First, let's look at some of the key lines, images, and ideas that link Gotham to 9/11 and Iraq.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Like Osama Bin Laden, the Joker is against all of Western Civilization. He has no rules, he wants people like Batman and Harvey Dent to break any beliefs they have, he thinks civilization is corrupt and proves it by turning cops and others into his "clowns". The public, the criminals on the boat escaping town, and even the mob are all tied into capitalism, they are all part of the same society and system. The criminals & mob are as much about money as the public is. Mobster Eric Roberts says he even loves his wife. The criminals on the boat are even willing to sacrifice themselves for their jailers! They all have a stake in survival and living. But the Joker goes Beyond Good and Evil. He's out to destroy the entire system that everyone works by. What's interesting is that makes him kind of fun in comparison to the run of the mill crooks & mob just as Batman is more fun than the typical police. It's not just that the Joker burns a pile a money. He doesn't really care at the end, when he almost falls to his death, if he actually dies. Earlier on, he wants Batman to run him over with the cycle which Batman fails to do. Why is the Joker willing to do this? So he can die in a way that makes Batman break his ethic about not killing and give him a guilt trip that will weaken him. At the end, when the Joker nearly falls to his death, he shows in his final monologue that he just doesn't care. Certainly he will sacrifice others to his cause. Faster than you can say 9/11 pilots, the Joker kills all the men on a bank heist and at one point he places explosives inside the body of a guy and blows him up with a phone call. But he is just as willing to die himself. He isn't just a terrorist but also the equivalent of a suicide bomber--he's his own human sacrifice willing to die for the cause of taking down the place too. Again, why? No reason. The Joker talks about a bad childhood or a bad relationship (each story contradicting the other and played to the specific person he is about to harm). This isn't talking about the Koran or religious ideology. The film is not so explicit. And the Joker, as a character, long predates 9/11. The Joker's disfigurement and social rejection are provided here as possible motivations, but the overall hatred that Islamic radicals have for the West is symbolized by the Joker's same desire to see society destroyed and that is how the film uses him, as an allegorical figure.

More links between the film and the War on Terror: Harvey Dent explicitly calls The Joker a terrorist. When later, the Joker tries to kill Harvey Dent, he uses rocket-propelled grenades as insurgents do in Iraq & Afghanistan. One of the cops says "I didn't sign up for this" which might be a reference to our volunteer army in Iraq & Afghanistan. After the Joker blows up the hospital there is a shot of the wreckage looking down on it from a high angle and it looks very much like Ground Zero after 9/11. Most significantly, Batman sets up a big surveillance network. Lucius Fox disagrees: no one man should have that much power, but Fox goes along with using it anyway, and it works, it catches the Joker in the end. So Fox is wrong about the network even if he can't agree with the method. Fox destroys the surveillance after it has been useful but this follows the right wing promise that its illegal wiretaps are just to hunt terrorists and after the War has been won, the surveillance will be abandoned and not used against average people.

This last example doesn't just show that the film links to the War on Terror but shows that it takes a very specific position about it. In this instance, widespread surveillance is good because it captures the Joker.

So what other aspects of the War on Terror does THE DARK KNIGHT approve of? How about torture?

What is interesting is that it's Harvey Dent who takes on the role of torturer. He kidnaps the fake cop and takes him to the equivalent of a "secret CIA prison" and threatens to shoot him if he won't talk. Batman arrives at the place (he knows where it is!) and says the torture won't get Dent anywhere and will tarnish his image. Does that mean the film is against torture? No. Because later on, Batman is willing to beat up the Joker to find out where Dent & the girl are (although the Joker is eager to tell him). He's not above or against torture, only against killing.

There is another point that these episodes raise: lying and putting on a good face for the public. Batman would like to retire and allow Dent to take his place in ridding the city of crime. A good public face will allow that to happen because it will give the public hope that crime is being stopped and the government isn't corrupt. But in the meantime, in fighting the War on Joker, what Batman is saying is that the public face of government should appear clean while the more secretive "CIA types" like him do the dirtier work behind the scenes.

Take for instance Batman's trip to Hong Kong. Gordon says he can't go because he has no jurisdiction, but that doesn't mean a secret CIA commando like Batman can't go. Before I say anything else, aside from Bin Laden, who are the USA's current enemies? Why the totalitarian Chinese and the Russians and they are the bad guys in this film equated with the mob. The film even suggests that the Chinese & Russians are behind bringing the terrorist out to work on us (but he turns on them & takes over--totalitarians shouldn't let that terrorist genie out of the bottle). So, in addition to terrorism, the film also comments on the other more nationalistic threats to the US besides Islamic radicals. And it's ok, in the film's reasoning, for Batman to go to China and return with the mobster and his stolen money.

The idea of appearing to be good while fighting enemies with a no-holds-barred behind the scenes approach is also an aspect of the episode involving Reese, a person who works for Batman. Reese is this diminutive mousy guy who always looks scared. In a film of muscle-bound He-men, Reese has no muscles and is not your heroic type at all. But he has inside information and tries to use it for blackmail. This fails because he is fearful. Since Reese can't get any money out of Batman, he decides to expose him, perhaps out of spite. Interestingly, the Joker doesn't want Reese to out Batman. What he wants is for his own threats & power to out Batman. He wants the victory himself and he threatens the city against Reese to the point where people try to shoot Reese and he has to go into protective custody. Who saves Reese in the end? Why Batman himself (who of all people should hate Reese and be his enemy). But Batman is so good, so protective, that he even protects those out to hurt him. What is the underlying meaning of this episode of the film?

Well, Reese represents the liberal media. Reese is associated with TV, the GNN news show where he is going to spill the beans. The message of the Reese section of the film is this: by outing Batman, by criticizing the government and telling people what it is up to, this hampers the government's ability to do it's job, and who in the end is going to save you & the country? Why the very government you are out there trying to criticize, reveal information about, and bring down. So liberal media, wags the film, don't reveal any secrets that might turn the public away from the cause or else the Joker wins.

In fact, it's very important again in this respect, that Harvey Dent be remembered in the end not as Two-Face but as Harvey Dent. The public must not lose faith in its leadership. The government's public face must not be tarnished or else it cannot do the work it needs to. Again, we are in the realm of right wing fantasy and control. The film says it's ok for Batman to operate secretly but not ok for the public to know about it or put an end to it because this is our real defense against terrorism.

What does this say about the public in general. A telling moment takes place near the end of the film. People are fleeing the city because of the Joker's threats. Two boats, one with common people passengers and another with convicts, are held captive by the Joker who uses them to conduct "a social experiment" by which he hopes to further breakdown the morale of the city. The common people take a vote and the majority decide to blow up the other boat to escape death themselves. Then a more leading citizen decides for all the group by making the more moral decision to sacrifice themselves. Interestingly, an alpha male on the convict's boat has taken the same step. But even if strong leaders have taken command while the public remains confused, all this really means is that both boats will be destroyed by the Joker instead of one. It is only Batman, by stopping the Joker, who really saves the day.

Ok, what is the film saying here by this episode? Well, the War on Terror isn't popular and people would like to get out of it. A majority vote against it however doesn't really solve the problem of terrorism. In other words, democracy fails. People aren't saved by it and it allows the forces of fear and selfishness to triumph. But, interestingly enough, democracy's opposite, a willingness to sacrifice yourself for others, while better morally and less blood-thirsty, still doesn't solve the problem. Only Batman's force against the Joker ultimately solves the problem. So, the film says, that during wartime, the common people must relinquish their democratic say-so to the strong fascist forces of Batman, the CIA, and the Bush administration. This is the only thing which will protect them against death.

Think of Alfred's talk about Burma (another totalitarian "enemy" of the US): you burn down the forest to get the terrorist. Only the toughest response wins the day.

At the end of the film, Batman agrees to appear guilty for the murders that Harvey Dent has committed even though he hasn't killed anybody just so that Dent will maintain his clean public persona into death. Although Batman is the hero who has done the right thing, he is willing to be hated and pursued. If that isn't a metaphor that whitewashes George Bush for all time, I don't know what is. Batman Bush has made the tough decisions that have saved the city but he has to also be the scapegoat because what was necessary wasn't always constitutional.

Batman isn't the film's only human sacrifice. Batman/Dent's girl is a sacrifice. The Chinese guy is set afire on top a pile of money. Dent says in public that he's Batman, which is a sacrifice on his part, but he isn't allowed to actually sacrifice himself for his love which leads him into criminal insanity.

I'm not entirely sure how to read the theme of human sacrifice in the film however. There are other themes & motifs that run through the film that I'm not sure I can place an accurate reading on. There are a number of falls from heights. The one where Batman saves the girl which ends with post-coital heavy breathing and her saying "We shouldn't do this again" is sexual but that doesn't mean that they all are. Likewise with the theme of breaking glass--does it have an allegorical meaning or does it just look good? Batman uses wires to stop a truck, bind the SWAT team, and capture the Joker. Is this just a convenient method of arrest or does it mean more than that?

There is also something going on in the film about disguises. Think of all of these instances: the clown masks over the bank robbers at the start and then later over the hostages at the end, the "cops" who turn out to be working for the Joker, the doctors who are actually the crooks, the fake Batmans pretending to be the real ones, even Gordon pretending to be dead for a while, etc. Then there are the ultimate masks of Batman and the Joker themselves. However, I'm not able to read this any more that I can the breaking glass and falls from heights. I presume all three have some symbolic or aesthetic function but I can't identify what that might be as yet.

Also running through the film are themes of duality and of shadow.

Duality: good cop, bad cop, the choices between one thing and another, two people tied to oil drums, two boats, the Dark Knight (Batman) and White Knight (Dent), the two-sided coin, Two-Face himself, Bruce Wayne/Batman who is both playboy and devoted lover, business guy & crusader, Batman's mask creating another Two-Face with the hood being dark and the open part of his skin being white, and the ultimate duality: Batman and the Joker as two sides of the same personality.

The shadow: When Batman goes to Hong Kong, his cell phone messes with the electronics so that the lights go out. When the Joker stops the ships, the lights do the very same thing. At one point the Joker says some lines and at the end of the film Batman repeats them. The Joker says that he and Batman are both freaks. Both wear masks that hide their faces. At the end, The Joker is hanging upside down: he and Batman are inversions of each other. In a Jungian sense, Batman is the shadow of Dent, who is the White Knight to Batman's Dark Knight, but in the same sense, the Joker is the shadow of Batman, what Batman has inside him but has to suppress if civilization is to continue. When Dent becomes Two-Face, he stops controlling chance and believes in it. He becomes half good-half bad but that doesn't really work. He crosses the line of murder which Batman is unwilling or less willing to do. Batman, for all his own violence, still follows a moral rule. Two-Face abandons morality to the coin toss. The Joker is out to destroy morality altogether which is made clear in the opening scene where all the crooks kill each other one by one: if the Joker has any kind of ethic it's betrayal. But to stop both Two-Face and the Joker, Batman has to be willing to be as close to criminal as he can get to what they are.

The dualities, oppositions, and mirror/shadow images might simply be a device through which to express the theme of good and evil. The film seems to suggest that good must take on some of evil's ways in order to defeat evil but mustn't fall into the Two-Face trap of thinking you are good when you are not.

Looking at the film, it's episodes, and it's take on itself, I see it as a propaganda film which apologizes for the excesses of the Bush administration, saying that Bush has acted in an honorable and necessary way given that we are in a time of war. It also says that the criticism the Bush administration has been given over these "excesses" is unjustified since the administration's acts have been the one thing which has succeeded while democracy itself has failed.

I'm amazed that a "simple" summer blockbuster carries so much thematic material but I'm also shocked that Warner Bros. has issued the most pro-fascist film since TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.

As for the score, I'll stick to my already established curmudgeonly persona and say that I've come to believe that there haven't been any good film scores written since 1980. Plain & simple: Film music is dead. It's been dead for almost 30 years. As far as I'm concerned, it's pointless to even talk about new scores any longer. The "music" in this film, when you could hear it at all, was simply weak or annoying as all current scores tend to be.

The discussion really gets brewing here, and gets interesting as it progresses.
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4848&postdays=0&postorder=asc&s tart=425

I'd like to see how your comments would be met.

And I hope you've been well, its been ages.

When a film comes along that can be interpreted as conservative or right wing (part of the vast conspiracy, no doubt), it's immediately called a fascist piece of unbearable propaganda.
[/rant]

Stargate-I don't disagree with you that leftists in Hollywood have produced a lot of politically didactic films on the War on Terror just as they have produced leftist cinema for over 100 years. There is no vast right wing conspiracy out there trying to subvert people's minds through the media. What there is are people both right and left whose values get into the news and media they produce. One could look at Fox News especially as a conservative-slanted channel just as one could say that NPR or the BBC reflect a leftist bias. Most of Hollywood cinema is supportive of capitalism and American nationalism. This isn't a bad thing either. If we are going to have a nation, we have to socialize people into its values. I'd say that American cinema with its images of fun, freedom, and fuucking has inspired a lot of the world from becoming a dreary gulag.

There have been a number of great films that could be seen as nationalist, conservative, or right wing in their viewpoints that I certainly consider to be important masterpieces, like John Ford's THEY WERE EXPENDABLE for instance. But I can't talk about THE DARK KNIGHT with the same reverence. I also see a strong difference between typical Republican Party politics and fascism. Unfortunately the Bush administration's "Imperial presidency" has used the excuse of war to blur those distinctions. If I call THE DARK KNIGHT a work of fascist propaganda, that's because that's what I see in it. Others may see only an exciting action film and that's ok for them. I don't want to be a killjoy and ruin their pleasure. However, in this instance, we have a film that is really using the medium of a summer blockbuster to support practices that people might be not be so thrilled about if they paid them conscious attention in the real world.

"A movie's a movie! Take it for what it's worth." If it were only that simple. Every film is a cultural artifact, even the most crass and low-brow, even porn. Films may be a pleasure and entertainment but one has every right to look at their content to determine exactly what messages and dynamics are going on in them. It's true that most films just express sex and violence and adventure that most people can't have in the real world. But films "speak" in images and symbols. They can be read and deconstructed and analyzed even psychoanalyzed without their function as entertainment being ruined.

There is, in this regard, no such thing as a movie being a movie. If I look outside my window, the grass is grass without it holding too many extra meanings but everything in a film has been constructed to be part of a system of culture and aesthetics. If I took that on face value and looked at only the surface level without any further examination, I would be opening my awareness and unconscious to any kind of influence. So I do take a film for what it's worth and THE DARK KNIGHT is still a work of fascist propaganda. I know what that's worth to me. You'll have to decide for yourself what you think that's worth to you.

Of course the Joker is seen as a terrorist, he's inciting terrorist acts; that doesn't mean he's a shoe-in for Al Qaeda. Don't forget, Al Qaeda isn't the only terrorist faction out there. And I didn't perceive that the Joker didn't care about his life, quite the opposite in fact. He knows that Batman is the only real threat posed upon him, and he also knows that Batman won't kill him; no matter how dastardly an act he commits. He's a man who values his life, and, most importantly, control -- despite his position on chaos, the Joker is always in control, and when his control fails (the ferries) he breaks his footing and is caught. I felt that the sonar tracking was a nice incite into the eventual paranoid that Batman/Bruce Wayne will become later in his life; and I felt that it was a strong jab AT Homeland Security. Fox seems to be a character with a strong moral center, and Bruce is often chastised for being a crazy grown man running around beating people up. Fox realizes that his boss is really plying things "close to the chest" and begins to worry about the paranoia aspect, thus he threatens his resignation. I don't see that as commending Homeland Security in the least, particularly if you're a comic book fan who knows of Batman's paranoia around Gotham. He needs control too, and the sonar gives it to him. Fox even mentions earlier in the film that he's upset being so unaware of the R&D department investing in a government telephone surveillance op.

So I'm sorry Lou, but your OP reads as a cut-and-paste job of some loony radical Leftist who maybe doesn't know the history of Batman, the Joker, or heroic characters. I refuse to believe that you actually bought into all of this.

Remember, Batman/Wayne isn't the moral one in these stories, it's those around him. He's clearly a deranged lunatic. At least Nolan realizes this and writes him this way.

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:

As for the score, I'll stick to my already established curmudgeonly persona and say that I've come to believe that there haven't been any good film scores written since 1980. Plain & simple: Film music is dead. It's been dead for almost 30 years. As far as I'm concerned, it's pointless to even talk about new scores any longer. The "music" in this film, when you could hear it at all, was simply weak or annoying as all current scores tend to be.

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I'll say it once, and I'll say it again, you people must really not listen to a lot of film music these days. I always imagine that anyone who says this is like a Howard Hughes of the film score community; just locked away in someone's basement, coveting old music like it's sacred, and never daring to try new things. Perhaps you only seek out the crappy stuff and ignore the good things?

While many incidents in the film can be read in different ways, I'm only putting down my own interpretation which is itself open to criticism.

I might be inclined to say that the film is simply a drama on the abstract themes of good and evil, but the signs and "clues" that are in the film itself that I mentioned above link (for me) to specifics involving current events.

Osama Bin Laden may not be the only terrorist out there but he's the one which the War on Terror is about and I still maintain the film is about the War on Terror specifically rather than about a good man fighting just any terrorist.

As for Fox, yes, he's a man with a conscience and he doesn't like that Batman has taken his simple technology and built a powerful surveillance network out of it. But he and Batman make an agreement. Fox will suspend his concern and help Batman long enough to get the Joker. Then he will pull the plug. And this is what happens. The surveillance does work to spot and help capture the Joker, the film says it is a necessary component. Fox then shuts it down. This doesn't mean it can't be re-built later of course. But that's a side issue. In the real world, the current administration set up a similar data mining system and went outside the law to do so (though Congress eventually went along). People are right to be concerned just as Fox is in the film. The Bush administration said 2 things about this: 1) that not being able to do this would help terrorists and 2) that this system was only being used to spy on terrorists and not everyday people. The implication is that once the terrorists are caught the system can be dismantled. Well, the events in the film don't criticize or go against any of the features of the real life scenario. The film says the surveillance is needed and that when it isn't needed, the government (Batman) will side with the people (Fox) to shut it down. This completely supports the Bush position/fantasy. The real life concern that the film only touches on and dismisses is that with terrorism as an never-ending threat, such a system will never be shut down and we'll never know just how it is being used.

As for the Joker's need for control and his awareness that Batman won't kill him...how does he know Batman won't? Batman could run him over with the motorcycle. The Joker seems almost disappointed that he doesn't. He would like to subvert and corrupt Batman just as he is able to do that with Harvey Dent. I can't remember the exact words the Joker says now when he is hanging upside down talking with Batman that gave me the impression that he didn't care if he had fallen to his death so i'm not going to be able to defend this point as strongly here as I'd like. But even if I conceed and say that the Joker wants to live and is only the mastermind behind terrorism and not necessarily a suicide bomber, that doesn't change the basics that he'd like to destroy the city. Does he want to take it over and run it? If he's willing to burn a pile of money, it seems obvious to me that he has other goals in mind than profit.

As for Russia and China, it's the film which elludes to them (and Burma too). To the conservative mind these old totalitarians are still out there as threats to us, especially economically which is how they are described in the film.

I've described how Batman and the Joker may be similar but I don't see the film as saying Batman is a deranged lunatic. He's still very much the hero of the film who makes everything turn out right even if characters like Harvey Dent are also shown to be heroic. I doubt that most audiences see Batman as crazy either. At one point he is seen beating up on the people pretending to be Batman but, like John Wayne in RIO BRAVO, he simply wants these people off the street because they are in over their heads (which is made clear when the Joker tortures and kills one). This could be read in a way which says, no vigilantism, the government has its own secret ways of dealing with things and the people can neither help or get involved.

As for new scores, time and time again, I'm convinced that they suck. Oh sure there is this one or that one that may be an exception, but so what? Overall, the sound that Hollywood industry practices insist on and that most composers provide is crap. I think I'm open to trying new things and I wouldn't come to this conclusion if my own taste buds didn't keep reassuring me it was the right one (at least for me). The score to THE DARK KNIGHT made zero or a negative impression on me.

I like the Howard Hughes analogy. I'd rather be the crazy recluse, a Quixotic madman reading Romances, than a "normal" hipster of today at least where the quality of art and culture is concerned.

Someone here mentioned a friend who once said: "There has been no good music written after 1750." I'm almost inclined to agree. That was the quote I was referencing when I said the same thing about film music after 1980. I still say it: film music is dead. People may like a lot of what passes for film scores today and that's fine but it doesn't alter my conclusion. Film music is dead. It has zero originality and no mark of authorship at this point. It doesn't really support the films it is composed for and most of those films are crap too. I don't think that by holding this overall position I'm somehow closed-minded, but even if I was, so be it. Better to be called closed-minded than to have to force one's self to endorse crap just so you can say you are open-minded.

quote:

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Originally posted by sean:
I have this friend, and this friend loves U2; absolutely adores their music. Nowhere near my taste, but he's my friend and can listen to whatever he wants. Yet, there's this thing he does that annoys me: Because he likes U2 so much (knows their music and lyrics backwards-forwards-quickly), he sees and reads connections with U2 into everything (other music, movies, politics, whatever) and can invent these connections instantaneously, whether or not they are actually there. If you want to see The Dark Knight as some kind of Right-leaning polemic, than there is, without a doubt, numerous ways you can go about it, but if that's all you see and that's all the connection you want to make, than you've put your foot in your mouth--and I have to agree with Clayton about all this nonsense being from one viewing; looks more like somebody is a grumpy old man.

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I watched SUNSHINE with a friend. The film opens with someone looking at the sun. My friend said: "This is a film about vision, about looking." Soon after, the planet Mercury is shown between the spaceship and the sun and my friend said, "it looks like a lens, like a pupil. The sun is looking back." By the time the film was over, my friend concluded that the sun was sentient, that it was the face of god and was purposely dying out to destroy humanity, that it even sent a quantum angel about the ship to stop the mission, but that in the end, humanity wasn't going to be wiped out and was able to touch god personally and save itself. It was a far out thesis but a lot of details in the film's plot and imagery formed and supported it.

I caught a number of details in HIDDEN/CACHE that others missed and when I realized the entire film was about people lying to each other, all the details fell into place. Even then, my more perceptive friends brought in ideas I'd never considered. For example, the couple eats dinner in a room lined with books while the main characters tell a teasing lie to their dinner guests. A friend (not the same guy as above)pointed out: "all these books are suppose to give them knowledge but they've never learned anything, so it's a pretense." Late in the film the main character takes pills so he can sleep and my friend intoned: "He's leading an inauthentic life, he needs pills to get to sleep."

So, my friends and I live in a world where we analyze every aspect of a film's form and content to come up with as much about it as possible. That may take us out into left field from time to time but more often then not we seem to catch what a film's real meaning, its' subtext, is about.

You guys sound as if you've never read any deep film or literary criticism in your lives. Go watch some Jodorowsky--he's a director whose films are all told through symbolism. In the director's commentary to the recently released EL TOPO & THE HOLY MOUNTAIN DVDs, he describes in detail just what the visual symbols in his films mean (which is more than most directors will do--they tend to remain silent about their deeper objectives). This may give you a much different way to approach all the films you watch.

When it dawned on me that THE DARK KNIGHT was about the War on Terror, I started to think back about the film's details and connected as much in it as I could to that central theme or idea. I don't think I'm stretching things myself but it seems that a number of you think I'm off base, that I'm reading too much into things or reading things incorrectly. Look, I call 'em as I see 'em and try to the best of my ability to support my thesis with evidence from the film. That doesn't mean I'll always be correct, but I try.

I have not seen MAN ON FIRE. It's ok to break the rules to do good. But it all depends on who is breaking the rules, what those rules are, and what the ultimate good is. If you are going to take my civil liberties away because you believe I'm a sheep that needs to be herded and protected by elitist alpha males, we're going to have a conflict about that.

I don't know if one can connect U2 songs to the entire universe but I think you can connect THE DARK KNIGHT to terrorism and a viewpoint on how that terrorism should be handled. There may be other things going on in the film but they didn't rise to the fore as being of any significance.

Lastly, I like being a grumpy old man. "Bah, humbug." And "Outta my way ya whippersnappers." [Grumpy Lou also gives you a few whacks with his cane.] It's all a good time.

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121694247343482821.html

http://inspersal.blogspot.com/2008/07/theres-whole-lot-in-andrew-klavans.html

http://inspersal.blogspot.com/2008/08/note-extensive-spoilers-for-dark-knight.html

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010555.html

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Originally posted by nuts_score:
I won't deny that this film doesn't touch on current events -- hell, I think it's the best examination of post-9/11 anxiety since the actual attacks -- but I can't buy into the "Bush equals Batman" jargon. Heck, even two of those links agree with me!

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quote:

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Originally posted by scoreguy16:

I am with you on that. And it seems like if you were able to write all that after seeing the film only once, you may have gone into the film looking for something like that.

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I agree there, Clayton. Lou isn't the first internet identity to make these assumptions, as I had read them and dismissed them beforehand (just look at the comment sections on TDK related articles on Ain't It Cool News and AV Club); maybe he is very inciteful and can remember these things on a dime, but these points are too detailed for just one viewing.

But I'm going to let Lou see what he wants to see in the film. I enjoyed it as a mature Summer blockbuster that we hardly ever get anymore. A film about the duality of good and evil, actions and consequences, and the gray area between it all. I'm thrilled that such a film has become so successful, being how dark and brooding and un-cliche-Hollywood-like it is. If he wants to see it as propaganda, that's his opinion. I jst don't see it and I don't think I ever will.

300, however, I do consider a racist, facist, Ayn Rand-ian and immature piece of propaganda; but I don't blame filmmaker Zach Snyder. He set out to adapt a Frank Miller comic book (written after his big Ayn Rand kick) and added a very un-Frank Miller subplot (Queen Gorgo); he adapted the comic successfully, because the book is also xenophobic garbage.

I'm also quite a big, big fan of Alejandro Jodorowsky. I must have been 13 when I first saw stills from El Topo, and had been anticipating seeing the film from then on. Of course, I wasn't able to until Anchor Bay released the box set (which I pre-ordered a month in advance and was so very excited the day it arrived, I watched all four films in a row and fell asleep to The Holy Mountain's score). I agree with Lou in the fact that Jodorowsky is perhaps one of the most intelligent and genius filmmakers of all time; and he's more than willing to let spill the secrets of his films. In their mystic, Alchemic, and religious beauty, his films are created to be interpreted and studied. Christopher Nolan is a very British filmmaker, more Alfred Hitchcock than Ken Russell. He's a technical marvel of a director; and alongside his brother and his other writers and co-writers, he's created an interesting filmography of interpretations of Noir and archetypes. But his films are hardly on the level of transcendentalism of the inspired Jodorowsky. As it is, both filmmakers are major influences on my own personal work and visions, yet I'd hardly ever pit them against each other when I'm trying to break apart a film. No, I'd rather pit Nolan against Hitchcock (who's he's inferior to, but making a genuine name and style for himself), Nic Roeg (who's clearly an influence on Nolan's editing style), or Michael Mann, who's influence is clearly stamped all over The Dark Knight (and for the record, I think Mann is the superior filmmaker, as well). In Jodorowsky's case, I'd rather put up the work of Jan Švankmajer, Kenneth Anger, or David Lynch in comparison; and Jodorowsky would always win my vote.

At some point I started to feel the connections between the film and current events. Dent calls the Joker a terrorist. Hmmm. The hospital blows up and we see the destruction from above and it looks to me like Ground Zero after 9/11. Hmmm. By the time Lucius Fox enters a big room and finds a wall of surveillance and makes his comments, it was pretty obvious. When I sat down afterwords and thought about it, I was able to pin more and more details from the film onto the basic tree.

And it turns out, from reading other people's writings on the film, that I should have brought in even more details into my argument than the ones I mentioned! I wasn't thinking of them. Really guys, reading films like this is not some big deal and, as I tried to show, other people I know routinely do this sort of analysis on their first viewings of films and a number of people (who I presume have watched the film also once) have commented on similar notions (and deeper ones than my own) in articles and blogs. Geesh.

Nuts-Perhaps because Hollywood summer films tend to be empty, you want to defend one which is not. Also, I gather you think that it's darker qualities are somehow special. Look around, most Hollywood films are dark these days. I don't know why you think the film is without cliches, however, since aside from the propaganda (which you refuse to see or acknowledge) the film boils to down the same old cops & robbers fare pretty quickly. I also don't think it's really as morally "gray area" as you seem to think, though the blogger who felt it wasn't pro-torture and therefore not pro-Bush may still have a point there.

To be honest, I was left cold and bored by the film, the only excitement I had in it came from the exercise of trying to put all the propaganda elements together after I'd seen it. With or without the propaganda, the film is pretty much a piece of crap and I don't even understand all the fuss, box-office, or over-all public excitement surrounding it.

As for 300, yes, that film was completely ridiculous and laughable. I saw that with a friend and we could barely keep from laughing out loud. At one point, someone goes before the Senate and here are all these old guys with gray hair sitting around and they all had 6-pack abs. I nudged my friend and said, "Even the old folks in this film are ripped." I was shushed by the guy next to me. I said to him, "Oh come on now, don't tell me you don't think this thing is a joke." And the love-it-or-leave-it jarhead says to me, "If you feel that way about it, why don't you leave?" So I just shook my head. I guess people wanted to take this one seriously. In fact, the Iranian government complained that the film put them in a bad light (as if they hadn't already done that by being a nuclear threat and terror-supporting nation by themselves). So whole nations were taking this thing seriously. But somehow the cartoon fascism of 300 didn't bother me the way the more insidious fascism of TDK does.

I really respect Jodorowsky but I only mentioned him because he was the first filmmaker I could think of off the top of my head who makes films where the symbols come first before the story and whose films have to be read through their symbolism. I was just trying to find an example to show Sean and Scoreguy (somehow) that there was another way of looking at a film than by merely taking the story at face value. Jodorowsky constructs his films to be interpreted. But he's far from the only filmmaker to do so. Actually, most directors load their films with meaningful details--that's the fun of the job. TDK also uses symbolism and metaphor and allegory. It isn't just a wrestling match between Batman and the Joker.

I wasn't quite sure if Two-Face was dead or not. Though I had to read him as dead since he wasn't moving and there was a memorial service for Dent in the next scene. I take it he may be behind bars and people simply think Dent is dead?

Scott-If you watch The Green Berets, the film starts out with David Jansen as a liberal reporter who has a lot of questions and criticism about what the US is doing in Vietnam. By the end of the film, however, he's convinced that the US mission there is helpful. Just because a liberal character shows up in a conservative film doesn't mean that the film is suddenly liberal for those moments. In TDK, Fox doesn't change his viewpoint about the spying and he doesn't have to. The film's overall events are the ones which are working on the audience to change their minds about spying. The film says spying is ok, it will catch the terrorist, and the people have nothing to fear because either the government or the people themselves will dismantle it after the job is done. Well, if you believe that our government hasn't already been spying on us for years and just plans to give up this technology, I have some swamp land in FL to sell you......

There was a guy who used to post here, Eric, who was a conservative and who felt that anyone who wasn't a conservative was somehow un-American. He even went so far as to say that if you didn't love America you were self-hating. I tried to explain to him that America is just a name and some land. In the end, we are each our own nation. I'm my own sovereign country. I just happen to live in America. Leaving it to go elsewhere is pointless because all governments have unfair restrictions and blood on their hands. If only I could be stranded on a desert isle somewhere and lord it over the coconuts. In a way, that's how I try to live my life anyway, as if in a hermitage or monastery, where like some medieval scribe I ponder "over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore."

What matters isn't the country you live in but the level of personal freedom that the country grants you. There is some group which charts each country by a list of its freedoms and the US ranks rather poorly on it actually. The US doesn't rank high on quality of life surveys either. This country was never so libertarian that it let people live and let live. Just because it looks good compared with totalitarian states and won a few major world wars still doesn't mean it's the world's miracle. And, now that I see the globe as a circle without boundaries facing problems which don't just effect one group of people and not another, I'm not a supporter of any country, I just support the sanity and survival of humanity as a whole. Given the dire predictions of global warming (250 degree temperatures next century and the end of mankind if we put too much carbon in the air and pass the tipping point), just about every other discussion is rapidly becoming pointless.

Meanwhile, TDK is not a wonderfully-made movie that is meant for entertainment (at least my entertainment). In my opinion, it is not wonderful, it is not entertaining, and it still remains propaganda. And if I fail to talk about all the left-wing propaganda Hollywood puts out, maybe it's because I think the right is more threatening than the left these days and am simply less bothered by it.

I agree that you can at times read more into works than is there or over-analyze a work beyond what the author intended. However, I tend to agree with something Fritz Lang once said. He said that a psychologist (or any outsider) can find things out about you that you hadn't considered or were aware of and so it only made sense that audiences could find the same kinds of things out from watching his films. In that respect, a filmmaker can think he's making entertainment without any message and is just out to entertain people and still make a product that is meaning-laden. Given how much films cost and how their material must be arranged for filming, however, I'm less inclined to believe that the filmmaking process is so unconscious. Rather, if some element is in a film, I usually consider that it's been put there deliberately for some reason or purpose.

And, actually, it's pretty obvious that ET goes through death and resurrection and is meant to be a Christ figure. Hell, I caught one that when I was 16.

And, also, you can say "Whacko" all you want and read things at surface level for the rest of your days. I'm not going to stop you so please go have fun with that. Enjoy all those James Horner scores too while you're at it.

Meanwhile, given all the resistant responses here, it turns out that by leaving my zen mountain retreat to talk, I was just wasting both my time and yours. I'll try not to make that mistake again. Outta here.

Peace,

Scott

Scott-Let me try to explain myself and my position. I've been posting to this site for, I'm not even sure, off and on, something like 10 years. I've spent a lot of that time formulating what I think are good ideas about film music and writing long complaining tirades against views (and people who hold them!) I don't like. While the whole exercise was fun, I'm not sure anyone cared or was listening or that it ever accomplished much and I often wish I could get all that time and effort back.

Another thing you need to know about me is that I'm really conceited and in love with myself. Every time I go to the bathroom I feel as if my piss and shiit should be preserved by the Smithsonian. It's not that I don't like a good debate against opposing viewpoints, but I have an the ego the size of God's, I've anointed myself myself as royalty (whether deserved or not), and basically feel that I should be worshiped like a king whenever I come into the room. I know, I'm ridiculous, delusional, and "a legend in his own mind". Nevertheless, "My subjects" refuse to treat me the way I want to be treated and so I just get sulky around other people. All I can say is that it's probably a good thing I'm not a real monarch because I'd being saying "Off with their heads!" every hour on the hour until I had no subjects left.

So you know where I'm going from. And when I post here I often feel like I'm repeating the Parable of the Cave.

At the start of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, Zarathustra has been a recluse in the mountains for 10 years formulating his ideas (that God is dead, that "Thou Shalt" must be replaced with "I will", that it's the material and not spiritual world that counts, and that we should not sit on our laurels but do everything to advance humanity into a perfected state). He comes down from the mountain to give this "gift" to humanity. He comes to a village carnival and speaks to the crowd. They laugh and make fun of him and basically threaten to kill him. So, he leaves town and he's outside town in a forest and he says to himself, "I'm not going to do that again. I'm not talking to the crowds but only to those few who have ears to hear my message."

There have been a lot of times here when I've felt that what I have to say falls on deaf ears. I've sworn to go and never come back but stupidly return because I still want to express myself.

Ok, that's why I felt that I was wasting my time. That people didn't agree with me is why I felt I was wasting their time.

Next, most therapists are just people you pay to listen to you talk. I'm not even sure they can help you out in any significant way. So I think we are in agreement there. I love Jung, love him! But neither he or Freud can ever prove scientifically most of their positions on things. And yet they are widely accepted. That said, I do think the major psychologists have things of value to say to us and shouldn't be completely discounted.

You write, "I am not convinced that because some educated book worm thinks some piece of art has this or that message that it is so." Fair enough. Any one encountering any work of art or culture from a statue to a comic book can read their own interpretations into what they see. No reason why any of this speculation carries weight. However, whenever I encounter a work and think about it or whenever I hear my smartest friends do so or whenever I read great film and literary critics, my sense is that their interpretations are on the money.

Let me elaborate. Sorry if I name-drop here. I was with a small group of people talking with Robert Altman and he was explaining that when he had the money, he could make big sprawling epics that followed a lot of characters, and when he didn't have the budget, he made smaller films set in one or two rooms. No big statement there, it all came down to cash. He said he'd once gotten a letter from a fan. The fan was gushing about one of the Altman films. The fan had written that he was really impressed by all the color symbolism, how the green of the grass represented money and so forth. Well, Altman just laughed, the grass is green because grass is green and it doesn't mean anything more than that. Even Freud, who saw meaning everywhere like that as well, eventually said that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

Ok, there's an example of wrong interpretation or over-interpretation.

Camille Paglia, who despite her excesses is just brilliant in my opinion, wrote a book about Hitchcock's The Birds. At one point she is describing her theory that Melanie has a psychic connection, a telepathic or intuitive one, with the birds. She uses an example from the film. In the diner just before the birds attack the town, Melanie slants her head and "hears" the birds while no one else does and she knows they are coming. When the birds attack, the people inside the diner can't hear their sounds outside. When the people in the diner see that gas is leaking and a man is about to light a cigar (there's that cigar again), they try to warn him by shouting at him. The glass muffles their sound so they open the window. How is it that Melanie could hear the birds when the sound really couldn't reach her?

This strikes me as good interpretation as it raises a theory and supports it with evidence from the film that I can see and follow.

You write, "Anything else is just guessing, just assumption, not fact. I try to avoid assumptions." Ok, literary interpretation of the Humanities is not rocket science, it isn't going to provide clear-cut solutions that either work or don't the way math will. It deals in the realm of guesswork. Everything is a theory and you can either go with an interpretation or not. Also, different people will bring different interpretations to the table and even if you can support your ideas better than anyone else, there is no final arbiter that says, well you're right, this is fact and truth.

Nevertheless, I think if we don't try to examine and interpret works, we aren't going to be left with much weight in encountering them. Speaking of Jung again, most stories and myths resonate on the symbolic level but also deal with the unconscious and the unconscious (if it even exists the way Freud and Jung talk about it) lies in very murky water.

Also, there is a problem with "The best source is the person who created it". Most artists are trying to provide you with an emotional experience and don't want to reveal how the magic trick works. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote that behind his works was a very obvious plan, pattern, and structure that he did everything he could do to hide from the reader. Directors like Ford and Hawks often said, "Oh, critics just read things into these films that aren't there". But in a way, that statement allows them an out about talking about the things which are most obviously there and had to have been put there.

Here is David Lynch repeating this same old refrain: "I don't do director's commentary tracks on my DVD releases. I know people enjoy extras, but now, with all the add-ons, the film just seems to have gotten lost. We've got to guard the film itself. It should stand alone. You work hard to get a film a certain way; it shouldn't be fiddled with. Director's commentaries just open a door to changing people's take on the number one thing--the film. I think you should try to see the whole film through, and try to see it in a quiet place, on as big a screen as you can with as good a sound system as you can. then you can go into that world and have that experience."

Basically, directors are like magicians, they want you to be moved and wowed and awed by what they are doing and they don't want to discuss what things mean in very concrete terms. They want to lead you by the nose to this image and that one, but they also, in a contradictory fashion, want to preserve the openness of your interpretation. Being too blunt or on the nose destroys the magic. In any case, they aren't talking. So there is a problem in trying to return to the creator for the final word: he likes to be absent.

In an interview, someone asked John Huston to define his films and he said he'd been spending most of his life trying to figure himself out and that he was still a mystery to himself so his films were that too. Similarly, you can have a child but even though you've created him that doesn't mean you completely understand just what you've made or how it works. Films take on lives of their own and many directors use the metaphor of talking about their films as if they were their children.

As for ET and Christ, while the message of Christ may be more profound than anything you'll ever see in a Spielberg film, there's no doubt in my mind that Spielberg is using ET as a Christ figure. That doesn't mean that ET is Jesus however. What it means is that we are supposed to feel for ET something akin to what we're supposed to feel for Christ, that he comes, like Zarathustra, with a valuable message or insight and is killed by the rubes and hoi polloi who don't understand it.

Actually, this is the oldest and most common myth in our history common to the Sumerian Tammuz, Egyptian Osiris, Greek Adonis, Roman Attis, the Persian Mithras, and even Aztec and Native American myths. In fact, at one point, the Mithras cult was large enough in Rome that it competed with the Christian cult. If it had won out, chances are most people today would be Mithrans rather than Christians. As a hunter-gatherer culture that needed animals to die so we could live that morphed into an agricultural culture that needed crops to grow so we could live, mankind's basic number one myth has to do with the death and rebirth of the god, we kill the bull but it returns (the bull sacrifices itself for our survival), the winter comes and wipes out the crop but it returns (again the crop sacrifices itself but also returns for our sake). So ET is not just a Christ figure, but the Life Source figure. It's Christ himself who is just another example of the basic Animal-Vegetation myth. Of course, Christians take their myth to be the absolute truth rather than just another version of an old story and they are SO SERIOUS about it that it's practically impossible to talk with them about this.

As for my outrageous statement that film music is dead, I could say it's hyperbole, but it isn't. I haven't heard every score composed in the last 30 years but I have heard a lot of new scores, and, once again, it's my opinion here, but they haven't been so good that they can't be thrown out.

I'm going to repeat myself and flog a dead horse here but follow me on this if you will.

This, in essence, is a summary of what I've been formulating and saying here in bits & pieces over the last 10 years:

The current poor state of film music is due to producers and directors who act as if they are plainly afraid of it. Film music is an unknown factor in the production process that they can't control in the same way that they can control lighting gear or editing. A big fear they have with film music is that the composer will create something that they don't like or that will make an audience laugh as being too blunt and over the top (as they view older scores to be).

In order to gain control over film music, a number of tactics are employed. First, the use of temp tracks. Music that has already been composed elsewhere is played to the composer along with the film and the composer is simply asked to copy it, to compose something similar in style, sound, and theme. This means that the producer and director do not have to worry about the composer coming up with anything unexpected, original, or unfamiliar. The result is a streamlining and homogenization of film music where most scores sound like other scores and the individual identity of any composer has been removed and can no longer be determined from hearing the music.

Second, the use of mock-ups. Basically, this is looking over the shoulder of the composer and judging every note as it appears on the page. Producers & directors want to hear piano or synthesized versions of every cue and make judgments and changes before the entire score is finished and certainly before it is recorded. Some composers can work under these conditions but others can't or at least they can't compose inspired works without being given the freedom to write from start to finish without too many cooks coming in the spoil the broth.

Third, rejection. If the producer and director don't like what they hear, rather than work further with the composer to get what they want, they simply dump the score and hire another. This morale booster leads to an overall working atmosphere where composers only work to give the producers what they want or else they find their music will go unheard, or it produces composers who don't work that hard in the first place because their music could be rejected, or it produces attitudes like Danny Elfman's which demands a million dollars per score to pay in part for the aggravation involved in producing one, or it lastly encourages hack composers who write without caring what will happen to the music. It also supports the practices of a "composer" like James Horner who will borrow themes from classical music or include whole passages from classical works within his scores.

Fourth, speed. Film music is a post-production element that is added as the finished film is trying to head to market. Under the old studio system, composers were given a very short time to compose and record scores, often only 6-8 weeks to write and record 60-90 minutes of music. However, they were generally left alone to compose this music without too much interference. The studio felt that they had hired professionals they could trust. Today, the time allowed composers to score films has shortened in some cases to 2-4 weeks, especially if a previous score has been rejected and the film has a set release date. Also, unlike the days of the past, the composers aren't trusted and tend to be highly scrutinized throughout the process.

Fifth, a denuding of music into a sound effect. This has been called "Sonic Wallpaper" by the composers of the Star Trek: The Next Generation scores who were told not to write any "action music" and to keep everything subtle, low-key, and almost like a tone or hum. Well, "Sonic Wallpaper" is so underplayed that it almost isn't even music any longer and, appropriately, it isn't even being called music any longer.

Not every film score or film music composer faces all of these stipulations of course, but the overall adoption of these conditions by the film industry has taken their toll on the quality, originality, and individuality of film music. This last statement is a bit ironic since even during it's golden age, many people felt film music was secondary, watered-down, and inferior classical music. Now many of film music's fans consider current film music to be secondary, watered-down, and inferior film music.

Composers find different tactics and responses to please their industry masters and one such approach was developed by Hans Zimmer. Actually, it's nothing new or novel, it's simply the use of a music library. Zimmer's group, once called Media Ventures and now called Remote Control, employs a large team of "orchestrators" who actually compose most of the music. Much of this music is composed in advance. A producer can take his film to Zimmer and, much like someone shopping at the Ethan Allen store, hear different music that might fit the film. Once the producer picks out what he likes, Zimmer and team customize the music to fit the specific film and go on to compose more generic music for the next film. The use of a large team means that scores can be completed in shorter periods of time since you have 10 people writing the music instead of just one, but again, this only leads to a hodge-podge of generic sounding music and reinforces the shorter time spans all composers are given to do their work.

Despite all of this, some (mostly younger) film music fans think that scores are better now than they ever have been in the past. Also, from time to time, the new group of fashionable industry composers actually do create fine scores as the current conditions haven't completely wiped out the talents of the composers themselves. In this respect, it's not the composers who can't write any longer but the industry that reins them in hard and won't allow them to write. Those who work best in this atmosphere are not always going to produce great work but only the more comfortable and familiar sounding work they've been hired to do. We could get better film music out of some of these composers but it isn't being allowed us.

I would add that the re-recording of film music has been more or less a complete failure. Despite the fact that recording techniques were poor in the past and that scores have been lost that can only be heard again through reconstruction and re-recording, the vast majority of these attempts suffer from poor arrangements, poor recording techniques (film music is not concert music and needs to be closely-mic'ed), and poor performance. Even if I can't hear every instrument, I can hear more emotion in an old acetate performance than in the newest state-of-the-art digital re-recording that supposedly gives us everything worthwhile about a score.

So, given these positions, which have put me into conflict with many people, I've come to the conclusion, made in outrageous statements, that Horner sucks, Zimmer sucks, re-recordings suck, and Film Music is Dead. And these aren't just wild outlandish statements any longer. I really think film music as a potent force that had something to say and worked in combination with films that did the same is dead. You can debate this example or that one but the overall situation doesn't change: every time an orchestra begins to play now, be it for a re-recording of an old score or the recording of a new one, they should just close up shop and not bother.

Dinko, who posted above, once made an even more outrageous statement than any I've made. He said films didn't need music any longer. So, film music isn't just dead, but it's unnecessary and redundant and needs to be buried and forgotten. I forget his whole argument but I think he said that modern sound mixes were enough on their own to carry a film and that music forces a specific viewpoint on the viewer that narrows how a film can be read. I would just add that scores now are just pointless and superfluous if not just plain annoying.

It may seem odd to you, given all of these statements, that I love film music, but I do. But I love original tracks of film music from 1930-1980. Beyond that, it's a done deal.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

So that's why I don't like to come and post here any longer. Film music is over and I think everyone here is just wasting their time and the whole site should just close down and everyone should just go home.

Also, as I get older, I see that film music and even cinema is not the end all be all of culture. I was shocked when Charles Champlin, a west coast critic, quit his job and retired saying that there weren't any more good films to review and that he felt literature was where it was at anyway. Now I completely understand him and agree. When you are reading Euripides or Arthurian legends, it's pretty hard to get worked up over The Dark Knight. Film music is certainly dead but maybe cinema itself is dead now too. When you are listening to Haydn and Schumann, Desplat and Shearmur just don't cut it. Amazingly, Herrmann and Rozsa still do though but I'm not even sure why.

My final message (I'd like it to be, though I'll probably return again since I must have the last word) to everyone here is that they go back into the classic repertoire of music, literature, and fine art, and give popular culture a rest for a few years. Drop all this, go listen to 500 K numbers worth of Mozart, and then if you want to return, so be it. But make the rounds first. There is 5,000 years of art and culture out there not just the "Now Playing" section of the newspaper.

But you see, no one listens to this old fool and he's just an old fool to keep on talking to those who could care less.

So I'm off to read Byron and Erich Neumann and leave you all behind to whatever.

At times I feel as if I'm already in mourning for the human race and am just waiting to watch the Apocalypse on television: "Tonight, the end of the world, live, but first, a word from our sponsor..."

Film music? Movies? Meaningless nonsense, a sleeping draught in comparison. Myth, drama, excitement, inspiration, these might have meant something at one time but we keep failing to bring the dream into existence. However, as Joseph Campbell once said, you can't improve the world, nobody has ever fixed it, you can only accept & love it the way it is. So, we simply preferred to create and pretend our dreams onto a screen and the cinema does represent the best within us at times (when it isn't showing us what monsters we are). As someone who loves to bury their head in the sand, I only know too well what it is to ignore hard work. But the result is a world that makes us all want to retreat from it all the more.

The main point, before I go into how he interprets the film, still remains however, The Dark Knight is a film about the War on Terror, on that I have no doubt. Those who read the film at face value are simply not going deep enough.

But my initial interpretation is breaking down in the face of all the articles and debate I've been reading and what I thought was a pro-conservative, pro-hard stance film might not be one.

Inspersal's blog about torture discusses how the film has an anti-torture stance while the Bush administration has a pro-torture one. Nuts-Score sees Batman as deranged and not heroic. I interpreted Alfred's statement about burning down the forest in Burma to get the terrorist as a green light to do what is necessary to get the Joker or Osama. But my friend feels that it reflects the mistakes America took in Vietnam, that the strong response is overkill. He also talks about another statement of Alfred's, where Alfred tells Batman that he has pushed the mob into a corner so that they've had to produce the Joker in defense. To my friend, this is a statement on the mistakes America has made. Basically, it says that America has produced terrorism as a response to itself and is responsible for it by its own actions! I'm not even sure I can buy that idea as a reality but it may be what Nolan believes.

So, if I accept all these other takes on the film, which are supported by evidence from the film, I have to consider a turn-around on my original position. Just another reason why I shouldn't have posted: I didn't think it through enough, so that's another waste of everybody's time.

On the other hand, one has to do something to kill time between now and the end of things which is probably why I write and you write and we all read and watch movies.

I just heard an interesting theory regarding it and thought I'd pass it along. Once again, it seems to support Nuts-score belief that the film is ambiguous in nature.

It seems that some right wing people are embracing the film as their own while others see it a liberal propaganda. Meanwhile, left wing people see things in it they like and yet others see it as right wing propaganda. The theory is that the film was deliberately, uh, two-faced, providing things that could be read by both right and left as supporting their viewpoints. In this respect, Christopher Nolan becomes the joker, advancing not one position or another but anarchy itself. Just as the joker gives different people different versions of his origin, Nolan is giving people different versions of "his" politics perhaps just to mess with people and stimulate talk

But I suppose if people really want to know which "side" the film is on all they have to do is count the product placements and box office receipts.

Batman has (as far as I know - which is not much) always (or for quite a while at least) been the superhero who does the dirty work. In TDK he reminded me a bit of Jack Bauer, of whom I believe Sutherland himself said he hopes he'll have to pay for his actions someday.

The Joker is a terrorist. There might even be parallels to the whole Bin Laden thing. But the important difference is: The Joker has no agenda. The major problem about most campaigns against terrorism is that they don't acknowledge the "enemy"'s agenda (which can only go so far at best to *justify* their means, but nevertheless it's the original reason for their actions), but in the Joker's case, there actually is none.

The whole mobile phone spy plot goes quite far, but in this case they do make a point of having Morgan Freeman nearly refuse to cooperate on it under even the worst circumstances.