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The Dark Knight: Hollywood’s Terror Dream
The Joker gets himself hired by the mob to deal with Batman and Dent and complications ensue, some of them hinging upon Dent and Wayne’s homosocial erotic rivalry: Rachel Dawes, Dent’s new girlfriend, is Wayne’s long-lost love, and she spends her brief screen time torn between the two men, before being brutally dispatched in a glaring instance of the “women in refrigerators syndrome,” a sexist literary trope identified by feminist comic-book readers in which male authors kill, maim or de-power strong female characters as a woman-devaluing plot device. The critics are evidently bowled over by the film’s “ambivalent” portrayals of high-tech adumbrations of warrantless wiretapping (when Batman rigs up a super spying system based on sonar readings from Gotham citizens’ cell phones to stop the Joker), superheroic enhanced interrogations (when Batman threatens to beat the life out of the hostage-holding Joker) and debates about the advisability of democracy itself when the barbarians are at the gates, to quote a speech from Dent recalling the Romans’ dictatorial practices. And indeed, as a tribute to the film’s supposed complexity, some critics believe the film to be advocating the suspension of democracy in a time of terror, while others see it as endorsing a liberal skepticism about leaders’ claims to free reign during a “state of emergency” which is often those very leaders’ own creation. However, ideology in a fictional narrative does not always express itself at the explicit level of that which the narrative seems to support or reject; it works in more subtle and insidious ways, and often functions by exclusion. That is, a text like this film presents a menu of choices from which it then invites the viewer to select, and we can locate the trace of pernicious ideology not in the choices themselves but rather in what the authors choose to leave off the menu. What’s on the menu in The Dark Knight? The same thing that’s on the two-party American political menu, year in and year out. First we have Batman and Dent representing opposite poles of so-called democratic politics. Batman, operating outside the law to protect the defenseless people, represents a kind of Bush/Cheney figure, doing what he has to do for the good of the homeland. Dent, on the other hand, along with Rachel Dawes, who chooses to be with Dent in the end, is an idealistic but by-the-book type who is nevertheless pragmatic enough to collaborate with a vigilante like Batman if it’s necessary to get the bad guys. In other words, a post-political Barack star. The film really tips its ideological hand in the Greek-tragedy-like arc of these iconic characters’ development: Dawes, the most liberal of all the “good guys,” dies at the hands of the Joker, while the liberal pragmatist Dent, scarred in a fire, abandons his ideals and embraces the Joker’s ethos of chaos—in other words, we are left in the cold embrace of Batman if we want to be secure. But what of the Joker himself, with his advocacy of terrorism and chaos, his speeches lifted from the adolescent repertoire of might-is-right conservative anarchism à la Sade, Nietzsche, Marinetti et al.? As liberal-hawk ideologue Paul Berman showed in his 2002 Terror and Liberalism, a figure such as this can very easily stand in propagandistically for “America’s enemies,” hence Berman’s insistence, for example, that Palestinians constitute not an oppressed and exploited, diverse and divided group trying to resist its enemies in various ways, some more defensible or ethical than others, but rather that they are a fundamentally irrational, chaotic and lawless cult of death. Thus, the Joker offers only the wild, amoral, killing life beyond the protective (and expansionist) borders of “democracy,” aka corporatist imperialism. The moral is as old, and as conservative, as Hobbes: we can live in a wild, murderous wasteland or a lawless, authoritarian police state. It doesn’t matter which of these options the film presents as more appealing or fun; all that matters is that no other options—e.g., left-wing anarchism, participatory democracy, decentralized communism, democratic socialism etc.—present themselves. It will be objected here that the left-wing critic is rigidly ideological and tone-deaf to the visionary powers of art. But actually these charges would more accurately be leveled at The Dark Knight itself, with its airless, humorless, joyless rush through murkily-filmed scenes of tiresome mayhem and its clunkingly obvious characterizations. I’m not opposed to art, not even Hollywood art, and I’m not doctrinaire. For a nice counterpoint to The Dark Knight, see its underrated box-office competitor in the super-hero, comic-book sweepstakes, Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Guillermo del Toro’s uneven fantasia at least relaxes its pace long enough for lyrical or idyllic moments that allow the audience space for reflection; also, while it can’t be taken for a feminist statement, it features powerful, heroic women characters who ultimately save the day. Finally, for all its silliness, Hellboy ends with its paranormal heroes realizing that the U.S. government, for which they’ve been working, ultimately opposes itself to the difference and diversity they represent, and they turn in their badges. Compared to The Dark Knight, this is radicalism itself—a sorry comment on our society. But The Dark Knight is best understood not in the company of other blockbuster fare; rather, it should be placed alongside two recent popular and populist left-liberal books that can illuminate its themes. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explains that, over the last three decades, capitalists have gone on the offensive to defend and expand their holdings by exploiting, and in some cases, engineering catastrophes which so stun and demoralize populations that they find themselves unable to prevent their commons and their public treasuries from being transferred to private hands. Susan Faludi provides a cultural companion to Klein’s materialist economic history in The Terror Dream; Faludi shows how the American political class, including many self-proclaimed liberals, seized the September 11 attacks as an opportunity to reanimate the genocidal American frontier myth in which the lone, virile, violent male is called upon by a barbarian horde attack from outside to protect his dependent, virginal and powerless women. Thus the conquest of the material commons by capitalist elites requires ideologies of control that can best be summed up by the eternal right-wing cultural program: family, faith and fatherland. Those who think this will all somehow magically improve after the election of the Harvey Dent-like Barack Obama, himself a two-faced authoritarian capitalist with a gift for co-opting progressive rhetoric, have another thing coming. Batman enhances his own material power by way of the Joker’s shocks to Gotham’s system, while the death of Rachel Dawes shows us why we need a hero—because if “we good men” do not control women, then “those bad men” will. And the baddest bad man, the Joker, reveals to us that freedom is a dangerous delusion and an insane temptation. It’s difficult to have much hope for a better future when audiences and critics are falling so hard for this example of Hollywood’s shock doctrine and its terror dream. John Pistelli is a writer, graduate student and instructor who lives in Minneapolis, MN. Read other articles by John. |
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ARRG! you took my
ARRG! you took my article!
But i was going to write something more along the lines of the analysis of the joker as a serious anarchist character.
good work!
That's an article I might
That's an article I might like to read, fellow Anonymous. To be honest, the Joker is what got me seriously interested in anarchism. Not that I wasn't mildly interested before, but hearing his speech in the hospital scene was the clincher.
Yes, blow up things, kill
Yes, blow up things, kill people, CREATE HAVOC!!! This is truly anarchism...
Oooor not. I can't tell
Oooor not. I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, but personally I was referring to the idea that no human life is more or less valuable than any other. And that institutions of any sort are silly. It's not his actions I was reacting to, but the idea behind them.
I was being sarcastic. When
I was being sarcastic. When you mentioned the hospital scene I thought of the Joker handing Dent a gun and telling him to seek revenge. I understand your point though, it just seems a little odd.
Hey, I'll freely admit it's
Hey, I'll freely admit it's a little odd. But my interest had to get that spark somehow. Two days later I picked up Emma Goldman for the first time. Looking for more recent works too in the meanwhile, but one's gotta read the classics, right?
(Oy, behold the anarchist n00bness that is me.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_%28comics%29
I think that the Joker is an interesting subject. I think you are quick to dismiss "bad" things. The very fact of the matter is that people do get blown up everyday, people are killed and our world is full of Havok. We don't live on an island of justice. We live in a brutal world where we ignore the day to day exploitations that rob people of their lives as a normal operation. Kids are still attacking school and taking casualties.
Every positive prescription has failed. If they offer resistance, they are always nullified by trying to keep a grasp on the world as it falls apart around them. The animal farm in Chiapas has pigs walking on two legs.
I say the joker is modelled on the anarchist of Sherlock Holmes and the nihilist of Dostoevsky. In the stories of heroes and villians, Batman is definitely not a figure worth emulating. He fights class war against the lumpen proletariat while ignoring the day to day exploitation that his billionaire multi-national does to the world. The Joker is not the villain, it is Batman!
Oh yes, those things do
Oh yes, those things do happen. But should we be placing them up as an ideal and a system that must be maintained?
i think your missing wombats
i think your missing wombats point. wombat is a good friend of mine and we are about the last people in the world who wish to maintain any system what-so-ever. the point wombat is making, i think, is that we aren't able to evolve this society, things are too fucked, they are fucked in part because of the very notion of social evolution and the actions taken based on this notion. wombat was not trying to advocate a sort of anarchist "justice league" (that would be a little absurd for a nihilist to do, except maybe as a joke) to bring violence to "evil doers" as revenge or something. the point is two fold in my book. first of all we cannot really hope to see any sort of sucsess for our ideals if the current society continues to exist. the other point is that we don't have any gurantees in life, we don't even know if negating this horrible prison world will result in anything any more worth while. both of us seem to think that mass movements for the perfect society are vanguardist notions which are going to defeat themselves and become a dystopia (the real result of all utopias) even if they are sucsessful: self managed work will become forced labor because you need alot of people and how do you know they all want this? can it really be said that the world wants anything? i think it can only be said that individuals and their cliques want things personally.
but we have been over that already in another post or two. the point is this society sucks and we all hate it (i would think, we are anarchists, but of course i can't read minds). the shittness of this society has made it "deserve" destruction. of course, and perhaps you know this, we are not speaking of hauling people off to the guilotine or forced labor camps, or for that matter blowing up buildings filled with them, we are speaking of the destruction of all institutions and the further destruction, should this be necessary, of every new form of power that trys to fill the void. i feel this is the only way we can really have free association because though we may more or less freely associate even now in certain respects, harsh reality is always peering its head in ready to recuperate or crush our little happy time. that and all to often when we focus on positive projects we become convinced of the need to set an organization in place and defend it with everything from documents to delegates and watering ourselves down so that the liberals will know were really nice and reasonable people (see federations but also safe spaces).
that being said i reiterate an old refrain: as things between friends and perhaps people you simply feel compassion for positive projects are perfectly fine...but lets not delude ourselves to think they will lead to a realization of liberation which we must offically establish and defend, and then from there give shit to the negative nellies like myself and wombat who choose a more angst ridden and harsh path. of course that being said much of what we are talking about is based on our local context and the interaction between myself and wombat, on the one hand, and most of the other anarchists around here on the other hand: people we like as friends or aquantiences but who have proven over a long period of time (and many different acronyms, and fractions of said acronyms) that there are next to no anarchist projects we can work on together, not because one is right and the other wrong but becuase of different focuses and approaches and the lack of a meeting point between our respective focuses and approaches (and not for lack of trying either). when i go outside this boring ass city, in the past when i have been to activist gatherings and when i have been a few recent specifically anarchist gatherings, this doesn't seem much different...some fun hanging out perhaps but nothing to sink ones teeth into. where are all the pissed off people who are ready to say enough is enough?
-lord rambler
I agree with almost all of
I agree with almost all of that. It just seemed to me that wombat was content with a world full of unnecessary violence and saw no answer or end to it. I was confused by that beginning sentence ("I think you are quick to dismiss "bad" things.") but now I get what you're say (that is, if you are a fair representation for wombats beliefs).
probably about as fair as
probably about as fair as anyone who isn't wombat can be, we know each other pretty well. of course i can't speak for wombat anymore than i can speak for you or for that matter the woman i love or my oldest childhood friend or my dog (and me and my dog are tight: everytime i come home, even if its only been like an hour, its all wagging tail and woof woof this and that). so i leave it to wombat to correct me if am wrong about his point.
-lord rambler
oh and one more addition:
oh and one more addition: when you read what i write pay close attention to where the noun/letter "i" appears in my writing. this is when i exit merely trying to convey, in my own feeble little way, what i think another person thinks, and where i speak for my own view as it stands now.
-lord rambler, the omnipotent, i like playing with words cause its almost as fun as playing with yourself except its not quite as down to earth pleasurable
Not to sound like a shitty
Not to sound like a shitty Ayn Rand novel, but I feel confident in saying that I have mastered the ever elusive complexities of the word "I." I can also easily spot my Is.
yeah, shit, not to sound
yeah, shit, not to sound pedantic there either: i was drunk and in a silly mood at that point and for some reason got it into my head to point out that i wasn't just rehashing wombats arguments but giving what i thought the point he was trying to make as well as adding my own points and a vauge thing about the context both myself and wombat find ourselves in. i think most people can spot "i's" and everything...i have this thing where i get defensive though because (and i haven't noticed you do what i am about to mention by the way) when i have posted arguments in the past in various places a number of people would take things i said completely out of context (i used to post like i have been doing the past number of days and got tired of it for this reason, i am back after a long hiatus when i have nothing better to do), the usual recurring example was that people felt i fetished violence and they'd "prove" this by chopping a part of a paragraph away from the rest, putting it in italics or quotes, and then asking me if this was the kind of world i wanted (perhaps this was intentional political manuvering or perhaps i was just dealing with people who didn't really read what they responded to, i'll never know for sure).
of course i don't fetish violence, i acknowledge its existence and how it is always going to be a part of existence no matter what we try to do about it (eating anything is violence, for example: we must consume other living beings, which includes plants, or we will die), as well as its uses to people who feel they are being enslaved (in other words the differences between three forms of violence: that of being a life form, that which serves domination, and that which slashes at the chains of domination). my main reason for that writing (it was called "destroy!" and was my first post-left writing), of course, had to do with so much talk i had been hearing about "irresponsible" anarchist militants who "gave us a bad name."
clearly cause of this i have become somewhat obsessive compulsive with my writing (i am not sure if this shows in it or not): it takes me a half hour to a whole hour even to write something like this both because of how i type and because i am constantly rereading out of an obsession with making sure i nailed down my point and (now this is going to sound silly) embodied clarity itself as far as my point so that no one could possibly abuse my writing (impossible, i know, i know, but i still think a good standard to work from unless you are doing poetry though careful not to get too dry). funny thing is because of my constant editing as i write i actually notice a seris of typos that result from me changing a sentence cause at second glance i don't like it as much ("accept for those who accept" or something, is i think the funniest one i noticed, it was supposed to say "except those who accept"). so that, and not any view on your intellegence, was why i posted that...but i am rambling, i'll do that, thats why i was dubbed rambler.
-lord rambler
astute as usual wombat.
astute as usual wombat. violence this and violence that, i think we all know that even the most violent anarchist commits less violence to life than the least violent capitalist and most moralists save the pacifists...who i consider deluded because i feel the very act of eating or walking across grass is violence. even these commit a mental violence of discounting everything that isn't human or some form of domesticated animal. oh, yeah, they care about wild animals too but this doesn't mean much to me because most of the pacifists i am thinking of are for civilization, which can't help but commit systematic violence especially to wild beings.
then there are some of the vegetarian pacifists, on this note, who also have a mentally violent complicity with colonialism in this area of their mind because they feel that human society has "evolved" beyond the need to eat meat, as if we were some sort of not only dribbling morons before we lived in civilizations but were also killing machines or something (i hate reversing things like this but, if i must, i'd have to say the other way around is closer to the "truth").
-lord rambler
Of course! I know that
Of course! I know that tomorrow is the day to spray round after round of 9mm at random cars as I stand in the middle of the road.
i guess it all depends on
i guess it all depends on whose ox is being goerd as some would say. i tend to cheer for havoc depending on what sort of havoc you are talking about (ie: aimed at the dominant order or just violence for the sake of violence or because you moralistically believe violence and human nature mean the same thing, the first is cool, the second and third i don't care for). there is a militant tendency to fetish violence as yet another one true solution (as if there were such a thing as a panacea!) that i do not care for and i am also very opposed to punitive violence with all its damn moralizing (and it doesn't fix shit, it is at best catharsis, nothing wrong with good old catharsis but i have other ways of doing that...of course i suppose that might not be true if someone murdered another person close to me or otherwise violated them, then i might go from chill to kill -or at very least, render ill- after all but i'd have no illusions i was brining some mythic justice to bear). there is also the whole sacrifice complex where one claims responsibility which many of the classical anarchists were into and i think is a dumb idea unless you have a death or captivity wish. still, violence becomes highly relevant when forces around you are crushing every last breath of joy from your life: its nothing personal (though perhaps sometimes it is) but if the social relation sucks and it is intruding into my life then i am afraid i am going to have to let loose the more monstrous and imposing aspects of myself.
there are also forms of violence (if we accept the full meaning some give to this, usually pacifists, that violence is any agressive act) that are purely based on ideas and are aimed at subverting various normalizing behaviors that oppress us. this is the particular target i have chosen as i am very good with critique, have little resources to draw on, and i don't feel like foolishly throwing my life away...i may be full of hate towards this society but there are people and experiences in life i love and i would rather not be dead or imprisoned (well, society is a prison but, at any rate, i don't want to be in the prison within the prison), unless perhaps my little action would actually cause real and widespread destablization of the dominant order, that might make it worthwhile (still, getting away with a deed is both smarter and more fun than going to prison after making a preachy speech about why you did it). still, my heart goes out to the sabotures and people like the insurrectionary anarchists of greece who are keeping it real (so i'll show my support by attacking morality while these attack material relations)!
of course the best physical violence in my book, given my views, is done to property. i am rather squeamish about hurting people, believe it or not, even assholes...though i am no pacifist (much of my childhood was spent having to defend myself, after all, if somewhat ineptly: i am pretty ripped now but i was a little puny runt back then and in highschool i was a blob, relativly numb to pain but also slow and lacking bite). at any rate violence is something i see as a tool in a big box of tools, though in one form or another the most appropriate tool for dealing with a situation like we find ourselves in.
another issue connected to this (in my view) obviously, is positivism: the idea that alternatives that anarchist create can actually have any relevance and thus no violence is "unnecessary" (is anything ever really fundamentally necessary except perhaps in relation to something else?). as i have said i like the ideas of projects enough...but they get to much of a scenester vibe though, often are too offical (i don't like doing things based on written principles, haven't we had enough with constitutions already?). the actions of positivism, on the other hand, if they were detached from the whole utopia notion, make a very good compliment to negation, i'd say "necessary" even, unless all you want to do is fuck with this cause its there (personally i have reasons based on my own life and the lives of others in this society) and they could provide resources for those of us who have chosen to walk a different path.
anyway i haven't seen the movie, perhaps i will wind up seeing it or perhaps not. i am sure that the character is meant to portray a stereotpyed view of anarchists as crazed murderers who just love the smell of blood in the air, most such flicks do this. none the less in some cases one can see through to the sympathetic aspects inspite of this (unrelated to anarchism for the most part but the whole "say goodnight to the bad guy" speech in scarface comes to mind). dunno, not to relevant to me ultimately but just out of curiousity what was the hospital speech...if it was that good i could always use new quote material.
-lord rambler
Ask and ye shall receive.
Ask and ye shall receive. I've cut out a little bit that gives away key events in the film, but this is most of it.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught it. You know, I just *do* things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans, you know. They're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I am not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are...You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.' Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics because it's all 'part of the plan.' But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well, then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair."
There were other things he said throughout the film that clicked with me, but that's the big one. Especially the bit in the middle about who 'deserves' or is expected to die according to society.
yeah, that is a pretty good
yeah, that is a pretty good quote for hollywood and despite its probably intended nature of portraying the "insanity" of anarchists (as if sanity were real, would someone like to define it then?). thanks.
-lord rambler
Hmm yeah I know though
Hmm yeah I know though hennesey says nay and spliff says yeh,the whole stereotyping of a minority group by hollywood,although I will say also that some of the most profoundly liberating and enlightening hollywood productions from young newcomers given a blank page manage to express and awaken viewers to alternative mindsets,which is the purpose of any genuine creative pursuit.Its interesting Chaplin and Keaton can still cause a belly laugh after 80yrs,,,classics. gilligan
I haven't seen the movie so
I haven't seen the movie so couldn't talk about it in context. gilligan
The joker sure planned a lot
The joker sure planned a lot of shit though from watching the movie.
It started with knocking crooks off in first scenes while robbing the bank, bus kills the last, comissioner gets poisoned, judge blows up, inmates on one boat others on another and a choice etc..etc..etc... He might say this and that but his plan kept the story going.
spOOk
An interesting anecdote,
An interesting anecdote, Christopher Nolan (who co-wrote and directed the Dark Knight) has publicly aknowledged that many of the ideas used in the film were borrowed from "The Killing Joke", a Batman graphic novel written by none other than Alan Moore (who wrote V for Vendetta among others), who very publicly considers himself an anarchist and in fact has contributed to anarchist theory about art and aesthetics. Also, Heath Ledger has said that he drew inspiration for his portrayal of the joker from "the Killing Joke". That doesn't negate the points made in this article or discussion, but it does seem to add another layer worthy of consideration.
What an awful article. The
What an awful article. The irony of seeing the choices and currents in a movie that one wants to see in order to make one's point, and then accusing it of having ideologically biased understructures - typically quasi-Marxist begging the question.
Even still, it had basic credit - its interpretation of the movie was shallow and predecided, but valid - until it suggested that awful Hellboy II movie as an alternative. The first one was okay. The second was simply terrible - incoherent, boring, poorly characterized, nearly plotless. The idea that it is not only redeemed, but catapulted to a position of art exceeding the Dark Knight, by means of its ideological correctness cf. an environmentalist and mildly anti-government message, is ridiculous and pathetic. The author really hit the nail on the head with this line:
"..the left-wing critic is rigidly ideological and tone-deaf to the visionary powers of art."
--ανομος