WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS EXTENSIVE SPOILERS OF THE DARK KNIGHT. DO NOT READ ANY MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE.
I hope that warning is sufficient, but let me reiterate, I will be discussing the film candidly and completely without any attempt to conceal what occurs at any point, including the end. Let me say also that this is not a review of the movie but an analysis of its politics. My review of The Dark Knight needs only two words: Absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it. With that in mind, let's turn to the politics.
The Dark Knight has already garnered a lot of attention. From Heath Ledger's death, to his performance, to its record breaking opening weekend, the movie was always going to create debate and discussion. And since it opened, the discussion has predictably turned to its politics
A commentator in the Wall Street Journal appears to be the first person to assert that Batman is represents President Bush. Despite the stupid superficiality of the argument in the WSJ, the argument has been adopted even by some left leaning commentators, including Open Left and Matt Yglesias. Even at Slate, their culture critics have called the film's politics "incoherent."
I disagree. The film is coherent and Batman does not represent George Bush.
I realize that it may be easy to make the mistake so many other commentators have made because the movie clearly does have something to say about our current politics and the war on terror. Simplistic interpretations are going to be advanced first, and that is what we are dealing with right now.
The WSJ's argument goes like this:
Batman represents Bush because Batman is willing to go outside the law to meet terrorists "on their own terms." Batman, the character, realizes that a free society sometimes must fight those who would destroy it through means that it normally finds unacceptable. Batman is a vigilante who operates without concern for civil rights or civil liberties in order to stop the plots of dangerous terrorists like the Joker.
Before we go any further, it is important to note that the commentator at the WSJ does nothing to justify this interpretation of the film through reference to the film itself. There is no analysis of the events in the movie or explanation for why this interpretation is appropriate to the plot. Thus, one's initial position on this interpretation should be one of skepticism
In order to develop a more serious understanding of the film, there are three significant points that must inform our interpretation. First, this is a movie that draws on a long and well established Batman mythology, and this mythology goes beyond the film. Second, the film itself is a creative work with its own story that is comprehensible without reference to politics. Third, nonetheless, this film is trying to say something about our politics and the war on terror.
Most commentators do not appear willing to allow these three interpretive principles, but each is crucial. I think many people are led astray on the second point, so let me explain its significance.
There are many movies that are transparently about the war on terror. These include things like "Rendition," "Lions for Lambs," and "Redacted." These movies have addressed the war on terror directly, and generally have failed to gain any popular attention or critical praise.
At the WSJ, the commentator argues that these are unsuccessful because
they are left leaning movies that attempt to establish moral
equivalence between the United States and Islamic terrorists.
However, this point is disproven by another set of left leaning movies like "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth," and TV shows like "Battlestar Galactica." All of these movies talk about the war on terror, take left leaning positions and have been generally very successful and received critical praise.
The reason is that these movies tell a story within an independent artistic framework. Although they address the war on terror, they do so while also telling a story that is unrelated to the war on terror.
This is important because it will often ensure that the filmmakers do not fall into common political positions. It is very easy to simply repeat the political debates we have on a daily basis in a movie that is about events mimicking those that occur on a daily basis. A story that is about something else, however, offers the opportunity to develop a different perspective on those debates. And a different perspective allows us to reassess, reinterpret, and refine our beliefs.
The Dark Knight is this sort of movie. It has a story to tell about superheroes and villains in a sprawling city. That story is not about terrorism, and its elements simply do not map cleanly onto the aspects of the war on terrorism.
In order to see that we must now turn to the film itself. So, let me once again reiterate:
SPOILERS FOLLOW. DO NOT READ MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE DARK KNIGHT. THERE WILL BE NO MORE WARNINGS.
In the broad strokes, The Dark Knight is a story about Batman's struggle to bring the Joker to justice. I hope that I can convince you of my position through reference to the movie. Thus, I am going to begin by discussing some of the characters and then move on to specific plot points. I will finish with some general thoughts on the movie as a whole and on the other political interpretations.
Batman, of course, is Bruce Wayne, multi-billionaire playboy industrialist. From the Batman mythology, and the previous film, we know that his parents were killed by criminals when he was a child and this has led him to seek revenge through vigilantism. He has extensive martial arts training, but he is also a detective, using forensics as much as brute force to catch criminals. We know that he does not kill indiscriminately, but rather incapacitates criminals and turns them over to the police. The real villains often end up in Arkham Asylum.
This allows the first departure from the Bush-is-Batman argument. The WSJ argument in part maintains that Bush is Batman because both go outside the law in order to fight terrorism. There are two reasons this analogy does not function. First, as others have noted, as a private person, Batman is not bound by the same laws as government officials. This is a simple argument and I assume it is accepted.
Second, and more importantly, Batman does not have the same relationship with the law as Bush, or to put it another way, their motivations are different. Bush has chosen to go outside the law because he believes the law to be unnecessarily constraining--that the actual terms of the law do not allow him to fight terrorism effectively. It should be noted, of course, that instead of changing the law, Bush has chosen to just violate it.
Batman, however, must go outside the law not because the law is unnecessarily constraining, but because the police and officials responsible for enforcing the law are themselves corrupt and criminal. They cannot be trusted because they are only pursuing their own interests.
Although this point derives from the pre-existing Batman mythology, it is repeatedly made in the film. Bruce Wayne/Batman works with Jim Gordon because he knows he is clean and can trust him. In the film, Batman/Wayne works to find out if he can trust Harvey Dent, the new district attorney. Bruce Wayne can see a time when he can stop being Batman, because he believes that Harvey Dent will be a public hero who upholds the law honestly. Later in the movie when Batman catches Dent about to torture one of Joker's henchmen, he stops Dent and explains that everything would be lost if anyone had seen Dent.
This is all a way of showing that Batman actually believes in the law. He believes in the goodness of society and decent order. But criminals--corrupt officials--undermine that goodness and destroy the order. This is not Bush's view of the law, and it is not his motivation in breaking it. Batman is fighting to restore the power of the law. Bush has struggled to weaken it.
The Joker is an anarchistic criminal who appears without warning to
wreak havoc on Gotham first by taking over the criminal underworld and
later through random killings and attempts at mass murder. The Joker
is not just unknown
but unknowable. He has no fingerprints, his clothes don't even have
tags, and he never tells a true story about himself. Without
explanation, the Joker simply is.
He does not seek money or power, only disorder. The Joker exists to show that despite our pretensions to law and a liberal order, society is only inches away from collapse. This is why he offers public rewards for killing other characters, so that society will give up its own rules and turn on itself. This is why he plants bombs on the two ferries--to make people face horrible choices, and he hopes, to get them to make those choices.
So, the Joker is in some ways a fair approximation of Islamist terrorists. For we often cannot understand their motivations and they can seem bent on destroying us. But I hope it is also clear that this is not a clean match for terrorists either. Joker does not demand anything of society, he just wants to play games.
Harvey Dent is the good lawyer, the good official. He believes in the law, and if Batman has his way, Dent would be the symbol that brings Gotham back from the edge of collapse. Dent tries to clean up the city through the law and without fear. He faces down death threats, he indicts multiple mobsters on hundreds of criminal charges, and he places himself in direct danger to catch the Joker.
Who could he possibly represent in the Bush administration? Or in the war on terror? If we want to make a direct analogy to our current politics as the WSJ argument would have us do, then there is no explanation for Harvey Dent. Dent is not George Bush, he is not Alberto Gonzalez or John Ashcroft or Michael Mukasey. One might argue that he is part of the independent artistic project of the movie and thus can be ignored in a political interpretation. I will return to this argument later, but for now it is sufficient to say that it is mistaken.
Let's turn to some plot points beginning with Dent. Perhaps the most important aspect of Dent's story line is that he and his girlfriend, Rachel Dawes, are kidnapped by the Joker, and tied to bombs. Rachel is killed in an explosion, but Dent is burned on half his body and becomes Two-Face.
One might point out that this experience forces Dent to face the relentless reality of the Joker's terrorism, and that Dent spends the remainder of the movie ruthlessly killing the people, including police officers, who helped the Joker. In other words, Dent, the honest district attorney, sees the limits of the law and chooses to operate outside of it.
That is a fair interpretation, but it does not account for all relevant circumstances. Once again, it was corrupt cops who helped the Joker--public officials in part led to the creation of Two-Face. This reinforces the above point about the position of the law in the Batman universe. The law itself is good, but the people charged with enforcing it are corrupt.
Second, we must acknowledge that Batman stops Dent from torturing one of Joker's henchmen. In doing so, Batman tells Dent how important it is that he remain clean, that he still stand up for the law, and that he not treat the henchmen that way. Furthermore, Batman chides Dent for wanting to torture a man who is a paranoid schizophrenic--a man who wouldn't be able to provide any information even if he had it. This Batman is against torture.
The counterpoint is, of course, that later in the movie Batman actually beats Joker in order to get him to reveal where Dent and Rachel are being held. This is not perfectly consistent with the earlier position, but there are also important differences. After all, this is the Joker, not a henchman. Bruce Wayne also loves Rachel Dawes and may be acting out of personal rage. And this is part of Joker's plan to force Batman to break his own rules. In the scene, the Joker says that he will reveal Rachel's location only if Batman breaks his "one rule." Again, this reinforces the point that Joker stands at odds with law itself while Batman is ultimately bound by it.
The third major plot point that needs discussion is Batman's broad based surveillance device. This is a system that allows him to see anything in the Gotham at any time. He can watch everyone, invade privacy, without regard for personal rights. This can be seen as NSA spying, warrantless wiretapping, TIA, and whatever other systems the government has in place to look over us. And Batman uses it to catch the Joker.
But the movie does not approve of this technique. In fact, Batman does not use it on his own. He recognizes the danger in the device; he recognizes that it is wrong. That is why he turns it over to Lucius Fox, a trustworthy and decent man that he knows he can trust to first oversee it's use and then destroy it when the need is eliminated. If the device is NSA spying, then Lucius Fox is the FISA court. Yes, the film admits that extraordinary measures are required in extraordinary circumstances, but only with supervision, only with an end point, and only with a return to normality. So, in this instance, Batman is not George Bush, but rather what Bush should have been.
Finally, some general thoughts about the film. I hope I have convinced you that The Dark Knight is anti-torture, anti-surveillance, pro-law, and pro-civil liberties. The movie also believes that people are essentially decent. This is clearly demonstrated by the prisoner's dilemma the Joker gives to the two ferries. Each ferry is rigged to explode and the detonator is given to the opposite ferry. One ferry is full of normal civilians--men, women, children, families. The other has been loaded with dangerous criminals from a prison. Joker provides the ultimatum: Press the button, and blow up the other ferry. The only way to guarantee your own survival is to kill hundreds of other people.
This is a genius piece of work, because the movie wants the audience to reflect on this question. This isn't just a dilemma for the characters, but a problem for the audience as well. We are given time to contemplate it. But ultimately the movie provides the answer: A hardened criminal takes the detonator and throws it out the window--even he knows you can't simply kill other people to save your own life. The same thing happens on the other boat. A man stands up ostensibly to press the button, but facing the reality of killing someone, he can't bring himself to do it. Both sides make the right choice, the moral choice, to face the possibility of own death rather than actively cause the deaths of others.
I just don't see how this can be a conservative message--a message that says it is ok to exceed the law in order to protect society. Instead, it says that we must restrain ourselves; that we are responsible for creating our decent society everyday. In a conservative world, the possibility of an attack from the other ferry would justify the destruction of that ferry.
Is that not what happened with Iraq?
I want to conclude by cautioning everyone against this sort of hagiography of George Bush. Yes, some people will continue to believe that his administration has been morally justified in torturing people, in breaking the laws of this country, and in acting in unconstitutional manners. But there appears to be many attempts to link his behavior with figures from popular culture. Saying that Batman represents Bush is an attempt to attach a specific mythology to Bush's presidency, a mythology that makes Bush the ultimate hero and people who oppose him all villains.
By the standard asserted by the WSJ, any superhero represents George Bush. Superman does not operate within the bounds of the law, nor Spider Man, nor the X-Men. They could all stand in for Bush. But they don't. They don't because they are stories and stories contain predetermined relationships between protagonists and antagonists.
In the real life, we have to make evaluations of actions as they happen. A hagiography that identifies a real life actor with a fictional protagonist that exists in world with predetermined evaluations of its characters risks false associations that justify behaviors that deserve independent assessments. That's all a way of saying that we can't just say Bush is Batman, Batman is good, and therefore Bush is good. We need to ask if Bush is good in himself. That remains a debatable question.
