I am Batman

I finally got around to watching The Dark Knight this weekend.
It was a very, very good movie, but Isabel and I both thought it might have been a little too heavy on plot. One got the impression that the film was setting up Harvey Dent to become two-face for a sequel...but when the film decided it still needed to wrap up his plotline within the same movie, we could feel a certain degree of narrative exhaustion setting in.

But the real surprise for me watching the movie was how could anyone not think it was about George W. Bush. By the end of the movie, I had a similar feeling as watching Horton Hears a Who (Did no one making this movie realize it was really about abortion?).
It might be that every movie critic has already made the Bush-Batman connection, but I was skipping reviews so as to avoid spoilers...so it's news to me.

There are essentially three components of the movie that, at least to me, make this movie seem like an allegory on Bush. First, the Joker has been rewritten as a terrorist. Sure, the Joker always had his schemes and plots and attempts to hold the city hostage. This time, however, the Joker wasn't in it for money, or revenge, or really any reason at all. This Joker just wanted to generate fear, evil, and panic in the city. At one point he calls himself an anarchist. He's constantly setting up bombs, sometimes roadside and often remote IEDs. He even distributes videos of him slashing and torturing his hostages, a la the distribution of various Islamic videos depicting beheadings. Also significant, the Joker's terrorism encourages the citizens of Gotham to turn against one another to meet his demands. Gone are the days when the Joker wants a pile of loot...now, he just wants to decentralize authority by creating mobs of angry people who obey his command so as to avoid his threats to blow things up. The Joker finds ways to make the citizens complicit in their own ultimate demise. This is most poignant when, after the Joker has demanded the city turn over Batman, he starts requesting the death of private citizens or else he'll blow up hospitals...and other citizens prove more than willing to comply.

Secondly, Bruce Wayne appropriates a rather implausible sonographic-cell phone device developed by his R&D man Morgan Freeman. Freeman originally creates the device so Batman can sneak into an enemy facility and get its layout on the go. Wayne, however, even more implausibly has this technology used, without Freeman's knowledge, to create a giant listening station enabling him to eavesdrop on every cell phone in Gotham City. When Freeman discovers this, he says Wayne has gone too far and that he will resign his position. Wayne (who is dressed at Batman at the time of the confrontation), explains that the surveillance technology is only to be used this one time to catch the Joker. To prove his honest, Wayne gives complete control of the technology to Freeman, who can then destroy the system after the Joker has been caught.
How is that not about Homeland Security and wiretapping?

Thirdly, Batman goes from being an icon of justice and a defender against terrorism, to a hated, rogue vigilante who takes the rap for the crimes committed by Two-face. Batman decides that the city needs a protector, not a hero. If the city knew that seemingly virtuous, "white knight" Harvey Dent had become the diabolic two-face, the city might lose hope. The city needs its heroes, but it also needs its pragmatic defender. Thus, Batman sacrifices his identity as a hero, taking on (rather Christlike) the sins of Two-face. He who was without sin, becomes sin (this is not to then compare Bush to Christ by some transitive property). My point here is that Bush completely sacrificed his reputation. He let the media savage him, essentially becoming a villain in the eyes of the populace, so that he could continue to protect an ungrateful nation. This seems even more relevant now that we have Obama, who seems so preoccupied with his own image, that he has to attack cable personalities anytime they criticize his position.

As a fourth clue that Batman can be read as a Bush figure, you only need to look at the boxart of the DVD set. Batman stands below a New York skyscraper with the Batman-logo burning across its face.

How such a poster got through the production company post-9/11 is beyond me.

Comments

[Akh Ari]

I was thrilled to see a movie (a hero-action movie!) that took philosophy, ethics, and morality so seriously. It must have taken some real guts to make a Hollywood movie that sticks up for consistent goodness and sticks it to moral relativism like that. Did you notice the source of the Joker's M.O.? Nietzsche. The clue-in is right in the beginning - "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you 'stranger'." Not a throwaway line.

Remember to pray for Mr. Ledger. Letting Nietzscheism in is not good for one's sanity.

[PeterTerp]

Just for the sake of being provocative, isn't Batman by nature a bit morally relativistic by nature of the fact that he's a vigilante?
Sure, he refuses to cross certain lines (he won't use a gun and he won't intentionally kill)--but he is breaking the law and even disobeying a just authority on a daily basis.
Batman is something like the lesser of two evils...and that's part of the problem that Gordon has to face. Gordon is supposed to be arresting Batman, but looks the other way.

Batman is, not by accident I'm sure, something like Bram Stoker's depiction of the early Dracula. He's a transgressive force that you accept because he seems better than the alternative. Batman wards off criminals the way Dracula warded off the Ottomans in Eastern Europe. But to accept their vigilance does mean compromising certain other morals and scruples.
Sure, Batman doesn't plan on sucking your blood or eating your babies...but he does step into murky moral areas. Even Morgan Freeman's character feels as though he is compromising his morality by eavesdropping in search of the Joker. Not only is it a breach of privacy -- it's a breach of privacy by a non-government authority.

[Akh Ari]

Is Sherlock Holmes a vigilante?

You raise a good point about superheroes in general, but a better example would be the 2003 movie Daredevil, where the title character takes it upon himself to beat up crooks.

I submit that a better interpreatation of Batman is a private consulting detective, who from time to time is engaged by the police to handle cases that would be impossible but for his unique powers (and ability to act non-officially on occasion). Like Holmes, he does not sentence criminals or punish them himself - he could, but he has too much respect for the rule of law and love for his country and its institutions. Rather, he tracks them down, confronts them, and subdues them as nonviolently as possible under the circumstances so that they can be arrested by the official police and given a fair trial under the law. This is most evident in the old tv show, but still holds in Dark Knight.

[PeterTerp]

I certainly agree that he doesn't quite engage in vigilante justice -- he doesn't act as judge, jury, and executioner.
I haven't actually read enough Sherlock Holmes to assess how often he violates domestic and international laws to apprehend criminals, though.

[tadert]

It is very much like Sherlock Holmes! This is one of my favorite books and movies too ( http://rapid4me.com/?q=Sherlock+Holmes )!