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Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
This is an interesting article that was published in the Wall Street Journal last week:
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Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
I really don't like the article. It paints the movie into a picture that it wants. I mean wasn't the point of the Dark Knight that Gotham didn't need a hero like Batman. They needed someone like Harvey Dent who could take back the streets with the public's support.
But not a political person, but do love me some Batman. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
I did think about the "war on terror" aspect of the film and wondered if that was an intended commentary. I never thought that it was pro-Conservative or pro W though. If anything, I feel like the Dark Knight explains that a war on terror doesn't work.
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Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
Yeah, I definitely think with an abstract movie, such as The Dark Knight, it's easy to impose your own beliefs into interpretations of the film. The editorial raises an interesting interpretation, but he doesn't make much of an argument and just descends into right / left polarized psychobabble.
I tried to think of supportive examples, and I came up with three: - Lucious Fox, against his better judgment, uses the sonar computer to track Joker, knowing that what he was doing is highly illegal. After Batman captures the Joker, the machine is destroyed. - Harvey Dent issues the warrants for the five banks which Jim Gordon wants to search. Not sure on the legality here, but I doubt Dent had the legal authority to issue the warrants with the information which Gordon provided him. - Batman kills Harvey Dent, compromising his virtues / values in a time of need. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
-Depends on how you look at it, Batman was the one who built in the self destruct feature. Batman also trusted himself enough to know he shouldn't have given himself the power so he gave it to someone who wasn't as driven by one motivation.
-I don't think there was anything wrong with the warrants. The only problem was that Gordon was giving him very little information but I mean it seemed to be legit enough, but don't know the rules of Gotham. -Batman doesn't intentionally kill Harvey as far as I read it. I think Batman made an impulse move which he generally doesn't and between being hurt by the Joker and rescuing the little boy, he didn't have time to save Harvey. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
What the fuck does 300 have to do with the Bush administration? If you want to talk about flimsy segues into arguments, talk about starting off on the wrong foot by comparing 300 to a conservative viewpoint.
This dumbass can't grasp the simple nuances of Miller's 300...I wouldn't take any fluff he writes very seriously. I don't agree with this article. At all. But, in response to the sonar: Superman has super hearing, and no one gets on his case for hearing everything in the world. Batman only used the device in a time of need; in a ticking bomb scenario. Someone said that Batman was advocating torture when he started beating the crap out of the Joker in the confession room. Again, I disagree. Sure, the author of this editorial brought up some good points; the new Batman movie is full of complexities on the subject of morals. But, again, I fail to see the connection to the conservative viewpoint or the Bush Administration's agenda. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
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The only things that worked were what the Dark Knight used to bring down crime, while the White Knight of Harvey Dent was simply a moral reflection to make people more comfortable with what "had to be done". Whether or not these actions were "right" or "wrong" is another matter than is left open to discussion, and believe intentionally so. Agree or disagree with the message, but it was the brutality and illegality of Batman's tactics that saved Gotham in that movie. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
Of course, the big difference is that when Batman invaded another nation he didn't do it under false pretenses or made up information.
Also, the movie made it pretty clear that spying on people is morally objectionable, as Morgan Freeman happily demonstrated when he destroyed the device and resigned. But more so, I think this movie just took the theme that was already used in Spiderman 2 - the weight of being a hero and not being accepted by the people you are trying to help - and applied it to a more realistic scenario. And, it fits much better in the Batman universe, which is much much darker than Marvel's Spiderman. I felt that the Dark Knight was more of a morality play than a political propaganda piece. It was nice to see, for once, a villain who did not want to take over the world. No, the Joker just wanted to watch the world burn. His interest was not in money or power, just in destruction and chaos. How do you combat a force like that? |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
...and before someone draws parallels to terrorists or suicide bombers...:p
Many of them are performing their act of terror under the pretense that there is some reward...just in the afterlife. Ledger's Joker was almost monster-like, an unstoppable force of evil that is almost impossible to combat. The type of villain that makes you go, "hey...that guy is scary." Had they not fucked up Spiderman with the awful Spiderman 3, I would have liked to have seen the appearance of Carnage. Carnage is a brutal serial killer, he could have easily rivaled the destruction of the Joker. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
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And while I agree that the motivation of the "suicide bombers" in the film wasn't the same as those of terrorists in the real world, the movie wasn;t about them... it was partially about a man who takes advantage of those people to meet his ends... just like the rich and educated terrorists are never the ones who strap bombs to themselves, they instead prey on the poor and uneducated. There is a correlation to be made. OVerral, I think the message is that when faced with terrible, unreasoning evil, understanding is irrelevant. Action is necessary to stop it before the world is reduced to chaos, but also, does that action leave us with a world that is better or just a different kind of bad? Thats why I think the film has a message, but it doesn't preach. It just poses difficult questions and says there are no clear answers, just choices we must make in a half-blind attempt to find the best result. |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
The bottom line is that the movie kicked ass. I think I need to watch the film 17 more times before I get into any serious nitpicking about semantics, because what really made me enjoy the film was Ledger's performance, the awesome cinema, the movie's fast pace, and the overall feel of it.
You are absolutely correct about the movie dealing with facing an unstoppable evil. I just wonder, is such an evil realistic in our society today, and if so who would be the hero to combat such evil? |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...5yzQwD92BOAC00 :( |
Re: Is The Dark Knight... George Bush?
I heard about that.
I wasn't too happy to hear that. What I'm not going to want to hear is that it's all related to TDK and people involved in it, which you know is gonna happen somewhere. |
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