Politics and The Dark Knight, cont.
Lots more talk about politics and The Dark Knight, sparked largely by this (kind of silly) piece by Andrew Klavan equating Batman with George W. Bush. Klavan’s column does a good job of being provocative, but kind of misses the point; Batman doesn’t need to be a one-for-one allegorical portrait of our current commander in chief for the film itself to be (as I have argued) inherently conservative. For a subtler take, check out Kyle Smith’s thoughts. Key paragraphs:
Liberals live in a world of “and.” Full security and full civil liberties. Universal health care and the best quality with no waiting. A dynamic economy and full welfare and unemployment benefits. Liberals, in other words, live in that scene in “Spider-Man” in which Spidey, forced to choose between saving a tram car full of innocent civilians and saving his girlfriend, chooses both. Liberals live in a fantasy.
Conservatives, though, live in a world of tradeoffs, of either/or. For having this relationship with reality, conservatives are caricatured as grumpy, stingy and negative. Surely all it takes is a bump in taxes on the wealthy and everything will be affordable? Where’s the Hope? Where’s the Dream? Yes, we can!
“The Dark Knight” lives on a razor edge of tradeoffs. In the coin flips of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent there is a message that not only can’t you choose both heads and tails, but sometimes you’re up against a trick coin that ensures you lose either way.
Matthew Yglesias admits that the film can be seen as inherently conservative but is inapplicable to real life; in his view the nihilist on the big screen is nothing like the nihilist hanging out in Afghan/Pakistani caves. In the comments, Will links to an internationalist approach to the film. In this take, the Joker is an inevitable byproduct of Batman’s aggression. Money thought:
Before Wayne dons the Hood and Cowl, Gotham is essentially a proxy for the international system: basically one step removed from anarchy, with no effective monopoly on the use of violence. Wayne/Batman believes that if he can give people a symbol, that Gotham can restore itself. (A decent proxy for the American belief that Washington can be a guiding light to the world without actually cooperating with it on things like landmines, global warming, or child soldiers.) But of course, signs and the signified are read differently by different people. While Batman can give the people of Gotham a sign of hope, or at least justice, he gives the criminals a sign that the rules of the game have changed.
I would argue against the idea of “Joker as blowback.” As I noted in my WaTimes review, “the Joker doesn’t even have an origin; co-writers (and brothers) Christopher and Jonathan Nolan mock the very idea of such a contrivance. Their clown prince of crime tells several different versions of how he got his scars, and their point is simple: It doesn’t matter how the Joker came to be. He simply exists. And if city elders cannot find a way to contain his madness and protect their people, his insanity could spill over to even the best and brightest of their wards.” Since he’s a blank slate you can apply any origin you’d like to him; blame-America-firsters will see him as an “inevitable byproduct of American aggression.”
But even if we grant that the Joker’s madness is a direct consequence for the Batman’s actions: so what? This is what Batman does in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight: He tackled Gotham City’s underworld, cleaning up a city that was completely ungovernable and lorded over by a corrupt system of police officers and DAs. Without Batman, Gotham City would have been destroyed by Ra’s Al Ghul. Without Batman, the mob would own the streets. Without Batman, killers would roam the city with impunity.
What liberals are saying when they denigrate Batman (and, by extension, American military power) as an ultimately negative force in the world is that it’s OK to live with rampant crime (or the occasional 9/11), that it’s bad to take the steps necessary to stop terrorism. I find this kind of staggering.