“They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I’ve looked for it ever since. I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge… Me.”

Ok, so that image isn’t from either of the films, but I felt it went with the quote better than anything I could find.

I think the hype behind Dark Knight and Batman Begins has settled down a bit. People are still talking about it, analyzing it, raving about it. Before going to see a midnight showing myself, I revisited the origins of our caped crusader. Well, I tried. The amount of comic book material is truly ludicrous to try and make something of at this point in time. Thank goodness for the people who are passionate enough to follow and document key bits on the most reliable site for all things particular, Wikipedia. Most noteworthy for now, though I promise links to come, is that as the comic book culture evolved, so to did the Batman we read about. It seems fair to state that the Adam West Batman has changed considerably from those days to where I actually want to start this discussion, the 2005 version Batman Begins. I want to talk about the two as a unit, which I have seen done surprisingly little. I find the two films really amplify what the other is creating. But enough preface.

Batman Begins is all about fear. (Possibly) Duh. While much attention is paid to the training and controlling of fear via Bruce Wayne/Batman, I think the speech by a fairly minor character captures the sentiment best.

The Key Dialogue:

Bruce Wayne: ….I came here to show you that not everyone in Gotham’s afraid of you.

Carmine Falcone: Only those who know me, kid. Look around you: you’ll see two councilmen, a union official, a couple off-duty cops, and a judge.
[points a gun at Bruce]
Carmine Falcone: Now, I wouldn’t have a second’s hesitation of blowing your head off right here and right now in front of ‘em. Now, that’s power you can’t buy! That’s the power of fear.
Bruce Wayne: I’m not afraid of you.
Carmine Falcone: Because you think you got nothing to lose. But you haven’t thought it through. You haven’t thought about your lady-friend down at the D.A.’s office. You haven’t thought about your old butler. Bang! People from your world have so much to lose. Now, you think because your mommy and your daddy got shot, you know about the ugly side of life, but you don’t. You’ve never tasted desperate. You’re, uh, you’re Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham; you’d have to go a thousand miles to meet someone who didn’t know your name. So, don’t-don’t come down here with your anger, trying to prove something to yourself. This is a world you’ll never understand. And you always fear what you don’t understand.

For one, I love the near hypocritical message. Our minor crime lord has just bookended his monologue with opposite sentiments. To start, to know him is to fear him. But in the end, you always fear what you don’t understand. I like it. It speaks to the depth of the human imagination. Falcone makes a case that plays out very fascinatingly in Dark Knight. By the time Bruce has full become his Batman persona, his fear is still driving him to revenge and the sense of justice he wishes to carry out. That fear, in my estimation, is to be left alone. His parents had, after all, died right in front of him, and he did not want to experience that loss yet again. But in Dark Knight, we see a hardened Batman try to choose the side of justice, and (arguably) knowingly sacrifices his beloved. True, he still has Alfred and Lucius, but to make them equivalent to Rachel is to really devalue what I can only imagine Bruce felt.

But where does this leave our Batman? We have seen him go from child scared of bats, to becoming a creature of the night…and an adult afraid of his parents legacy, only to embrace it in an entirely new way. What comes next? How far does it go? Cellphone radar technology that Fox expresses his displeasure with? Will copycat Batman either create more trouble, or give the real Batman a poor reputation? All we know is the sentence that starts him on his real training with the league shadows. When asked what he seeks, Bruce says, “I seek the means to fight injustice, to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.” And the significance in the wording should not go un-noted.

We’ve seen themes of love in film. We’ve seen anger consume, jealousy consume, hopelessness consume, and vengeance consume. But rarily have we seen fear given the spotlight. Fear can stem from any of these things, or fear can lead to any of these things. But fear as a root seems to have not had its time in the sun. And I, for one, am astounded by it. And fear is the primary weapon used by BOTH the good guys and bad guys. Crane/Scarecrow uses his fear toxin for control…and Joker uses his fear for total dischord. Both prove quite effective in their own right. But we also know how effectively “the Batman” uses fear…as we see at the beginning of the second movie and we hear the Joker mention, crime lords are afraid of running their dirty businesses with the Batman around. And what happens then? When you no longer have good vs evil, and you merely have different people with different motivations using the same tools. The Batman cannot conquer the Joker, for the Joker has nothing to fear. And Harvey Dent…Harvey Dent I love. He justifies my own sense of cynicism. That, in a way, I empathize with where Ra’s al Ghul is coming from. Gotham can’t be saved. There will always be villians. No matter how many you lock up, someone will step in or step up to take over. And while I want to see the hope, that were will always be good guys, people attempting to emulate Batman (even if it is poorly) that there is always something good. Ra’s al Ghul may be disobedient, but he still conforms to the same set of rules as Batman insofaras; the world is messed up.

The movie ends on a note foreshadowing the sequel, but more importantly cementing my own cynicism. Gordon points out what we all already know from having lived in the real world. Escalation, as he calls it. “We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds.”

It has been talked about to death, but to jump topics again, let us talk of heroes as symbols. The body and flesh are destroyable, ideas live on. That business. It’s a good business. But with this darker Batman, we are looking for a symbol of fear. As Ducard/Ra’s teaches him, theatrics is key. Superman and many others have it down, in a sense. Stopping a plane from falling out of the sky and the like counts for something, obviously. But Batman is not a superhero. I will argue with anyone who doesn’t call Batman an everyman. No, not every man is a billionaire with the sweet connections he has. And going with the fact that he wasn’t bitten by some radioactive spider is a bit too easy of an argument. I get chills…yes, I said it, chills…during the scene that Bruce nearly kills off the murderer of his parents. Just typing that I needed to re-focus. For one, its still early-Batman, as its very rare to see Batman actually take someone’s life. But compounded with that…I can’t help but think of how that moment would come to define Batman, and the moments I have had in my own life. Premeditated animal instinct, as I like to think about it. It’s nothing to be proud of, and its hard to justify…and yet we’ve all been there.

There is only one clear cut answer that we get from any of this…forget Spider-Man’s “With great power comes great responsibility.” With Batman we get, “With great power comes somebody else to screw with it.” The Joker. He was well written. Ledger did an Oscar worthy performance with it. But the Joker is not given an origin. We get no radioactive experiment gone wrong or mentally unstable patient break out. We are merely introduced to him as the Joker. He is seemingly born into the world to disrupt the order being instilled by Batman.

EDIT: No, I can’t leave it at just that. Dark Knight is so intertwined…(sigh). So let’s keep going. The Joker’s thesis… The Joker: You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.

The players may change, but the game will remain the same. The rules may change, but the game remains the same. And that is the discomforting but real dark feeling Dark Knight leaves us with. Heck, in the long run, all we really know is Batman is about to take a hit for being the bad guy. That’s it! The Joker is on the loose, the justice system will take a hit in losing their one beacon of shining hope, and now their masked symbol of hope is also going to be tainted. So what are we left with?

The prisoner’s dillema, of course. The ferry scene, in other terms. That, even under the most extreme circumstances, people are capable of doing the unexpected. And not just any people, the unexpected among us can do the unexpected as well. Ok, that sounded very wordy, but the sentiment certainly remains. The Joker and Batman have reached an impasse. Throw out the outliers. We know that people will not always do what is right, and will often do what is in their best interests. But we also see that one is fully capable of overcoming these shortcomings to do what is moral in a corrupt society.

The Joker: You’ll see, I’ll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh… civilized people, they’ll eat each other.

So while the above statement was true; Gotham will always need a Batman and Gotham will always have its bad guys…we are not left to despair. Villains of Gotham? You will never fully corrupt a city. No matter what depths your corruption goes, the city will never fully bend to you. That is why we press on, that is why we fight the good fight. One can listen to the cynics…Harvey put it best I think: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” And while we see that apply to both him and, presumably, Batman, we can’t buy into the theory wholesale. No one is perfect, and if we look closely at our heroes of modern times we can chip away at what they are all about. But those infallibilities do not make them bad, they make them human.

And on a completely random note, I love the pervasive “professionalism.” All very tongue-in-cheek. Every fight and encounter seems to have a bit of the sword fight in “The Princess Bride” too it. I’m not sure if its the best example, but certainly one of the prime examples could be from the trailer…the Joker complaining about Batman starting with the head trauma during the interrogating. The magic trick with the pencil also comes to mind. Batman dangling a crime boss from a distance “that won’t kill him.” The list goes on, but this added a great layer of comic mischief for me…a dark comedy bit that totally fit in with the dark themes and action scenes.

I have gotten off the path again. I will get back on by using the Joker’s own words to describe himself.

The Joker: [speaking to Two-Face] Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So, when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I’m telling the truth.
The Joker: It’s the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
The Joker: [Joker hands Two-Face a gun and points it at himself] Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.

Is he really telling the truth? Does he not have a plan? Or is this more made up tom-foolery of the scar variety? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. The truth is between the lines. Something very Tim O’Brien about it. The Things The Joker Carried. I like it. But that rounds off my thoughts nearly. So to a conclusion maybe?

I would have paid to see Dark Knight as two separate movies, by length and by quality. It was brilliance. The script, the acting, the works. Go watch it. If you already read this, you hopefully aready did. So go watch it again. It might not dethrone Titanic, but you’ll get to see a great, great movie.

Lt. James Gordon: Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now…and so we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a dark knight.

Hats off to you. To those who do your job, and we don’t know how well you do it because if you are doing it well, we will never hear of it.

RIP Mr. Ledger

All quotes courtesy of IMDB, that amazing well of information.

The Killing Joke

The Philosophy of Batman: Political Sociology Edition