Fionn Dempsey 09/06/2008 7:31:00 PM
Dear RC Baker,
I appreciate that your context for this article is the previous incarnations of Batman in the cinematic mainstream. As such, it is possible to look on the Batman franchise pre-9/11 as being somewhat naive - somewhat "safe" in the sense that there was no real terror (although I do recommend watching Burton's Batman again with a view to seeing how Nicholson's Joker was already, although not explicitly, representative of the forces of which Ledger's Joker is an embodiment.)
However, I think there is a definite sense in which Nolan's Batman work is just being more faithful to the Batman of the comics than those other movies.
In fact, Batman has been, since the early 1980s, a meditation on these themes, which you adduce here as somehow new. The perennial Gotham city of the comics has always been a city whose edifice is, not only corrupt, but critically unstable, and in serious danger of being driven over the edge by terrorists (which is one of archetypes that Batman villains have traditionally embodied - the other being the uncharted chaos of the deranged mind. Batman villains, at least since the 1980s, have never been simply "criminals." They've always been something more. Something worse.)
One of the constant themes of the "dark" Batman of the mature comic-book era has been, as CD Bond has already noted, to "self-reflexively question what heroism is and how a society constructs it." There's always been reverberating in there a superlative tension between the ideals Batman represents and the path to living up to them. One of the most vivid, shocking things about the Batman of the comics is just how unconventional he's willing to be.
For instance, it just isn't true that "we've always [been]... confident that [Batman's] crusade... will be fought within the bounds of civilisation, if at its most brutal frontiers." As I understand it, one of the central points of the Batman saga is that the job he has to do simply cannot be done within the bounds of civilisation. He's a vigilante. His crusade is one which, by definition, makes him extrinsic to society - a dark, guardian angel who puts himself above the law, and becomes himself a terrorist, in order to pursue a higher ideal of justice. What is implicated in this reversal is neither the villains nor the hero, but the civilisation itself which is so systematically unjust as to debar with the letter of the law the observance of its spirit. Batman, therefore, has always represented a radically anti-social force: the clash of the ideals of a society with its flawed process, and the cleave between the appearance of justice and the proper achievement of it.
Perennially, the villains of Batman have been "the malignant wildcard that turns the city into a war zone." And the city has, even in 1983, repeatedly, literally, become a warzone. I recommend reading Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS for a literally shocking premonition (in terms of hysteria, not of actual occurences) of the crisis situation of September 2001 - and also for an interesting juxtaposition of the DC Comics flagship heroes (Superman and Batman) and the heroic creeds they represent. Telling about this crisis situation is that, again, the people of the city redeem the corrupt social fabric from the ground up, coming together in a time of need and transcending the mere obligations of society to give of themselves, and therein, become the real secret heroes of the piece.
Likewise, the Batman saga CATACLYSM, and AFTERMATH, and the follow-up NO MAN'S LAND, are a piece by piece anatomy of a city that has really, truly descended into a lawless warzone. The premise of NO MAN'S LAND is that the US government abandons the earthquake-torn Gotham entirely, and erects a fence around it, as irredeemable. It's a shocking evocation of both the Berlin Wall and the terrifying chaos of a society in bello. The National Guard long since having herded the populace out of the city, all those who stay are not allowed to leave. Only the stubborn few, the mob, a few rogue nemeses, and Batman himself remain, along with a stalwart police force which, in the exigency of the situation, begins to style itself along the lines of a criminal outfit.
Perhaps one of the more shocking, and relevant, elements of the comics is the continuous indictment of the machinery of state. As a vigilante, Batman continuously comes up against the establishment. There is an inherent distrust of traditional authority in the Batman mythos - an unwillingness to surrender unconditional trust to people just because they command positions of power, or because they speak the rhetoric of the powerful. All too often, the establishment is in danger of being "bought out" by characters such as Lex Luthor, and even the other superheroes (like Superman) that have a commitment to "law and order," rather than the higher ideal of justice, can become compromised. All too often, Batman commits acts of terrorism against a United States government which transgresses the hallowed line of right and wrong under the auspices of power and the rhetoric of the just.
This brings me to the following interesting contextualizing factor: NOBODY is above the judgment of Batman. It points to his one, if you will, "superheroic" quality - his infallible conscience. It is this conscience that drives him continually to sacrifice after sacrifice - the inherent desire not really for fighting crime, but for things just being RIGHT. For "fixing" all the bad in the world. The thwartedness of all of the institutions that are to stand for good. The nauseating "brokenness" of society. There is a constant despair at the wrongness of the world.
As you might expect, this feature is explored in both its positive and negative aspects - as a hopeless, naive idealism that can pervert his ego, and drive him astray from the social order - as something which is in danger of unhinging him, since it leads him to deny a reality in favour of an impossible ideal; but also as the embodiment of something that is necessary to all well-meaning acts, and as a study of the machinery of any idealism, lest we lose sight of the reason we have a justice system in the first place.
This is an important thing to recognize about the heroic symbolism of Batman. The message is that "In this world, yes, some people ARE above the law, but nobody OUGHT to be."
Nobody is above the rule of ideal justice. Batman represents no worldly force, but only the transcendent ideal of justice. For this reason, he just isn't a happy analogue for GW Bush. The latent worry is that no WORLDLY figure could be as uncompromising, as ultimately uncorruptible, infallible, as Batman. He is "whatever Gotham needs him to be" - an empty placeholder for the contextual realisation of Gotham's ideal justice. He simply isn't a REALISTIC figure. He represents only the ideal. That's why, when Dent, who represents the worldly figure of heroism, starts to compromise himself, he isn't allowed by Batman. Even the truth of his downfall cannot become known. That path isn't for him, and his ultimate failure is proof of this. The recognition is that nobody but Batman could tread that path, because Batman isn't a real guy.
That's why we get all these lines about Batman not really being a hero at all. He's "something more. Something greater." The implicit criticism is that Bush, like Dent, is not entitled to take the position of Batman, because no such worldly personage can rightly take on the responsibility of an ideal angel of justice.
ONLY Batman could wield the power of a panopticon without being corrupted. The assent to his pragmatic use of these things in the film is the consensual removal of those devices from the hands of worldly people - of politicans, government and lawmakers. "If I'd only trust Batman with such a thing, I should trust nobody else with such a thing, because NO REAL MAN could be Batman."
And the message of the film, as in the comic-books, is that perhaps the presence of such an ideal of justice as the Batman, might, by offering a new construal of the ideal mechanics of a society, call our FROM THE PEOPLE a willing commitment to the ideals, and a willing selfless sacrifice on their part, and the whole corrupt edifice of society might be cured FROM WITHIN.
That's why Batman's crusade is portrayed as being, ultimately, impossible. His presence causes escalation. The immanence of an ideal in worldly form CALLS INTO BEING the embodiment of answering forces of CHAOS. The absence of a definitive JOKER story in TDK is a clue to this. The real reason the JOKER exists is because Batman does. An Unstoppable Force meets an Immovable Object. This confrontation is not meant for worldly soil. It can only "go on like this forever." But its immanence is perhaps a demonstration that the only way that the cycle can stop is for the system to reform itself from within. And Batman recognizes this. He WANTS to retire. He WANTS to shed the cowl, and hand over the reins to a legitimate figure who yet has the idealism to have some influence, and who might inculcate social change. This is what a HERO is, as opposed to the embodiment of an ideal. It is a worldly person who strives towards an ideal, not an angel - not the hand of God.
I bring all this up here, though, in order to call into question your claim that all of this is suddenly new. It is of course, quite topical given recent world events, but more than anything else, I see Nolan's movies as faithfully rendering onscreen what the real thematic substance of Batman has been all along. The mainstream impression of Batman, from the original Batman sequence, has been, if you will, "Batman-Lite." It's far less Nolan making a political point than Nolan being the conduit by which the many contributors to the comic-book Batman franchise over the years make a political point. But it's not just a political point. It's not mere political allegory, as coarse and banal as that might have been. It's more timeless than that - it's a meditation on the same stuff that the Greeks were putting on the orchestra 2500 years ago: ideals, heroism, the Good, the Just, etc.
That why I think Nolan means it when he says "Hopefully, there's stuff in the movie that resonates, but we try and be a little accidental with that." He means the same thing Tolkien meant when he said "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." What Nolan created, instead, was a thematically rich and somewhat truthful meditation on those ancient, vital themes, and his articulacy and directness is the reason the film resonates with us so much in these troubled times. The strength of this is that it won't age the way transparent allegory would - it remains vital, incumbent on new interpretations, and it is, by contrast with what I think the point of your article is, certainly not a foregone conclusion that the messages discerned within it can classified either "liberal" or "conservative" in the narrow, equivocal senses that both those terms are meant today.
I'm sorry I've taken so long to say this, but I've seen the same point made in many places, and I just had to air my grievances about it, because it seems to me that your interpretation, and indeed the interpretations of others, would be better made in the light of the context of the wider Batman tradition, which has always been like this, and of which Nolan's film is the best cinematic rendering we could have expected. I hope you'll consider publishing my comment for others to read and make up their own minds.
