Like mas movies are bout story telling and in great stories like great mas mas there are many layers too what your looking at. It is those layers and the meanings within them both seen and unseen that make the great movies , great narratives and in mas great mas presentations.
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| The Dark Knight Rises (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer) |
In The Dark Knight series, an elected official
suggests that the city intends to arrest Batman. A female cop watching the
television turns to a middle-aged detective and says something like, “The man
says you’re closing in on the Batman.” The detective says that they’ve got some
suspects, balls up a piece of paper and throws the wad up against a bulletin
board which has photos of Elvis Presley, Bigfoot, and Abraham Lincoln. They are
the political messages of the series in a nutshell:
1. Elvis:
Fame is powerful, useful and destructive. Mortal men can become immortal
symbols, but they still remain mortal in reality.
2. Bigfoot:
Man is also a beast. He walks on two legs, but is he really different than an
animal?
3. Lincoln:
Sometimes you have to lie, break the law and otherwise enter into temporary
evils in order to do good. But it might not work for the long term and it might
cost you your life.
The first film focused on the first theme. Bruce
Wayne begins to conceive of Batman during his lessons about theatricality from
the League of Shadows (so that you become “more than just a man” in the eyes of
your opponent). The idea takes further form during his conversation with Alfred
about the nature of symbols on the private plane back to America (as a symbol,
he can be “incorruptible”). Bruce Wayne would not be able to rescue Gotham
City, but some symbol into which Wayne could step might be able to.
Symbols have independent existence from the occupant of the
symbol. This is all very 20th century philosophy and we would be surprised
if Christopher Nolan did
not have a reasonably thorough philosophical education. Modern philosophy is
obsessed with symbols, or what they call ‘signifiers.’ This is understandable
given the fact that for the most part, academic philosophy in the 20th century
tended to give up on truth. What’s left after truth? The symbols that used to
convey truth.
Bruce Wayne creates what we now call a personal brand. He creates
a brand logo and it is literally written on the sky. Media gladly distribute
and magnify the story, enhancing the fame. It’s a reality show. Batman is a
Kardashian, but with a little less padding. Criminals are terrified of this
image (Batman, I mean), which is inherently terrifying, and comes from a
traumatic childhood experience in a cave.
The problem in the second film is that the Joker seems better at
it. His personal brand is even more compelling. His mugging for the camera
is more open and explicit. He covers himself in layers of makeup (another
Kardashian parallel?). He captures hostages, videotapes their executions, and
calls on Batman to reveal himself in order to avoid further death. He has a
Masters in Marketing that trumps Batman’s MBA. The Joker succeeds and the city
largely turns against Batman. By the end of the film, Batman is forced to
surrender entirely to this inversion of his ‘approval rating’ and take on the
persona of villain. The Joker wins the P/R battle. He (being a villain) is the
better publicist.
The fact that the symbol is a splice of man and animal feeds into
the series’ focus on the dual nature of man, especially in the second movie.
“What’s with all the growling?” the critics asked. Answer: Batman growls (and
so does the Joker, who barks, too) because Christopher Nolan is exploring human
nature. Early in the movie a group of gangsters brings a pack of vicious
Rottweilers to a drug deal. While the gangsters can’t seem to lay a hand on
Batman, the animals actually manage to injure him. The beast, literally, is the
only thing that can find the chink in his armor. The mindless, self-destructive
beast is the only enemy he hadn’t prepared for.
The Joker is almost all beast: He admits that “I’m like a dog
chasing cars” when he commits his atrocities. He unleashes (literally) a pack
of attack dogs on Batman during their climactic confrontation at the end of The
Dark Knight. The Joker is perplexing to Bruce Wayne, who keeps trying to
find ways to deal with the madman rationally. But the Joker defies all
rationality. He tells fake origins stories about the scarring on his face which
satirize the language of recovery and therapy, suggesting and then withdrawing
the suggestion that he became who he is because of an abusive, alcoholic
father. Critics have been puzzling over precisely who Heath Ledger (in the last
role before his death) was channeling. I’d say that’s a complex question, but
at least on one level he was mocking the whole modern notion associated with
developmental psychology, that evil is the result of insufficiently loving
parents. But what if the Joker is what St. Paul called ‘mysterium iniquitatis’,
the mystery of evil, evil for no good reason?
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