intertribal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
intertribal) wrote2012-08-01 12:32 pm
intertribal) wrote2012-08-01 12:32 pm
The Dark Knight Rises, and stuff
So, The Dark Knight Rises - the last Nolan Batman movie (God willing). I really liked Batman Begins, which I think I saw in theaters with Christina when neither of us knew what we were expecting - and we were both like, "I think I really kind of LIKED IT" - and have a special relationship with The Dark Knight, which I saw on my own in a shopping mall/movie theater in Surabaya after I bought a canvas bag that said "Life. Industry. Work. Strength." I saw The Dark Knight Rises last weekend in another shopping mall/movie theater in Jakarta with mixed company, and I felt frustrated and disappointed with it.
Many people have talked about the questionable politics of The Dark Knight Rises - I particularly like Abigail Nussbaum's review (but when is that ever not true?). Others have pointed out that these weird fascistic/Randian trends have been in Nolan's Batman movies the entire time, although I must confess I didn't really see them. To me Batman Begins wasn't very controversial politically, and The Dark Knight was about the classic dilemmas facing public servants trying to do the right thing (I think the most interesting character in it is Dent's) as well as the personal mental collapse that takes place when you decide you can't take trying anymore (see for instance "that's it, I'm moving to Canada" on a much more mundane level, or "fuck iiiiiit" in meme terms). In the Order vs. Chaos argument, I think a pretty compelling point was made for Chaos, even if officially Order won out. The Dark Knight Rises, on the other hand, was really playing up the 1% vs. 99% thing, and the 99% pretty much turn out to be duped by an evil that has no motivation other than to be evil. It actually kind of reminded me of Michael Crichton's "environmentalists are actually engineering global warming to scare us all into going with the Kyoto Protocol!" as well as of that terrible book by Glenn Beck. The 1% don't even really commit any sins except their parties are boring. And then there they are, being thrown out on the streets and executed by exile onto a sea of thin ice! Even Catwoman, the "Robin Hood" character, is all "Batman, you don't owe these plebes anything, they stole all your money." So yeah, all that: kind of sucky.
Beyond that, I didn't find the movie as much "fun" as I did its predecessors. I had heard a lot about the explosion in the football stadium scene beforehand but it did not pack the emotional punch that it truly should have, given me and my inclinations. I actually felt most emotional in the opening scene, during the nuclear physicist's surprise kidnapping. I don't really know why - maybe the claustrophobia and imminent death involved for such a small pack of people? But the police being stuck in the tunnels, then surprise!liberated and being gunned down like Theoden's Riders in The Return of the King - meh. The random schoolbus of orphaned boys - meh. The pit? I did feel a twinge when Bruce Wayne makes it out at last, but it was for the cheering prisoners still in the pit, not Bruce Wayne. This one just didn't click with me. It felt cold and distant and unwilling to really give of itself.
On the other hand: Alfred the loyal-unto-death butler and Gordon the beleaguered police commissioner were great. I think those two and Blake (the scrappy new cop) were really the actual soul of the movie, as far as it had a soul at all - the most human characters, at any rate. Batman/Bruce Wayne was just kind of annoying/useless (ironically), Catwoman was like What Happens When Men Write Women #5a, or so, and Miranda Tate would have potentially been a competent character if not for the barren face heel turn. Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow was also fun.
If anything I sort of wished Batman was erased from this movie, and that it was just the tale of the horribly dysfunctional city that had to fend for itself - that there truly was no ubermensch to save it. Because I'm fond of Gotham - have been since the beginning - and I was always fiercely of the belief that the League of Shadows was wrong, and Gotham should not be sacrificed as hopelessly corrupt. Maybe that's because I come from a city that really reminds me of Gotham, sometimes ("criminals in this town used to believe in things - honor, respect!"), and Gotham being assailed by Chaos was like the Jemaah Islamiyah era here, when hotels were being blown up; and the Gotham being assailed by Quasi-Revolution is like what's happening now, with people burning suspected thieves in the street. And let me tell you: we have no ubermensch. What we might have, if we're lucky, is a Gordon, a couple Blakes. We certainly have plenty of Alfreds.
ANYWAY. Something else I realized while watching The Dark Knight Rises: I think I may be finally shifting my gaze from older men (father substitutes, all) to men my age (the "damaged" ones, but oh well). I was way, way more attracted to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie than Bruce Wayne (that scene where he's running to the hospital with the rifle! Rarr!), and that is new. I was talking about this with my mother, and concluded that regardless of who I actually date, my ideal type seems to be this older, married, brooding political scientist type that is clearly a doppelganger for my father. And it's also! A completely safe, riskless outlet for whatever feelings I might develop, because I know in my hardest of hearts that nothing real can actually happen there. There was no possibility of anything developing. I couldn't really get involved. I wasn't going to get heartbroken. Plus it let me deal with my Daddy Issues. Sort of, anyway. I mean, the walls I put up -- both because my father died and everything normal and happy was shattered, and probably just because of me, because I was born nuts -- were miles high.
But I think that's starting to change, and that's a good thing.
Many people have talked about the questionable politics of The Dark Knight Rises - I particularly like Abigail Nussbaum's review (but when is that ever not true?). Others have pointed out that these weird fascistic/Randian trends have been in Nolan's Batman movies the entire time, although I must confess I didn't really see them. To me Batman Begins wasn't very controversial politically, and The Dark Knight was about the classic dilemmas facing public servants trying to do the right thing (I think the most interesting character in it is Dent's) as well as the personal mental collapse that takes place when you decide you can't take trying anymore (see for instance "that's it, I'm moving to Canada" on a much more mundane level, or "fuck iiiiiit" in meme terms). In the Order vs. Chaos argument, I think a pretty compelling point was made for Chaos, even if officially Order won out. The Dark Knight Rises, on the other hand, was really playing up the 1% vs. 99% thing, and the 99% pretty much turn out to be duped by an evil that has no motivation other than to be evil. It actually kind of reminded me of Michael Crichton's "environmentalists are actually engineering global warming to scare us all into going with the Kyoto Protocol!" as well as of that terrible book by Glenn Beck. The 1% don't even really commit any sins except their parties are boring. And then there they are, being thrown out on the streets and executed by exile onto a sea of thin ice! Even Catwoman, the "Robin Hood" character, is all "Batman, you don't owe these plebes anything, they stole all your money." So yeah, all that: kind of sucky.
Beyond that, I didn't find the movie as much "fun" as I did its predecessors. I had heard a lot about the explosion in the football stadium scene beforehand but it did not pack the emotional punch that it truly should have, given me and my inclinations. I actually felt most emotional in the opening scene, during the nuclear physicist's surprise kidnapping. I don't really know why - maybe the claustrophobia and imminent death involved for such a small pack of people? But the police being stuck in the tunnels, then surprise!liberated and being gunned down like Theoden's Riders in The Return of the King - meh. The random schoolbus of orphaned boys - meh. The pit? I did feel a twinge when Bruce Wayne makes it out at last, but it was for the cheering prisoners still in the pit, not Bruce Wayne. This one just didn't click with me. It felt cold and distant and unwilling to really give of itself.
On the other hand: Alfred the loyal-unto-death butler and Gordon the beleaguered police commissioner were great. I think those two and Blake (the scrappy new cop) were really the actual soul of the movie, as far as it had a soul at all - the most human characters, at any rate. Batman/Bruce Wayne was just kind of annoying/useless (ironically), Catwoman was like What Happens When Men Write Women #5a, or so, and Miranda Tate would have potentially been a competent character if not for the barren face heel turn. Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow was also fun.
If anything I sort of wished Batman was erased from this movie, and that it was just the tale of the horribly dysfunctional city that had to fend for itself - that there truly was no ubermensch to save it. Because I'm fond of Gotham - have been since the beginning - and I was always fiercely of the belief that the League of Shadows was wrong, and Gotham should not be sacrificed as hopelessly corrupt. Maybe that's because I come from a city that really reminds me of Gotham, sometimes ("criminals in this town used to believe in things - honor, respect!"), and Gotham being assailed by Chaos was like the Jemaah Islamiyah era here, when hotels were being blown up; and the Gotham being assailed by Quasi-Revolution is like what's happening now, with people burning suspected thieves in the street. And let me tell you: we have no ubermensch. What we might have, if we're lucky, is a Gordon, a couple Blakes. We certainly have plenty of Alfreds.
ANYWAY. Something else I realized while watching The Dark Knight Rises: I think I may be finally shifting my gaze from older men (father substitutes, all) to men my age (the "damaged" ones, but oh well). I was way, way more attracted to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie than Bruce Wayne (that scene where he's running to the hospital with the rifle! Rarr!), and that is new. I was talking about this with my mother, and concluded that regardless of who I actually date, my ideal type seems to be this older, married, brooding political scientist type that is clearly a doppelganger for my father. And it's also! A completely safe, riskless outlet for whatever feelings I might develop, because I know in my hardest of hearts that nothing real can actually happen there. There was no possibility of anything developing. I couldn't really get involved. I wasn't going to get heartbroken. Plus it let me deal with my Daddy Issues. Sort of, anyway. I mean, the walls I put up -- both because my father died and everything normal and happy was shattered, and probably just because of me, because I was born nuts -- were miles high.
But I think that's starting to change, and that's a good thing.
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"The Nolan brothers are determined to make some kind of serious, dark, brooding, non-fascistic moral sense of Batman, and that’s just flat-out impossible. ... If what the world needs is masked vigilantes behaving in this crazy way, then fascism needs a serious look-in as a political philosophy. But what we should really conclude is not that the moral sense of the film is fascist – or even aristocratic. Rather, we should conclude that the film makes no moral sense whatsoever. It conveys no moral message. It’s morally illegible. Lots of explosions and fighting. That’s it.
"You just can’t call a film fascist – or even aristocratic – when the makers are at such evident pains not to have that be the moral of the story. A related point: lots of complaints about swipes at the Occupy folks. But surely the Nolans are trying to be evenhanded, to an almost pathetic degree: you could say that the film makes a point of showing that it’s evil 1%-ers – the finance guys trying to take over Wayne Enterprises – who let Bane get control of Gotham. They think they are using him, for their dishonest stock market rigging shenanigans, but he’s using them. Bane brings out the worst in the 1% and the 99%. Not that this makes it the case that the movie has anything minimally sensible to say about 1%/99% relations – we all need to unite against nihilism!
The whole thing makes no more moral sense than that 100-foot tall Voldemort I just saw fight with a bunch of Mary Poppinses. What did you think of that? I thought it was extremely bizarre and I didn’t like it. I enjoyed Dark Knight Rises a lot more. ..."
Other topic in other comment.
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Also way too lazy to italicize all that.
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Although, to be fair, I guess, the worst (both in terms of annoyance and in degree of hipsterness) hipsters are the ones who cannot create anything themselves.
So maybe I just hate postmodernism. And post-industrial culture. And life. And people.
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Also, uh-oh!
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But I do feel a distance from those who were born to 'professional' parents--professors, doctors, lawyers, artists--things where people admire you, that require skill, whether or not you make lots of money from them...what is that called? Oh: cultural capital--real class, of the aristocratic kind. ;) If we still had aristocrats, anyway. Now it's something else.
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Yeah, I understand. It is definitely a kind of capital, I agree. To be honest I don't feel the distance at all, but that's me speaking from the "privileged" position, such as it is. Funnily enough whenever I talk to my mom about something you and I would both know about - from excessive schooling, you know - she'll be like, "I don't know who that is! My education wasn't as good as yours! I'm not actually well-educated!" and like, disengage. FWIW.
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Eh...of course I feel it in some situations and not so much in others, and then there are those where I just kinda thought people were different--you know, unique snowflakes--and later wondered if it had anything to do with that sort of background. Someday I will probably be like your mother, haha. I certainly don't feel well-educated. I feel like a fraud, mostly. But it's definitely more than education...just an attitude toward life, toward opportunity, work ethic, careers, other people, what's 'cool', etc.
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Yeah, definitely. OTOH neither of my parents came from backgrounds with cultural capital themselves, although they didn't come from dirt poverty. Evidently they managed to cobble together enough of it that I was raised thinking we had it (cracks showed later on).
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By contrast, neither of my parents graduated college. They flunked out.
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I don't think it matters whether or not it is even-handed. Probably the fact that so many people are sensitive to the possibility that it is not even-handed or even (!) against the 99%ers goes to show that they are not receptive to movies that do not agree with their good American populism. That might be different, granted, if it had something of substance to say about "1%/99% relations," which I gather it does not. But people are gonna react to an simple image with a simple 'dislike' (or 'like', I guess, if they are big into the 1%?), and that's about all there is to it. Not that you're saying there's more. But I feel like the only way to judge a movie like that is to judge it for not saying more, or for trying to say too much.
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