Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

I'm about to see this in IMAX in about 40 minutes. So I'm sure ill change my mind about all of this!

It's also worth noting that Nolan probably has at least the idea of a sequel in mind, so who knows where this is going as far as intention goes.

"Fair enough, goole, and the wiretapping reference really was the thing that pushed it over the edge for me. But there's more to it than just that."

the wirtetapping basically reference goes:

batman: hey look i can spy on the whole fuckin city!
lucius: fucked up. dont do that, asshole. youre not good enough.
batman: i know im not! but YOU are.
lucius: ok whatever fine.

[batman apprehends joker using this system]
[freeman blows it the fuck up]

in other words, the film has extraordinarily mixed feelings about its own superhero using this power - in fact, its superhero doesnt even trust himself with it. and in the end, its destroyed by the one man he does trust.

how can this really be read as 'pro-wiretapping', esp when its done by a faceless monolithic entity like the NSA? if anything id read it as very much anti-wiretapping (keep in mind this wasnt just wiretapping but that batman/freeman could actually SEE YOU AT ALL TIMES - spooky shit!)

Free-man!

like i said, the debate w/in the movie is more like an excuse for this hero using this technology at this particular time, while taking the time to point out that like, in the real world, this shit doesnt fly. somewhat ambiguously, yes, but who wants a superhero movie with a an actual political agenda?? xp lol

who wants a superhero movie with a an actual political agenda??

Warner Bros sure hopes you do come March.

The film's argument is basically this: Domestic wiretapping ("spying on six-million people", in Lucius' words) is a terrible thing. But, as evil as it seems, it may be an absolute necessity. Given the circumstances, aren't we lucky that only the best-of-the-best good guys are doing it?

the movie is more like an excuse for this hero using this technology at this particular time, while taking the time to point out that like, in the real world, this shit doesnt fly.

It was very hard for me to accept the public need for Dent the way Batman and Gordon did. Especially since, in the end, the mob has been crippled by both Batman and the Joker.

exactly! they need someone on their side who can actually appear in public, has a real name and face, that they can vote for, etc. it seemed reasonable to me.

going to see this tomorrow night (finally!) - STAY TUNED

it may be an absolute

ha i hope you havent been reading this thread, ive been ignoring avoiding spoiler type shit for awhile

thanks... in a way this discussion has come back around to what the pinefox and I were debating upstream. mainly about how bringing your moral viewpoint to the movies can blind you to what a movie's really trying to convey.

whether you're pro or anti-bush, if you watch tdk with an eye towards how the movie is supporting or violating your political beliefs, you're not going to get the full impact. this discussion gets a lot more interesting when we admit that there isn't a simple answer to the question of whose side this movie is on.

also, imagine christopher nolan walking into a room full of hollywood bigwigs and pitching his $180M-before-marketing-costs blockbuster as "the batman is dubya".

"...may be an absolute necessity..." Sounds goofy, but what I meant is that even if the necessity IS absolute, we're denied total certainty. I'm a relativist trying to talk about absolutes, so of course things get a little muddy.

they need someone on their side who can actually appear in public, has a real name and face, that they can vote for, etc. it seemed reasonable to me.

-- Jordan

"The film's argument is basically this: Domestic wiretapping ("spying on six-million people", in Lucius' words) is a terrible thing. But, as evil as it seems, it may be an absolute necessity. Given the circumstances, aren't we lucky that only the best-of-the-best good guys are doing it?"

the best of the best good guys? as in SUPERHEROES? yes, we are very lucky to have superheroes like batman/dick cheney walking amongst us.

really? I imagine that although dent went down in flames (hur hur) the promise that someone could relieve batman + gordon from living the life they were leading (the dark vigilante and his covert enabler) was still an ideal worth pursuing for them (and us).

xpost to contenderizer

it's still probably better to have dent as a martyr than as another symbol that the joker won (by turning good citizens into murderers and criminals), but i see what you mean.

xp

whether you're pro or anti-bush, if you watch tdk with an eye towards how the movie is supporting or violating your political beliefs, you're not going to get the full impact. this discussion gets a lot more interesting when we admit that there isn't a simple answer to the question of whose side this movie is on.

also, imagine christopher nolan walking into a room full of hollywood bigwigs and pitching his $180M-before-marketing-costs blockbuster as "the batman is dubya".

-- Edward III

For what it's worth, I didn't watch with "an eye towards how the movie is supporting or violating" my political beliefs. I just watched it, and I felt that The Dark Knight went out of its way to articulate a political point of view. The film's politics did rub me the wrong way, but I don't think they're something that I simply conjured up without any outside help. I mean, no one seems to be seriously arguing that this is an anti-dubya film.

(And no, I don't imagine Nolan pitched it as "Batman=Dubya". But then, I doubt he had to pitch it at all.)

it seems more like an admittance that there are politics to comic book heroes, & that nolan went a bit out of his way to engage with them to make the movie seem more close to the bone to his audience - you really seem stubborn about the idea that the movie justifying (more or less) its heroes actions is in any way equivalent with justifying bush's. it's playing off the national consciousness, & obviously doing it pretty well: it's not justifying wars or wiretapping or anything else, really, except its own main character.

this is probably the part where i stress again that that main character is a man who dresses up like a bat

And Aslan is just a really big lion.

i think the point is, the movie says that lawbreaking by the powerful is sometimes ok because the people doing it are fundamentally good, use wisdom, and the results are heroic, even if people are concerned about the details. it more or less has to say this, because it's an action movie about a superhero -- it's not just genre but drama itself that militates against obvious policy positions even as it demands "engagement with" hot-button topics of the day.

i think david addington believes that kind of thing about himself, the trouble is, he's not a man who dresses up like a bat, as far as we've been able to find out.

you never know

I think it says it is never ok, and those that do so are necessarily excluded from a lawful society because they undermine it. Batman's methods are not sustainable because he does not hold himself to any law.the aporia is common:law as such is ultimately sustained and protected by something outside the law.

Or, more pessimistically, that law and justice are illusions we subscribe to without recognizing their contingency.

the movie says that lawbreaking by the powerful is sometimes ok because the people doing it are fundamentally good, use wisdom, and the results are heroic, even if people are concerned about the details

i think the movie shows this kind of lawbreaking, speculates it may be heroic, but more than anything says: man, these questions are really troubling and hard to parse.

Batman & friends seem pretty fucking conflicted.

i've been mulling over a bunch of half-thought-through arguments for years that the essential political disagreements in modernity are between boredeom and excitement, and boredom is always the moral choice but a clear loser in the realm of popular argument. decent transit is godawfully boring, so the excitement of the "open road" gets us what we have today. education is boring as fuck, so let's spice up our solution set with vouchers based on the idea of "competition," that'll light a fire under it!

gaining information and working toward security are intensely boring affairs, too -- putting together an accurate picture of the economic patterns of waziristan and a cop walking the same beat for years are less exciting and infintely more useful than stringing a dude up by his nuts or a SWAT team taking the door of some shithole, but dude that's like homework.

so in the end there are very tight limits to what an action movie or really any drama at all can say about what we should do in the world, because the real status quo and any good change to it are just wholly undramatic.

lol this is what my insomnia is made of

Yeah. And it's worth agreeing with whoever said above that this is all part of the Batman mythos. Were this Superman we were talking about the context would be way different. Now there's a hero for Bush's self conception!

Speaking of the mythology...

Batman's methods are not sustainable because he does not hold himself to any law.

Connecting this basic character material to real-world situations that seem to echo the Bush administration is where things get tricky. And I do not for a second accept that the film condemns the Batman's tactics and/or overall course of action.

See I was thinking that if bush = Batman then we should chase bush out of office!

so in the end there are very tight limits to what an action movie or really any drama at all can say about what we should do in the world, because the real status quo and any good change to it are just wholly undramatic.

-- goole

Connecting this basic character material to real-world situations that seem to echo the Bush administration is where things get tricky. And I do not for a second accept that the film condemns the Batman's tactics and/or overall course of action.

-- contenderizer

what effort really has to be made to connect them? the connections are going to be there anyway - gotham is already giving batman way more power than any one man should have, right? why is it ok for him to have that power?

the movie bothers to ask that question, it answers as it should, (BECAUSE HES A FUCKING SUPERHERO) & now its catching flack from you for it!

also, remember the way the wannabe non-batman-batman vigilantes were treated by this movie? (not well)

I don't think that Batman is a natural, obvious parallel to the Bush admin. The metaphor I'm talking about isn't built into the character's basic mythology. Filmmakers had to drag in terrorism, torture, domestic surveillance and the nobility of lying to create the subtext.

gotham is already giving batman way more power than any one man should have, right? why is it ok for him to have that power?

The metaphor I'm talking about isn't built into the character's basic mythology. Filmmakers had to drag in terrorism, torture, domestic surveillance and the nobility of lying to create the subtext.

To the extent that it matters, the filmmakers don't have to go far -- all of that stuff exists in Batman's history in the comics to some degree or another. Most recently, he created a satellite surveillance system called Brother Eye to keep track of all other powered beings on Earth, because he stopped trusting them after discovering that the JLA had previously subjected him to a mindwipe. Unfortunately, Brother Eye was compromised by his enemies, causing many deaths.

He's also brushed up against torture many, many times in recent years, going so far as to put a loaded gun to a criminal's head with his finger on the trigger, only to be stopped by Wonder Woman from going through with it.

For what it's worth a lot of forgettable dialogue in the beginning addresses these issues.

And authoritarianism is brought up when Rachel mentions Caesar.

Pancakes: Yeah, I know that Batman has dealt with all/most of these issues before -- their presence in this context doesn't start with the film. But in bringing up Batman's "mythos", I was focusing more on the basic essence of the character than all the permutations he's been run through in this or that DC title (his history). But I can't deny that a taste for brutality and for snooping where the law might not allow are a big part of what distinguishes the Batman from most other DCU superheroes. Even the characterization of the Joker -- as the embodiment of a malignant nihilism that naturally opposes civilization-enabling order and faith -- has roots in the comics. Still, I think it would be easy to make a Batman film that doesn't function as a direct apologia (in roxy's words) for Bush/Cheney war-on-terror policies. And I'm not convinced that it's mere coincidence that The Dark Knight fills this role so well.

just for the sake of clarity: you do think that Nolan intended the film as an apologia for Bush?

Interesting things I noticed this time through:

-vigilante to Batman: "what's the difference between you and me?"
-the aforementioned bit about Caesar suggesting that Nolan knows full well that terrorism is often used as an excuse for authoritarianism, and that even good intentions can have that effect.
-that batman doesnt seem to recognize that the joker is the logical consequence of his own actions. stepping outside the law to protect it forces one to confront the utter chaos and nihilism that the law normally shields us from. it's strongly suggested in the film that batman "makes" the joker appear.

in other words, the joker is like what happens when batman upsets the natural order of cops vs criminals...and like some metaphysical entity made flesh he has to face the nihilism that his own vigilanteism implies.

just for the sake of clarity: you do think that Nolan intended the film as an apologia for Bush?

...batman doesnt seem to recognize that the joker is the logical consequence of his own actions. stepping outside the law to protect it forces one to confront the utter chaos and nihilism that the law normally shields us from. it's strongly suggested in the film that batman "makes" the joker appear.

While it's fair to say that Batman similarly "made the Joker appear", it isn't because he did anything wrong. He simply refused to accept the corrupt compromise between crime and justice that allowed the city to function smoothly. His only fault is the hubris that led him to think he might make Gotham/the world a better place. And while the film does suggest that we unbalance the status quo at our peril, it also argues that once the forces of chaos have been unleashed, we have no choice but to fight them on their own terms.

the joker is like what happens when batman upsets the natural order of cops vs criminals...and like some metaphysical entity made flesh he has to face the nihilism that his own vigilanteism implies.

And on another note Gary Oldman is sooo good in this.

Hokay, on second thought, I don’t believe that the film functions as the story of the consequences of lawless vigilantism. The Joker is created/necessitated not by Batman’s vigilante tactics, but rather by Gordon & Dent’s legitimate police actions: raiding crooked banks, invoking RICOH, etc. Therefore, The Dark Knight doesn’t show us the chaos that results when good men operate outside the bounds of the law, but rather the chaos that results when good men dare to stand against evil. And it suggests that a particularly cruel and lawless form of heroism may be the only recourse in such dire situations, even though polite society later repudiates the dirty work that saved the day. Again, the Bush apologetics.

Plus, yeah, Gary Oldman. And Ledger in a wig.

I totally disagree!

But we can all agree on oldman thankfully.

i think this movie was bout eating crayons

Batman : cops :: joker : criminals

Ok we've argued in circles so ill let it rest!

Nolan's an English Literature graduate = he knows about Barthes = he's not going to be offended by how people read this movie, or have a 'proper' way to read this movie that he adheres to even, probably, beyond "It's a morally-conflicted Batman film".

Which also means the Batman = Bush analogy is not wrong; but also not right either. It's just a possibility; millions of subtly (and radically) different interpretations of this movie exist. I note that Nolan doesn't really do much in the way of interviews about his films that go beyond "we dreamt the Batpod up in my garage and asked the engineers to make it and they said 'unpossible' but we asked again and they did it lol".

Compare Batman to the protagonist in Memento.

The Joker is created/necessitated not by Batman’s vigilante tactics, but rather by Gordon & Dent’s legitimate police actions: raiding crooked banks, invoking RICOH, etc.

Yes, but it was only Batman's actions in the first film, and his continuing action at the beginning of this one, that made it possible for Gordon and the MCU to take on the Mob and the crooks in the first place. And it was Batman who provided the irradiated bills and the means of tracking them, since Gordon seemed to be running the whole op on the down-low, outside the eyes of the commissioner and the mayor.

I suspect this all actually makes your reading stronger, not weaker.

Perhaps I'm remembering wrong, but in the Tim Burton Batman movies, didn't Batman not have as many qualms about killing people?

I seem to remember him setting a few criminals on fire with his Batmobile in Batman REturns

(note: I know these are not part of the same storyline, just asking!)

Yeah, he also blew up the Joker's Smilex factory in the first one with absolutely no warning to anyone who might be inside. Frankly, his "no killing" rule has always kinda meant "no just outright shooting guys." Crippling and maiming, or putting them in the ICU, is perfectly OK.

those were the "can the end justify the means" portion of Nolan's movies, I s'pose. pretty sure IRL, law enforcement would have let Batman let the Joker fall...Batman must have one guilty conscience about things.