE THAT MEANS THE TERRORISTS HAVE ALREADY WON.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

You're...one of them, I see. Meh, I like these analyses - lke how people compare invasion of the body snatchers to the cold war fear of commies (they look like us but they're not). This one really lept out and me though - I am used to all sorts of mad villians, but they all want something - fame, money, power, love, revenge...but this random chaos for the sheer sake of it joker...well I can't think of another like it. What other terrorist comic villians are you talking about?

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Really? Could they have twisted the story to fit our current situation? This really struck me as an odd plot, it really did. It seemed to scream our current political ethical issues, however the not-happy ending was really cool - practically european to have a movie with characters that show both good and evil, and the ending isn't just a ride away into the sunset with the princess happily ever after...

Re: More or less, yeah... except for one thing...

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Very interesting point! We have to hire or tolerate rogue agents because law is insufficient...

[empressmiaka.livejournal.com]

The specific plot was not in the comics, no, but you're basing it on the characters themselves, yes? The characters themselves are written exactly from Frank Miller's versions of the comics. There are a few differences, for instance, Gordon gets revenge on his first partner, Flass, by beating the crap out of him in the comics. The police commissoner in the comics is corrupt as well. So I guess another interpretation is that by using this dark, not-completely good character, the corruption in the government is exposed and a new administration (Gordon) takes over. Gordon is not corrupt, but he doesn't deal with those who are (such as in his own unit) with a heavy hand, which pisses off Harvey Dent (that's also in the comics).

The character of Batman, himself, is taken almost directly from Frank Miller's batman. So while I don't think you're completely wrong, I just think that Miller has thought that since the Reagan administration? lol

[pastor-saturn.livejournal.com]

I wasn't thinking of terrorist comic villains really, more of mythological characters that are tricksters/agents of chaos/sufferers from poor impulse control/etc. :) Same basic story goes back tens of thousands of years.

Oh, also, I must agree with your assessment of the love triangle. I found it silly, superfluous, and pandering to moviegoers who want to see a Tender Love Story, no matter how unrealistic. Dude, I'd date Batman in a hot minute if I were Rachel Dawes. Silly cow. What's the worst thing you can say about Batman, that he works nights?

[desiringmachine.livejournal.com]

I heard this complaint but I don't buy it.

First, the Joker wasn't invented for this movie nor was he reimagined as a crazy fuck that wants nothing more than to drag everybody else into the crazy with him. I haven't read a Batman comic where he was anything other than that.

I was pretty sure Morgan Freeman worked for Wayne Co. or whatever it's called, not the government. And while they did say they were making stuff for the government I saw that as a half truth to explain the secrecy involved in making stuff for Batman. Because if you make some cell phones for the army whose to say how much that might cost, it's top secret. You don't need to admit that the phone development is only a percentage of the budget.

Also, Freeman didn't set up the phone sonar, even though his character clearly had the technical know-how. And it was destroyed in the end.

I think you're reading *way* to much into the fake batmans and the mystery of batmans identity, again, masked superheroes with alter-egos not being a new thing.

In real life yeah I'd have a problem with Batman spying on me through my cellphone but in real life a guy with clown makeup can't roll drums of gasoline into a hospital and set it up for demolition without somebody noticing. And if half your face burned off one of your eyeballs would melt or burst or something...

People compared the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to our War on Terrah when that came out, apparently missing that the Lord of the Rings was written decades ago. I think the parallels are in your head.

But I did like that they killed the girl. Wish they didn't kill Two-face.

Re: More or less, yeah... except for one thing...

[end-fate.livejournal.com]

Bounty hunters are legal!

[end-fate.livejournal.com]

psst... Two-Face isn't dead. :)

oh good.

[desiringmachine.livejournal.com]

they did leave it ambiguous enough to bring him back around, so i was hoping so...

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I've never read a batman comic, ever, and hadn't heard anyone else make these observations. I'm crazy all on my own!

The half melted face didnt' seem to match teh amount of burning we actually saw him experience in the movie - his fire was soused/smothered immediately.

I think that people add some of these elements - I did hear the LOTR issue, and as a book reader I'm pretty damn sure there was no suicide bombing at the battle of Helms Keep? Now THAT I first thought of after others drew the comparisons.

[desiringmachine.livejournal.com]

maybe living in/around dc makes you paranoid :P

i only saw the two towers once but i do not remember a suicide bomber at all, i will have to rewatch...i was a bit disappointed with that movie and never bothered to see the 3rd. i lost count of how many times i read the books after the 12th.