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Showing posts with label heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heroes. Show all posts

Film review: The Dark Knight Rises

Posted by moses @ 05:07 • , , , , , , , • 0 comments



I'd finally gotten round to seeing The Dark Knight Rises last month, and, frankly, I enjoyed it. As such, although the film—like Nolan's other works—did not leave me with much of a lasting impression, I will not be too critical of it, acknowledging the film for what it is: An encapsulation of Hollywood at its flashiest.

Certainly, one may detect proto-fascist undertones in the film. The Dark Knight Rises tells us, after all, that raw violence and not money or influence is the ultimate source of power—Bruce Wayne's wealth and position may get him all his fancy gadgets, but he could not defeat Bane until he trained himself up physically and prevailed against his adversary in a slugging match.

Nevertheless, I will not go as far as to say that The Dark Knight Rises' politics are regressive or backward. For one, the film strikes me as partly an attempt to articulate a contemporary brand of political consciousness; although it does so in a traditional comic-book-hero fashion, hence the seemingly more backward elements in its symbolisms. The film's favouring of muscle power over sophisticated methods could, for example, simply be explained by the film's comic book roots.

The Batman of the Nolan films is also very much a traditional comic book hero. He is basically benevolent, despite his psychological scars and his initial motivation to seek vengeance. And he fights for a supposedly universal sense of justice while remaining outside of the political and legal systems. The latter is an especially important aspect in The Dark Knight Rises, and it has been given a contemporary twist: The legal and political system of Gotham are structurally unable to solve the city's serious crime problem, and it's thanks to the work of a vigilante hero that the city is saved—a narrative that banks heavily on today's post-crises distrust of traditional institutions.

But Batman isn't just Batman; he is also Bruce Wayne, whose wealth and technological expertise can save the world in their own right. How he uses or does not use them is bound to be interesting. And it turns out that he chooses not to use them except in aid of his role as the vigilante hero—all because of his fear that someone might misuse whatever technological marvel he came up with that could, on the other hand, have untold benefits for humankind.

Not only that, while fighting crime as Batman, the wealthy and powerful Bruce Wayne does little or nothing to transform the legal and political systems that are part of Gotham's problem. As such, Bruce Wayne/Batman stands for the contemporary reluctance to rock the boat too hard, representing our bitterness towards the capitalist/democratic system that is, at the same time, tempered by an unwillingness to cast it aside. Nolan's Batman is thus the hero of today: A benevolent but broadly non-interventionist patriarch, shaking his head at the excesses of late capitalist society but letting it go on nonetheless, only scraping at the mould on the rotting meat. If anything, the world must be "ready" for utopia before it can be given it—or, more correctly, it must ready itself, because he is too cynical to help it along.

Where radical movement and revolution are represented in the film, they are portrayed as simply a big con job perpetrated by the terrorist Bane, who is not actually interested in emancipating the people. Even then, when Bane's motives are finally revealed, the film plainly steers clear of any portrayal of ideological conflict. The origins of the war (on terror) can ultimately be attributed to family drama, a perennial bourgeois favourite of a genre since when novels were the most prevalent form of mass entertainment.

Thus, it's difficult not to see the film as reactionary, a middle class abrogation of things like the Occupy movement, or perhaps even a vision in a Tea Party reverie with Bruce Wayne standing in for the Koch brothers. However, it is probably overstating the case to say, for example, that the film advocates fascist politics or plain old feudalism. After all, I would hesitate to attribute a nefarious genius to a politically-flat director like Nolan. Instead, I would suggest that the film was primarily made to entertain and, like many other films, to make money, and that its haphazard politics are merely an accident, the result of the film being made in contemporary times.

Thinking that way certainly helped me switch off and enjoy the mindless entertainment while it lasted.

Don't bet on the Batman

Posted by moses @ 16:37 • , , , , , , • 0 comments



Upon hearing that a massacre had occurred during a premiere of the latest iteration of the Batman films, some people asked, "Where was Batman?"

Perhaps the joke, all jokes are not an appropriate response to such a tragedy. But this is also a singularly powerful question. Indeed, where was—is—Batman?

Of course. He's not real. Batman is fiction. Everyone except some kids (and maybe some delusional fools) knows that. People can be expected to know the difference between reality and the superhero fiction, can't they? Well, can they?

Most people know that superheroes don't exist. But to what extent do they grasp this fact? I mean, why do people like superhero stories? The modern trend in fiction may be to humanise superheroes, to depict the conflicted and flawed hero. But they're still superheroes—they are still powerful; they can still solve the world's problems, even if they must bleed and sacrifice much in the process. Perhaps stories like Watchmen defy this convention altogether, but not the Batman films.

Christopher Nolan's Batman is a tortured hero, a hero who has to mask himself as a villain. But the audience are well aware that he is hero. And the fantasy of the mighty superhero, furthermore, is not shattered. People can expect Batman to save the world within the big screen. They want to savour—even just a shadow of it—the excitement that springs from the knowledge that a saviour is here to fight for them. Fiction melds with reality; the story is not real, but physiological reaction to it is.

That is why the massacre is semiologically powerful—a horrible crime is occurring while the superhero is 'present' on the big screen, a demonstrably flat image that interacts with the world purely as illusion. It's not even impotent; it's nothing at all. The mirage is shattered completely by the jarring reality of a tragedy unfolding simultaneously. Thus, observers may be prompted to ask, "Where was this hero?" Of course they'd known that he doesn't exist. But this incident makes them realise that anew and takes the realisation to a higher, uncanny level.

The death of the superhero, a theme that has been explored in fiction, is not as devastating to the fantasy as the real deaths of superhero fans in front of the big screen.

However, while many of us may intuit this, not everyone will realise what it means. Take, for example, this Facebook comment about the survivors:
All I can say is send them a hero Chris send the dark knight to the hospital for them, so the children know there are real heroes out there, and that evil won't win
This is exactly the kind of sentiment that should have been extinguished by this incident. Yet people want to hold on to the fantasy and, worse, to perpetuate it by instilling the same delusion in children—the notion that there is a simple fix to the big problems that can be accomplished by a few mighty and benevolent individuals.

Perhaps adults have a vested interest in raising children who are naïve and docile. Some of them had probably been raised to be that way themselves. But the use of a crutch is symptomatic of disability—this much-needed delusion reveals people's psychological inability to steer away from a petty existence waiting for salvation.

Those people have got it the wrong way around. If they did exist, superheroes would exist because people are unable to fight for themselves. Thus, instead of wishing that they did exist, we should want their existence to be unnecessary. That, not having a superhero around, would be truly empowering.