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Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Raw Critic: “The Dark Knight”
I saw the two Tim Burton Batman flicks, and then the third, Batman Forever, but that’s it. In particular, I didn’t see Batman Begins which, so I’ve heard, restarted the franchise. As the summer began I was vaguely aware that another installment was on the way, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was more attuned to WALL-E, which, BTW has dropped in my estimation since I wrote about it. I read another review, did some more thinking, and it just fell apart. But I digress.
Last week it seemed that wherever I went online I’d see pictures of Heath Ledger in Joker make-up. Strange. And then the first reviews hit: The Dark Knight is the greatest thing since sliced bread! And then there’s the theme struck in the opening line of Christopher Orr’s review: “How far can an idle entertainment be bent toward art without breaking?” This film is suspended somewhere between art and entertainment, and that’s good.
I guess.
If you want a recommendation: Sure, go see it. I’m likely to see it again; I may even venture into Manhattan to see the Imax version.
Comments have been closed, but I have preserved them below the fold. Why have comments been closed? Because they had little to do with the film.
But whether it’s really there betwixt art and entertainment, beats me. I’m not even sure I know what happened in the film. In particular, I don’t know when and how District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) got turned to the dark side. Once it had happened I wasn’t even sure it had happened. Did I miss something, or is the film flawed on this point? That’s something I’ll look for on a second seeing. I’ll also ponder his last act facial make-up. Seems to me I should have been disturbed, but I wasn’t. It was just, um, there. Or, not there.
And, yes, if your favorite review indicated that the film’s a parable about living with terrorism, it got that right. I’ll be pondering that one too. The final test, as it were, is especially interesting, as it seems to be right out of the Game Theory lab: See if you can guess who’s going to push the button. For, in a way, that’s what the film does, puts the audience in the driver’s seat. Of course, you don’t actually have the power to determine the film’s ending; it’s not as though everyone has a game console and the ending depends on how the members of the audience play the game. But it comes close.
Ledger is smashing as The Joker, a very different dude from the Nicholson version. Nicholson was comic-book nuts; Ledger is really nuts. A performance to ponder; he really inhabits his character, as opposed to manipulating it from the outside, as Nicholson did.
On the whole, The Dark Knight is more real, less comic-book. Real with respect to what? Ethical choice?
Bat Cave: Mes, Goth
Comments
I’d like to suggest that a century from now, academics will marvel (npi) at a culture that accepted films featuring vigilantes dressed as bats, spiders, wolverines, robots and, um, hulks as adult fare… but there’s a good chance things will be even *worse* by then. Hey: it’s about a po-faced millionaire dressed up as a *bat*, people. I’m not ten years old; therefore it makes me laugh.
Yes--would we were back in the 17th century, where witches, ghosts, and severed heads were what moved responsible, sober-headed adults.
If it *were* the 17th century (or we were all ten years old), we’d certainly have an excuse.
Aw, Steven, we don’t need an ‘excuse’!
Steven, I’m with you. I watch nothing but documentaries—about very serious issues.
Hey Adam:
It’s not “seriousness” I eulogize with this thoughtful snark, it’s maturity. Also: picture me trying to imagine a budding, Left-leaning intelligentsia quite so seduced (infantilized; co-opted) by the (admittedly) slickest fascist propaganda in history: I can’t. Leni Riefenstahl called and she wants her totalitarian back-lighting back. And to think it all started with Superman! Oy… the irony!
If I can’t like comic books, it’s not my revolution.
Adam K: “Steven, I’m with you. I watch nothing but documentaries—about very serious issues.”
But you’ve got to admit that you also read a lot of Zizek.
Yeah, John, but he’s over 13. He’s allowed.
Are superhero comics fascist in tone? Sure. But you have to admit it’s the cutest possible fascism that carries its own ineffectuality along with it. I mean, you can’t be too worried about the Comic Book Guy stamping on an improperly sealed Mylar bag containing a no longer mint issue #1 of Dazzler, forever.
I remember when a Bush follower was saying that we had to re-elect Bush because Bush was like the Batman and Osama was like the Joker. You see, even if Batman never actually stops the Joker, he’s still the best person to send after him. Maybe he’ll get him next time! If only that had been a more common pro-Bush argument.
On the idea that superhero comics are fascist…
Perhaps it is rather the case that democracies are not quite so democratic, that democracy provokes daydreams about a more serious and exciting kind of life than sitting in a cubicle and pushing around paperwork. Perhaps boredom and security cause people to fantasize about extraordinary individuals who are stronger, more powerful, more courageous, and more noble than the great multitude. The superhero is a descendant of the Greek heroes, the saints, and the knights of Arthurian legend. The difference is that in an age where the pursuit of money is regarded as the most important vocation, power is identified as the mark of distinction, making saintly fasting and celibacy appear rather quaint and homely, and knightly magnanimity silly and counter-productive. Brute strength and force, in their stupid objectivity, become the measure.
On the other hand, it could be said that overwhelming ambition, the desire to be extraordinary, was the major factor in the decline of Athens—Themistocles was exiled, Alcibiades defected to the Spartans, and Nicias allowed the Sicilian expedition to be wiped out because he did not want to return home to face the anger of his fellow citizens. Could comics (and films and video games) lead us to a similar outcome?
If Plutarch were alive today, he’d probably write superhero comics.
Carlyle also.
"Are superhero comics fascist in tone? Sure. But you have to admit it’s the cutest possible fascism that carries its own ineffectuality along with it.”
Are we talking about comic books? I thought we were talking about movies. Are action movies that get your heart pounding (ie, “successful” movies) “ineffectual”? Was Rambo “ineffectual”? I think we can use the same toolkit that valorizes popular entertainment as worthy of “serious” analysis in the first place to argue that consuming it (esp. as a fan) has more than a neutral impact, or even make a plausible case for its baleful (npi) influence on the Left.
Is it “ineffectual” because current conditions prove it so (eg, despite Iron Man’s blockbusting debut, the country is a Pacifist Paradise), or because to admit otherwise would be embarrassing?
My feeling is that the critical defenses are down on these things in a way that’s powerfully reminiscent of the malleable naivete of adolescence. But even I have to admit that if Leni R. had lived to direct the next Batman/Spiderman/Howard the Duck, I’d be the first in line to see it, baby.
Oh, no. I mainly wanted to re-tell the Bush:Batman::Osama:Joker story, not really restart the world’s most re-trodden superhero discussion topic (next up over in sci fi: was Heinlein’s Starship Troopers fascist)?
But, OK. Peter, the superhero isn’t merely a hero, isn’t merely a descendent of Greek heroes, saints, and knights. That’s because the superhero has two things they don’t have: 1) a fascist visual iconography, what with all the masks and sleek costumes and the standing dramatically against the backdrop in a way that’s difficult to describe in words but is best summed up as “fascist”; 2) a radical disconnection that lends itself well to fascism. Yes, they are “stronger, more powerful, more courageous, and more noble than the great multitude”, but they don’t actually really work with the great multitude in any way. The Greek hero showed his individual excellence while fighting alongside an army (well, a band) of Greeks. The saint served God, and in practice, at least half of them worked for the church. Knights served the king and led armies on occasion. Superheroes decide alone what they’re going to do, they don’t consult any of the people who’s lives they are affecting about it, and those people are incapable of really helping them in any case. They aren’t just physically strong, they’re moral superheroes—people are supposed to admire them personally, as symbols, and as decision-makers for the multitude, who only bad people challenge the decisions of because the superheroes are good. But they aren’t political leaders, like the famous Greek political leaders—they’re more like the Greek gods.
All of this is why the up-and-coming figure now is the nebbish, geek-identified supervillian, star of the book Soon I will Be Invincible and that Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog thing. The supervillian shares all the Romantic qualities of the superhero, without demanding implicit ratification of his decisions—especially when, as in the examples above, he never gets around to killing anybody.
Steven, didn’t Adorno write your whole line? I mean, why not go for Jazz first?
"I mean, why not go for Jazz first?”
When I see the footage of Mingus wearing black molded anatomically hypertrophied torso armour in concert I’ll consider it; until then I’ll consider his Art an adult aesthetic pleasure. Unless you have evidence that his Cadillac featured a rocket launcher: that would change everything.
But maybe the first line of inquiry should be: are you willing to acknowledge any boundaries drawn between “juvenile” and “adult” (as categories of worldview or behaviour) or are these merely distinctions of convenience, in your opinion?
Three cheers for Jamie Lynn, whoever she is. At least she’s seen The Dark Knight.
I don’t quite get the point, Steven. Sure, there are fuzzy boundaries between juvenile and adult (although, like any binary, etc. etc.) Yes, superheroes are juvenile. But that’s what I meant by “the cutest possible fascism that carries its own ineffectuality along with it.” Adolescence is ineffectual. Yes, some people may thrill to the Batman movie in a fascist-liking kind of way. (Although your preference for movies as visceral thrillers over comic books is mere snobbery of one medium over another, unless you’re mostly concerned about the people who don’t read, not even a comic book.) But if they thrill to Batman, so what? Then they become the Comic Book Guy.
"Adolescence is ineffectual.”
But the question is: is fascist propaganda ineffectual?
When I read Batman comics as a kid—thankfully, I was within the permissible age range—I got the message loud and clear: all of them were promoting a virulent form of nationalism combined with corporatism, legitimated by an appeal to traditional values over against the decadence of modernity. What’s more, since I was living in the wake of World War I and the subsequent global depression, I found this message to be both deeply appealling and to be the only live option to stave off communism.
In short, Steven has totally nailed it.
If the fascist propaganda gets you to idolize Winnie the Pooh, then, yeah.
"Three cheers for Jamie Lynn, whoever she is. At least she’s seen The Dark Knight.”
Bill, are you suggesting that I need to see the latest offering in the series in order to understand the template?
And, Rich: my point (which is difficult to make in the form of a dialogue, with the lag time of moderation added): a vivid symptom of a fatally degraded “Left” (and Left-leaning intelligentsia), in America, is, in my opinion, this child-like acceptance of fascist memes in entertainment so overt that even devoted fans admit to them (as above) without, at the same time, being repulsed by them.
“If the fascist propaganda gets you to idolize Winnie the Pooh, then, yeah.”
What if it renders the so-called Left essentially collaborationist and pathetically toothless in the face of Rightward expansion?
"What if it renders the so-called Left essentially collaborationist and pathetically toothless in the face of Rightward expansion?”
Maybe you should give me more of a hint as to how this is supposed to work, Steven. I imagine something like this:
1. Movie released: Winnie: This Time He’s Bad
2. Fans rave. “Wow, did you see that punch where Eeyore’s tail comes flying right off? We need someone like Winnie for our Maximum Leader.”
3. Academics write, hmm. What? “The Eeyore tail-flying-off scene parametrizes the cybernetic nature of the postmodern body, in which all interiority is essentially detachable. Also, fascism is cool.”
Let me offer you a counter-question to all of your Socratic ones: assuming for the sake of argument that this scheme somehow holds up, what makes you think that the “so-called Left” that you refer to ever was or ever could have been the Left?
Jezz, you know it was the left side of Dent’s face that got, um, disappeared. I wonder if that’s Frought With Meaning?
Or, hell, rather than wait for yet more dialogue, here’s how I see the situation. Everyone that I know on the Left is very busy right now, because the planet is in trouble environmentally. They all know that the next decade is going to be critical. So they’re, you know, working. Whether people think of Batman as Serious Art or not just isn’t a question that seems very important. The people who do think that Batman is Serious Art—as well as those who think that It’s Important That Batman Isn’t Serious Art—are pretty much irrelevant, unless of course they’re discussing this as recreation. Because, you know, art criticism is just not very important to the Left, and people who work as part of the Left don’t go into art criticism and do not bear the responsibility of being some kind of vanguard intellectual corps.
Now, personally, I love things like this. My children are 7 and 5 years old, and they inevitably get into pop culture children’s shows—since their friends watch them, even with highly restricted TV they find out about them through osmosis if by nothing else—and since I spend a lot of time with my kids, I enjoy reimaging the weird worldviews they’re presented with as adult culture. I’ve written poems featuring Bob the Builder as Gnostic demiurge who is responsible for all evil since he built the world wrongly, Thomas the Tank Engine as nihilist, bomb-throwing anarchist rebelling against the ethic of usefulness, and Oscar the Grouch being enlightened by the Buddha into seeing the entire world as trash. Now what, exactly, is wrong with this confusion of artistic categories?
Rich:
“Because, you know, art criticism is just not very important to the Left, and people who work as part of the Left don’t go into art criticism and do not bear the responsibility of being some kind of vanguard intellectual corps.”
We’re not talking about Arts Criticism (though to some extent we’re indulging in it). I’m only wondering about the connection between what I perceive as an infantilized culture and the drastic rightward shift of the culture’s host("America") and the fact that my parents, who were literate, Left-leaning people, wouldn’t have been caught reading a Batman comic; not because they were style-conscious but because they were busier patronizing smarter, wittier, hegemony-questioning books, plays, movies and magazines, etc (for which there was an actual market). Even the guys who produced the original Batman television series were smart enough (and liberal enough) to make it self-mocking.
My parents and their ilk helped to sap LBJ’s political will and then put Nixon out of office by being part of a larger mood (and set of values) that anathemized certain illiberal and/or unethical behaviours. Of course, they only managed to chop off the snake’s head, and the head grew back soon enough, but it was *something*, and I grew up detesting War, organized religion, and Vegas (titter) as a result. Well, all three are now cardinal values in a grim landscape of the imagination dotted with grotesques like Iron Man. I know it’s unfashionable to make this comparison; of *course* it is.
And, now, the best the Left can come up with is (rather safely) condemning Bush’s illegal adventure in Iraq long after the fact, not because it was illegal but because it didn’t *work*.
The framework has shifted. Is it your contention that powerful propaganda (whether system-directed or system-supporting) doesn’t shift culture-wide ethical frameworks? Is it your contention that you don’t vote with your dollar when you help to make fascist propaganda movies blockbusting hits; aren’t you guaranteeing more (and more extreme) of the same?
I smell boiled frog.
I was having fun with this for a while, but… Steven, you can claim that you’re not talking about arts criticism. But when you write “Is it your contention that powerful propaganda (whether system-directed or system-supporting) doesn’t shift culture-wide ethical frameworks?” what you’re talking about is arts criticism. Moral and political criticism, of course. I didn’t mention Adorno for no reason.
I tend to think that people who really think that Batman causes culture-wide ethical framework shifting—rather than, at most, being an example of correlation not being causation, for the seemingly good reason (to me) that Batman fans are seen as spotty adolescents, or developmentally challenged adults, by the wider culture—are more interested in describing arts critics as important than in anything else. That’s what this “a budding, Left-leaning intelligentsia quite so seduced” bit seems to me to be about.
Could this possibly be the same Steven Augustine who said that art raises no moral questions, and even (this is delicious) used the Joker as evidence of this? Summer blockbuster season really changes a man.
”...when you write ‘Is it your contention that powerful propaganda (whether system-directed or system-supporting) doesn’t shift culture-wide ethical frameworks?’ what you’re talking about is arts criticism.”
I’d call it sociology, shading into politics, unless you consider Advertizing an extension of Arts criticism, too.
If you’re looking to art as a means of fighting hegemony, you note, for example, the Falstaff is one of the most vibrant characters in Shakespeare. If you’re looking for affirmation of the existing order, you harp on the fact, for example, that Hal kicks Falstaff to the curb when he becomes king.
Reading political lessons out of literature is easy. You can even find the ones you want, every time. No doubt something’s been going on in the country ever since Lucas invented the FX action blockbuster in 77. What it is . . .
Meanwhile Jamie Lynn thinks the acting sucked, the effects sucked, and, while we’re at it, the whole Dark Knight movie sucked.
Tomemos:
This is certainly the Steven Augustine who considers these blockbusters to be propaganda and *not* Art; and who used the Joker as a joke. And can you not draw trhe distinction between a moral judgment that can’t be made against a particular character (the Joker is not a “bad” man because he’s not a man), versus the crafting of propaganda? Or do you consider Lolita to be in the same league as a Leni Riefenstahl film?
Maybe the problem is your unwilligness to draw a distinction between Art and propaganda; I’m not as inclusive as you are.
"Reading political lessons out of literature is easy.”
That’s precisely what I’m *not* doing; I’m adducing political effects from the popularization of fascist iconography. The “plot” (the literary vestige) in “Batman” is as relevant, in my opinion, as the “plot” in Triumph of the Will.
Tomemos:
Here’s the supposedly self-incriminating quote you refer to:
‘Humbert’ is a fantasy construct...you may choose to evaluate the ‘morality’ of the motives (or impact) of the author in creating the fantasy, but that’s a very different thing. What about the ‘morality’ of Wile E. Coyote’s constant attempts on the life of the innocent Roadrunner? The Joker (from Batman) isn’t evil...he’s ‘evil’.
I’m not now arguing for or against the “real” evil of the character The Joker, or Batman, or whatever comic book construct under discussion… I’m arguing the visceral impact of film-as-total-experience; and the use of popular film as powerful propaganda; and my theory that a somewhat (in my opinion) infantilized Left-leaning intelligentsia is eating the “message” of specific films (power) up, where it should be resisting the message with savage mockery and serious criticism.
The two positions are not contradictory; they zoom past each other on utterly different planes.
"I’d call it sociology, shading into politics, unless you consider Advertizing an extension of Arts criticism, too.”
It’s about Batman, therefore it’s arts criticism, as a matter of genre. But you can call it whatever you like, really; what it still comes down to is vital importance for people who talk about (in order to savagely mock and seriously criticize) Batman.
"It’s about Batman, therefore it’s arts criticism, as a matter of genre.”
Rich, I don’t want to fall into an endless loop of gainsaying on this point, but I can’t quite get your apparent claim that discussing any effect an “artwork” has on the public is filed under “criticism”. Putting the music of (generic deathmetal band of your choice) on trial as the influence in a murder wouldn’t fall under the rubric of music crit, would it?
Anyway, I’ll back off on that one in the name of avoiding the above-mentioned loop.
Just to be clear: are we conflating Film and Literature in some of these arguments?
That’s precisely what I’m *not* doing; I’m adducing political effects from the popularization of fascist iconography.
At the level of analysis and argument in this thread, the direction of a causality is a matter of mere assertion.
Are we conflating Film and Literature? I thought that it was your contention that Batman never was Literature… at any rate, I’m conflating film and comics as media; if you’re going to argue that film impresses adults with gosh-wow effects, I don’t see why you shouldn’t say the same thing about children reading comic books. (Yes, I know that adults read comic books too. But children often read them.)
Bill:
I meant that “Literature” is not my concern here. I’m happy to admit to the causal flow in either (or both) directions.
Rich:
“...if you’re going to argue that film impresses adults with gosh-wow effects, I don’t see why you shouldn’t say the same thing about children reading comic books.”
I’ll take this as meaning the debate has come full circle… (laugh)...
Steven, while I appreciate the role that your parents, Woodward and Bernstein Augustine, played in bringing down Nixon, I think you’re overestimating your ability to discuss a work (of art, prop, whatever) without seeing it. You say Lolita is art, not propaganda; well, I had a student who thought that Humbert was writing it to endorse Humbert’s actions. I was able to refute her, and justify the bad grade she received, by dealing with the actual content of the work. I’d love to have that debate with you about Dark Knight, but you’re not talking about the content but the costumes: by their batsuits, shall ye know them. Liberals are a superstitious, cowardly lot.
Make that, “…that Nabokov was writing it to endorse Humbert’s actions.” Way to go, Tomemos.
I have no idea how you think the debate has come full circle, Steven. I was saying that if you think that movie Batman has bad political effects on adults—which seems to be your thesis, although I don’t agree with it—then you pretty much have to think that comics have bad effects on children as well. In any case, I see no reason to differentiate the move Batman from the comic book Batman, in general.
Just wanted to drop a line in response to Rich Puchalsky’s statement that superheroes resemble Greek gods more than the Homeric heroes—I do agree with Rich on this point. But you might also say that there’s something kind of odd and disturbing in the movement, especially in a secular, technological age, from more human role models (Achilles, Joan of Arc, Galahad) to figures who can never die, and if they die, get their deaths retroactively undone. It’s as though mere humanity is too finite, corporeal, and demanding to titillate people.
Also, Bill, accept my apologies for posting here - for those who are interested in pursuing the fascism/superhero link, I welcome you to post under my contribution to the Reading Comics event. My post does address this point somewhat, and I’m quite eager to pursue it further.
Tomemos:
The difference between a student’s idiotic misreading of Literary Art (even HH doesn’t appear to “endorse” his own actions; being that the narration is delivered as retrospection, Humbert’s guilty grief on hearing that Lolita-free chorus of innocent voices near the end of the book shades everything preceding it), and a culture’s susceptibility to fascist propaganda, is surely a question of scale and category.
Your Woodstein joke can’t erase the fact that Richard M. Nixon was impeached for the sort of thing that G. W. Bush gets up to on his weekends, to unwind; you don’t legally remove an American President from office without the support of a vociferous swath of the populace: my parents, and my parents’ friends, and people like them, to their credit, belonged to that vociferous swath and actually saw Democracy *work* as a result of populist pressure.
PS Augustine isn’t my last name, it’s my middle name; Steven my first.
Rich:
If there were no difference between filmic (or video) propaganda and print propaganda, candidates for POTUS could save millions by merely dropping pamphlets from helicopters, right?
My “full-circle” quip was about my initial comment to the effect that adults watching Batman-the-film are *all too similar* to children reading the comic. In that sense you seem to agree with me. But children buying into bullsh*t and intellectual adults buying into the *same* bullsh*t are two different things. Bullsh*t is part of every kid’s development; there’s only cause to worry if he/she doesn’t manage to outgrow it.
I created “The Raw Critic” rubric so that I could discuss new works - most likely films - and work through my reactions to them in public. This post has attracted no discussion of The Dark Knight, but quite a lot of discussion of fascism and superheroes. That particular discussion seems rather larger than this format can accommodate and seems pretty much to have destroyed any possibility for the type of discussion I was seeking.
For that reason I am closing the discussion down. Fascism will just have to roll on over us without further comment in this thread.