Why, you’d almost think that extra-legal vigilantism wasn’t such a good thing at all!

Needs more Billy Dee!

“What makes them what they are is how they seek to transform Gotham; the Joker by burning it to the ground, Batman through preservation by almost any means necessary and Dent by working within the system to reform and rebuild it.
If this is the salvation of a society on its last legs, it’s hard to argue that the empire should persevere.”

I dunno.  Sounds like a pretty good microcosm of American politics to me.  Perhaps even Human Politics.

Dent dies working within the system, like MLK and JFK and RFK and so many others.  Nothing new there.  Batman tossing aside any sense of law and process of justice to do what he thinks is “right.” No, that isn’t new, either, in fact is now again in vogue.  Joker just laughing at the whole mess.  Perhaps the most appropriate response of all in an insane world.  Not new either.

Go read IOZ once in while, is my suggestion.  He DOESN’T think the Empire is worth preserving, and makes a damn compelling case in at least one rapt reader’s mind.

I guess my point is that there is nothing new about the genius inherent in the Empire, exceptionalism, when viewed in the short lens of history.  Take a long look, and you’ll soon figure out that we’re doomed, too.

Adding that I hope not, just that I don’t think it is very realistic to hope otherwise, and hope is for losers, and that our second ratification of Bush The Lesser as CIC accelerated the process a great deal.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting review.  I’m one of those people who consider “spoilers” of movies via the written word as trivia; there is nothing like the experience of provocative art, or even provocative pop-culture.  You’ve piqued my interest in the movie.

Keep up the great work.

Just as a matter of context and clarification, I’m 49 and don’t think I’ll be alive long enough to watch us finally go down the drain.  And being 49 makes me young enough to fight against our decline as a fair, just, and authentic power-broker.  I wouldn’t be here if it were any other way. 

Call it an awkward age.  I love my country, I just wish I had a little more respect for it right now.

Norbiz - that was the worst casting decision ever.

Do you think Billy Dee would have let someone scar half of that beautiful face?

And with Tommy Lee Jones, who could really tell that half of his face was jacked up?

Mama Lee Jones.

Batman at least realizes that ultimately what would be better for the city is people working within the system to make it better rather than operating as extra-legal vigilantes.  The tragedy of this installment in the series is that the character which seems to be the hero, who can achieve the desired ends without resorting to immoral means, in the end ultimately falls short.  The audience should realize though (or at least I did) it’s a tragic or ambivalent ending at best rather than one where good ultimately won out.  The story is great in large part because the ending isn’t spoon-fed happiness.

As an aside though, I liked the way Batman’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on the Joker was worthless in terms of getting the information Batman really wanted.  Over and over the vigilatism of Batman is at best able to keep things from crumbling into the abyss, but over and over it’s also made clear his approach isn’t really effective in addressing the root causes of any societal ills.  That’s an excellent moral premise in my book.

Rachel Dawes, the love interest of both characters, points out that this resulted in the rise of the Caesar and the fall of the Empire.

I believe she said the republic, not the empire, which was not only accurate, but was sort of the point. If you allow for authoritarianism in times of danger, you risk losing control when the danger passes. Dawes is the hero in this situation because even though she dies, she doesn’t compromise. Dent doesn’t so much turn as he gives into his inner fascist once he’s burned, and Batman was always extralegal, so all he really does is acknowledge who he’s been all along.

As an aside though, I liked the way Batman’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on the Joker was worthless in terms of getting the information Batman really wanted.  Over and over the vigilatism of Batman is at best able to keep things from crumbling into the abyss, but over and over it’s also made clear his approach isn’t really effective in addressing the root causes of any societal ills.  That’s an excellent moral premise in my book.

Exactly. If anything, this film argued that neither fascism nor libertarianism can be effective in the long term, and that the risks in bending to them are too great to take.

I know the film says Batman is a vigilante, but I have to ask: is it even illegal to disable violent criminals and leave them for the police to collect?  True, there’s a certain amount of excessive force, but were I to be given the choice between getting caught by the Batman or possibly shot by trigger happy and corrupt Gotham (or L.A. for that matter) police, I’ll take a solid elbow to the solar plexus over a few dozen .38 caliber bullets.

To follow up a little on my last comment:  I think of lot of (good) tension in the storyline is that Batman knows he isn’t a hero society should look up to.  You could argue that the decision in the end to hide the true details of what happened from the public was morally wrong.  I would argue though that Batman was to some degree trying to elucidate a higher truth: that he is ultimately an unlawful figure and was to a large degree responsible for much that had gone wrong, and that ultimately the city should be searching for something other than a masked vigilante for their salvation.

I won’t be seeing this non-G rated film (and if I found a babysitter, I certainly have other things I would rather do first).  But as I get older I more and more reaffirm my stance in the Superman camp.  There was a short period of time in high school—oddly enough just past when The Dark Knight Returns was released—when I pretended that Batman was the best.  But really, I would much rather have Superman on my side.

The movie isn’t trying to teach any lessons. By the end, the viewer should at least be conflicted by the idea of Batman. Look at Dent—he’s screwed the minute Bruce Wayne comes into his life. Even if he succeeds by imprisoning a large portion of Gotham’s criminal element, thus eliminating the need for Batman, he’s probably going to lose his fiancee to Bruce. Wayne’s support for Dent is, at it’s core, pretty selfish.

Another example—when Gordon “plays things close to the chest”, he imposes on his own family for the greater good of the city. When Batman “plays things close to the chest”, he illegally spies on the entire city to do what he feels is in their best interest. I’ll also add that it’s obvious who we’re supposed to sympathize with in the Lucius/Batman debate. Even if Batman’s plan does work out in the end, he and Gordon then proceed to build a house of lies on top of it that seems destined to come tumbling down.

We’re becoming what we hate, folks. First we pretend that we can’t understand satire, and now we’re complaining about the political slant of movies.  All that’s left is to become outraged by Chappaquiddick.

If anything, this film argued that neither fascism nor libertarianism can be effective in the long term, and that the risks in bending to them are too great to take.

The problem, though, is that there’s no alternative model offered.  Dent becomes the sacrificed fascist hero while Batman is the fascist scapegoat; Dawes is ultimately sacrificed from a narrative perspective to see the lie of Dent live on - the movie is an affirmation of Dent’s die great or live evil theory, perpetuated by the choice of two other Great Men deciding what the truth is for everyone else.

We’re becoming what we hate, folks. First we pretend that we can’t understand satire, and now we’re complaining about the political slant of movies.  All that’s left is to become outraged by Chappaquiddick.

Wow.

Can you be any more wrong?

The mishmash of contradictory politics was what I liked about it, actually. I agree with Woody in that the ending is tragic and/or ambivalent, but it’s worth noting that the end of the film is not necessarily the end of the story, or what Nolan is trying to say. Batman chooses to maintain the myth of Dent--and not even so much the myth as the truth, kind of, of Dent before he was destroyed inside--by making a personal and moral sacrifice, but remember that the chaos was unleashed when Oldman’s character (can’t remember his name) makes moral sacrifices to fight the mob.

It’s not obvious, I think, that Batman makes the right decision at the end, and it will be interesting to see what Nolan does with that decision.

Ultimately I think the movie is about the various moral structures people use to make decisions in a crisis, which is why it didn’t bother me that the characters are shown making good, bad, and morally ambivalent decisions (chance, law, opportunism, democracy, the Golden Rule, etc), or that the “good” decisions they make don’t necessarily work--which is why I think the ending is less ambivalent than indeterminate, actually. It’s really uncompromising in that sense, and I admired that.

Personally I loved the movie, but I think in large part the problem of trying to apply politics to the movie is that the fantasy nature of a superhero movie twists those politics in upon itself, and thus become difficult to reconcile with the real world.

The central problem of Batman, of course, is that while batman may not have superpowers, his incorruptibility is super-human. Batman has a line he’s drawn: he’s a vigilante, but while his methods are brutal, he doesn’t murder, he doesn’t “disappear” people. He beats them up, restrains them, and lets the cops and courts mete out the convictions and punishment. In this one certainly goes for the “Beat it out of them” torture interrogations.

It’s that incorruptibility that makes Batman as impossible as Superman; take that away, and he’s just not Batman anymore. I think to that end, the movie did well in trying to focus on the darker aspects of Batman’s vigilantism, without going all the way and destroying that mythical core of incorruptibility that separates Batman from the tragic figures warped by revenge that he so often goes up against.

I do get a little tired of reminding people in real life that in real like vigilantism resembles the brownshirts and Klansmen instead of Batman.

I saw the movie last weekend and enjoyed it, both for the craftsmanship and for the attempt to bring up some deeper issues. That’s more than most summer blockbusters aspire to achieve. Look at this review and the comments.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

“It makes you wonder what about this city, lost without an authoritarian figure to lead it, is actually worth saving.”

You’ve hit one of the core issues in the film: what *does* Gotham deserve? This question is addressed by all the major and some minor characters, from the Joker ("this town deserves a better class of criminal") to Lt. Gordon ("the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now"). Even the Mob banker puts in his two cents on the topic, looking back to pre-Batman Gotham ("The criminals in this town used to believe in things: Honor; Respect."). An exhausted Batman himself is conflicted as to whether they deserve him, and what they deserve in his place.

And no wonder: Gotham’s citizens are a nasty, selfish bunch—perhaps less nasty than in the first film thanks to the influence of Batman, but not by much (contrast the art direction of the city in the two films).

Whatever the city’s residents deserve—organised criminality (the Mob, which ran the town to begin with and still holds waning power), well-meaning vigilantes (Batman and his less competent imitators), anarchic chaos (the Joker, a man who “just wants to see things burn"), rule of law (Dent and Gordon)—it’s ultimately *their* choice to make. The Joker is the only major character to grasp this, and he gives them that choice in the ferry sequence ...

“Whereas our heroes debate over which one of them can save Gotham, the villain of the movie gives the people the chance to save themselves.”

... and in doing so under the worst sort of external duress (but not direct orders) from a very competent terrorist, they (criminals and law-abiders alike) prove themselves decent and ready for the rule of law. But given that this is a transitional period (Dent is dead, Gordon’s position is shaky), Batman remains by forfeit the “hero Gotham deserves” at the moment—a hunted outlaw who can take the heat and hold the line.

Looked at in this context, this messages about the shifting nature of heroism, the constants of leadership, the functional and dysfunctional symbiotic relationships that spring amongst various leaders and heroes*, and the ultimate agency of citizens holds together surprisingly well in America ca. 2008.

[* e.g. this exchange:

Bruce Wayne: I knew the Mob wouldn’t go down without a fight. But this is different. They crossed the line.

Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.

My first reading of this was an allegory about authoritarian Arab states and Islamic terrorists. But in the context of the analysis above, Arab states aren’t the only authoritarian “crime families” being discussed here.]

We’re becoming what we hate, folks. First we pretend that we can’t understand satire, and now we’re complaining about the political slant of movies.  All that’s left is to become outraged by Chappaquiddick.

I second this.

“it’s a movie that endorses a libertarian fascism”

There’s no endorsment, if anything the resolution shows us, it’s an indictement. Batman, unlike Bush, had a price to pay for crossing the line.

The problem, though, is that there’s no alternative model offered.  Dent becomes the sacrificed fascist hero while Batman is the fascist scapegoat; Dawes is ultimately sacrificed from a narrative perspective to see the lie of Dent live on - the movie is an affirmation of Dent’s die great or live evil theory, perpetuated by the choice of two other Great Men deciding what the truth is for everyone else.

The implicit alternative is of course a democratic society based on the rule of law.  The premise of Batman’s Gotham city setting though is that the system has completely fallen apart.  The question raised then is can the city (perhaps with Batman’s help) every get back to a desirable model?

How was Dent working within the system fascist?  The hope was that Dent could be a hero for working within the system, thus alleviating the need for the fascist Batman.  The tragedy was that Dent’s inner psychological flaws (and the events of the movie) led to his criminal turn and ultimate downfall.

Batman at least knows he’s not the answer and has claimed he’s willing to retire (as fascist enforcer of order) once the mechanisms of a just society are in place and working again.  Batman’s viewpoint is that the choices at hand for the city’s societal model are (hopefully temporary) fascism or complete anarchy.  Unanswered is the question of whether Batman is actually helping to move society toward a better model.

As long as the movie isn’t presenting Gotham’s status quo as acceptable, I don’t see it arguing that fascism is an acceptable end-state.

The problem, though, is that there’s no alternative model offered.

I don’t take Updike’s observation that you shouldn’t criticize art for not doing what it wasn’t intended to do as holy writ, but it’s always worth keeping in the back of your mind.

The implicit alternative is of course a democratic society based on the rule of law.  The premise of Batman’s Gotham city setting though is that the system has completely fallen apart.

And that’s what’s really interesting about the movie. People working outside the rule of law--Batman and Gordon--unleash chaos even though their motives are pure. That chaos destroys Harvey Dent, and Batman tries to repair the damage by fixing Dent’s image before he fell--trying to save the rule of law with a noble lie (cf. Strauss).

It’s a morally difficult movie that really forces the audience to react to difficult moral choices without offering an easy answer. Sometimes art’s dangerous like that.

Incidentally, that last comment isn’t meant to defend the idea of a noble lie. One of the more profound themes of the movie is how bad moral choices compound themselves, which is part of the ambivalence and tragedy of the movie.

I also agree with Woody. I liked the movie, and thought the Joker clearly won. Perhaps it says too much about my black heart, but I thought the movie was too optimistic. My friends and I pretty much assumed that the boats’ detonators would connect to their own boats, so in trying to destoy the others, they would destroy themselves.

True social psychology seems to indicate that both boats would have been blown within five minutes.

That humanity redeems itself to destroy the Joker’s plans is pretty much the biggest joke of all. In a country where the heir to Bush can even be considered a legitimate choice for president, it’s easy to see the ferry scene as a cop-out, a sop to American audiences and critics to whom the movie is already too oppressively dark.

Ignoring for a moment all the history of how things got to where they are now, I see an interesting (to me) parallel between the setting of the movie and the current situation in Iraq.  Both Gotham City and Iraq seem to have the underpinnings of a society based on the rule of law with elected representatives and a judiciary, but in both cases the effectiveness and even the ongoing existence of those institutions are in serious doubt.

With the U.S. military as an analogue for Batman, the question then becomes: Is the U.S. Military’s/Batman’s continued application of military/vigilante force just postponing the inevitable slide in anarchy?  Perhaps even worse, are they now actually impeding the growth of the democratic institutions they claim to be trying to save?

It’s a morally difficult movie that really forces the audience to react to difficult moral choices without offering an easy answer.

Even if my comparison with real-life events is more flawed than interesting (very possible) I still think this quote from whetstone best summarizes what elevates this movie above the typical summer blockbuster.

True social psychology seems to indicate that both boats would have been blown within five minutes.

For some reason I was really hoping that the civilian boat would press their button which would reveal the Joker had played another switcheroo by giving each boat the detonator for their own boat.  Thus reinforcing the notion that rationalizing an injust action just leads to more tragedy.

In retrospect, I suppose the way the script played out vis-a-vis the boats was a way of showing that regular people and even the criminals in society might be able to save themselves (and hence society) by making the right moral choices despite the failings of their legal and extralegal leaders.  If it had gone the way I was predicting while watching it would have made the script much more nihilistic.

Just to provide some evidence to prove I’m not just a big meanie:

The Milgram Obedience to Authority Experiment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YSMhDkv-GQ

Stanford Prison Experiment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KXy8CLqgk4

The “Good Samaritan” Experiment

http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/Virtue.html

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner’s_dilemma

See also the 2004 American election.

The problem, though, is that there’s no alternative model offered.  Dent becomes the sacrificed fascist hero while Batman is the fascist scapegoat; Dawes is ultimately sacrificed from a narrative perspective to see the lie of Dent live on - the movie is an affirmation of Dent’s die great or live evil theory, perpetuated by the choice of two other Great Men deciding what the truth is for everyone else.

I don’t really see offering an alternative as the film’s responsibility, though. In fact, I’d say that if the film had offered some alternative, it would have really been shitty. It would have been a propagandistic, Hollywood ending. The ending left me uncomfortable, which is what I think Nolan was going for--it’s certainly a more satisfying ending than one where people see the error of their ways and learn an important lesson.

“It’s a morally difficult movie that really forces the audience to react to difficult moral choices without offering an easy answer.”

That’s what I like, too. Even if (or perhaps because) the messages are muddled, it forces the audience to think about something more than that cool chase scene or the SFX.

All of the major character, “good” or “bad” make serious mistakes in their assumptions about the citizens of Gotham.

The Mob believes that they’ll passively accept the old corrupt status quo if only Batman and Dent and Gordon are taken out. Gordon thinks he and his major crimes unit can play all sides to somehow get them to accept rule of law. Dent, working within the system, ignores the fact that Gotham’s culture of corruption makes uncompromising rule of law a tough sell. Batman/Wayne, working outside the system, believes that it’s not so much an overt sell but coercion (hidden and overt) that will do the trick. And the nihilist Joker acknowledges they have free will, but believes they and the rest of humanity are, like himself, completely irredeemable.

All of them end up paying a heavy price for their errors—except, of course, for the Joker, who lives for unintended consequences (and even he gets a little annoyed when the folks on the ferries show their better natures). So really, there’s no perfect, feel-good outcome in a place like Gotham, only the best of a hodge-podge of imperfect and inherently flawed choices.

“It’s not obvious, I think, that Batman makes the right decision at the end, and it will be interesting to see what Nolan does with that decision.”

I walked out thinking the same thing. My bet is that we’ll see a contentious citizenry divided almost 50-50 on whether Batman is a hero or a villain, even as they all accept (or are resigned to) the fact that he’s holding the line against a backslide into corruption. Meanwhile, Batman wil secretly support Gordon’s efforts to maintain the rule of law against a grotesque villain and the Mob, even as Gordon’s men make a vigorous show of hunting him down.

I don’t know if Nolan can toss another curveball into this morally ambiguous mess like he did with Heath Ledger’s Joker and the short-lived Two-Face. But he and his brother are clever guys with a healthy interest in continuing a lucrative franchise, so I’ll be there in 2010 to see what they come up with.

That’s showbiz: always leave ‘em wanting more.

Seebach, I had the same reaction. Batman’s beating ten dudes up at once and the Joker has the actions of everyone plotted days in advance and I’m sitting there going they would have blown each other up in ten seconds! That’s not realistic!

“The problem, though, is that there’s no alternative model offered.”

Art exists to ask questions- not give you the answers.

Oh, one final thought for the evening: in the discussion between Dent, Dawes and Wayne about the Roman dictators, they bring up Julius Caesar but didn’t mention (as I was expecting) that other famous dictator of the Republic, Cincinnatus. I get the feeling that the Nolans left this out deliberately, though I’m not sure exactly why—perhaps it would have introduced a note of optimism they weren’t ready to concede in this film.

(long story short, the Joker sets up two boats with explosives; each boat holds the detonator for the other - either one of the two boats can survive, or both will be blown up at midnight, the joke being that the only detonators are the ones each boat holds and there is no external threat of detonation)

No, the Joker was serious in saying he’d blow them both up if one didn’t blow the other: remember, he muttered “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” (or words to that effect), and pulled a denotator out of his pocket while he had the Batman pinned under that whatever it was.

I would have been better if the Joker didn’t have that extra detonator, imo. Would have made his entire Ferry plan a much better ‘joke’.

What really struck me about the fall of Dent as the hero was the fact that in the end he revealed a sickeningly ugly character trait which was likely there to begin with. When he kidnaps Commissioner Gordon’s family and uses them to punish him, he reveals that he must surely subscribe to the Iron Age system which dictates that women and children are the property of the family patriarch and are to be used to humiliate and punish him. Instead of being angry at what had happened to the woman he says he loved, he focused on the pain it caused him and sought to punish the one whom he felt did him wrong.

Of course people will watch the scene, engaged in the drama of the moment, and passively absorb the message that ultimately women and children are property.

Art exists to ask questions- not give you the answers.

The poet/essayist W. S. DiPiero once wrote

“Lesser art does not challenge itself, does not become adversarial; it can only breed its own unquestioned, and sometimes quite moving, perfections. It’s singular and meticulously idiosyncratic. Eventually it proves itself to be what its time wants, not what it needs.”

A movie that offered a solution would have been lesser art, in my opinion. The art in this film came from forcing us as an audience to look at the options presented and reject them both.

I know the film says Batman is a vigilante, but I have to ask: is it even illegal to disable violent criminals and leave them for the police to collect?

yes. Even if you ignore the fact that that is not all he does: 5th amendment rights and all. You think dangling someone over a building for an interrogation produces court worthy info? Even if you ignore the fact that violent criminals have civil rights too and Batman violates them, remember the goons with guns? “just following your example?”

Even if you have one demi-god who can literally stop any crime he witnesses without a single life lost, ignoring his work will encourage others to follow his example. Those individuals might not be as restrained. They might kill. or they might GET killed.

Society has rules for a reason. When you ignore the rules because they’re inconvenient, or because you’re afraid, or because its just easier to ignore them, it doesn’t matter what your ends are. You’re a criminal.

When you’ve decided you can break one set of rules for some greater good, where does it end? It’s a difference of degree, not kind. Perhaps you’re thinking I sound like some monologuing villain.

You should know. I did it 35 minutes ago.

I agree that the studies linked by Seebach would imply that the people in the boat without the criminals would have touched the trigger, and indeed, they even voted to blow up the other boat. However, those studies all considered people acting alone. The people on the boats had to act as groups though--meaning one person had to essentially take the lives of the people on the other boat as everyone watched on. I thought this was an endorsement of sorts to a free and open society where all the actors have essentially equal power as being able to make the right choices and provide checks and balances on tyranny, even a tyranny of the majority. It was the one bright spot in a very good, but very dark movie.

“Batman has a line he’s drawn: he’s a vigilante, but while his methods are brutal, he doesn’t murder, he doesn’t “disappear” people.”

You may want to read a lot of the earlier and even later Batman comics. Batman in the start offed criminals left and right. In the later comics books causing the disapperance of people was also done from time to time if it served the greater good according to Batman. He also did off criminals when pressed to do so.

As for those wanting Superman when in the comic books facism become mainstream Superman was first in line to enforce the facist regime while Batman opposed it.

However, those studies all considered people acting alone. The people on the boats had to act as groups though--meaning one person had to essentially take the lives of the people on the other boat as everyone watched on.

In their situation, I would have blown the other boat within five minutes even with everyone watching. It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma.  Remember - they had no idea that Batman was going to stop both ships from being blown up when the clock ticked out.

The only reason not to is the simple question of whether you’d trust a psychotic guy in clown makeup to be telling you the truth.

I won’t be seeing this non-G rated film (and if I found a babysitter, I certainly have other things I would rather do first).  But as I get older I more and more reaffirm my stance in the Superman camp.  There was a short period of time in high school—oddly enough just past when The Dark Knight Returns was released—when I pretended that Batman was the best.  But really, I would much rather have Superman on my side.

Then you’re going to have a problem with “Watchmen” when it comes out.  The central element of that world is that a Superman does exist, a near-omnipotent figure who tries to be a good person, and it shows him distorting the world around him like a lead ball distorts a thin rubber sheet.

No, no.  Not a Superman, Superman.

Superman, a comic book superhero (remember), was always about supporting the state.  He wasn’t even on the world’s side, he was American.

But what do I know?  The only book I really read when I was a teenager was Usagi Yojimbo.

Tootired: Well, you’ve got me there. I was never big on comics as a kid, largely because of the maketing choices that tangled the entire comic universes together. Batman’s multiple comic book titles was a big turnoff in trying to get started. Usagi Yojimbo was also my first comic series, one I still collect today. I prefer those more independent storylines that don’t bleed over into 50 different comic series, crossovers and retconed spinoffs.

So most of my exposure to Batman is the movies, popular culture, the standalone graphic novels and the Animated Series.

I’ll bow out of the discussion and just enjoy it as a spectator then.

I agree with just about everything you said, but it made me love the film, not dislike it. 

And yes, The Joker had a detonator to blow up both boats if they failed to do what he told them to do.  The Joker is a man of his word. ^_^ He doesn’t mess around.  Or… he does… but… like.. he does what he says he’s gonna do.

When Joker said, “Oh, and the bridge- and tunnel-people have a surprise in store for them.” (or something to that effect), I turned to my buddy and said, “Wow..that was clever, actually.”

He said, “What do you mean?” and I replied, “The surprise is that those are the only safe ways OUT of the city, but no one will take them.”

“Of course they won’t, they might blow up,” he said.

“True, but I don’t think they will.  It’d take a lot of work to blow up every bridge and tunnel,” (but of course, this being a movie, the Joker could do it..why not?), “but it’s much easier to do nothing, but paralyze people with the *fear* of what ‘might’ be.”

And--unless I missed it--I was spot-on.

Which set me to thinking, of course, about king georgie’s “war on terror,” Homeland Security, the TSA, and so on and how *we* have allowed ourselves to be similarly paralyzed by a similar tactic cooked up by our own gub’ment.

It seems to me that a lot of the discomfort with the movie is evidence of a privileged worldview.  (As a well-off white American male, I recognize that maybe all I’m doing is betraying my OWN privileged worldview, but I’ll let you all decide).  Gotham is fictional.  I know you all realize that, but I think a lot of people seem to be trying to map it onto their own experiences, when if you are, like me, a lower middle class or higher American, you have NEVER experienced any reality like the one experienced in Gotham.  Gotham is a failed state.  It’s like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or much of sub-Saharan Africa, or Russia, or the West Side of Baltimore.  And the questions it deals with are relevant not to me, in my daily life, but to the people who live in those places.  How do you fix a society whose institutions have been turned against it?  If you work outside the institutions, then you bring chaos, but if you work within them, how can you avoid becoming part of the problem?  It’s all very well to say “reform and rebuild”, just as it’s all very well to say “spread democracy and freedom.” But when you do those things, you cause instability, and whenever there is instability, it provides an opening for the Joker (aka Stalin, aka Idi Amin, etc., etc.).  How do you know when you’re reforming, and when you’re making a bad situation worse? I don’t know the answer to those questions, and neither does Christopher Nolan.

And yes, there is a certain amount of “leaders loftily arguing principles in life or death fights that spill over onto the populace rather than involve them”, but that’s inherent to the form of a superhero movie, I really don’t see how you can get around that.  For that matter, it’s inherent to the form of a movie - there’s only time to see things from the perspective of maybe 4 people at most.

Superhero comic books are all about “confused libertarian fascism” - or at least they have been ever since the creators started marketing them to adults in the 80s and started taking them “seriously”.  If you think too hard about Batman or Superman or most other comic book superheroes you’re left with the mixed messages of “some people are special and get to make the rules” adolescent power-fantasy combined with a simple-minded “liberty and justice for all” motif.  Batman and Superman both especially fall into that camp, and have gotten worse about it since the 80s.

It doesn’t surprise me one whit that Nolan would hit on this “confused” motif when tackling the material because it’s built right into the material he was looking at - he and Goyer (scriptwriter) have both cited “The Killing Joke” as a major influence for this movie, and Alan Moore knows this stuff lies at the root of “taking superheroes seriously”.  His “Watchmen” is criticizes the libertarian fascist confusion of superhero comics and laying it bare for everyone to see, and there’s an edge to the Killing Joke where this lies as well.  (Contrast with Frank Miller who also laid the libertarian fascism conundrum of comic book superheroics bare in “The Dark Knight Returns”, but apparently managed to do it completely by accident because he doesn’t seem to actually have understood what he did.)

Seebach-

I heard a lot of people in the audience say the same thing, and I honestly didn’t understand it then either.  Why is the fact that people might actually have a few moral qualms about killing someone is so impossible to believe, but cars made out of explodium is accepted without question?

This is not quite like the Stafford experiment, or the Milligram experiment, as there was no “authority” telling them what to do- Joker’s a nutcase, not someone in a lab coat.  We aren’t raised or encouraged to respect terrorists.  And while this is the perfect example of the prisoner’s dilemma, the prisoner’s dilemma does not always end up with the two turning each other in.

Oh, and Joker WAS going to blow up the boats, Batman just stopped him.

I can’t really agree with that essay on Miller’s authoritarian lovin’. Miller tells stories about characters and you can’t - if you’re serious - ignore the quasi-fascist authoritarian roots of Batman or Spartans in telling stories about them. I consider Miller’s Martha Washington (faceless females!?) stories to be fundamentally anti-authoritarian - if, granted, still somewhat Libertarian/Objectivist in nature - and the Sin City stories are downright nihilistic. Hell, look at his Daredevil stuff where he works with a character who is extremely similar to Batman with the major exception of not being an authoritarian psychopath (and Electra is tough to characterize as faceless either).

Ohioboy, that’s pretty much the state of New Orleans right now.

OhioBoy makes the great point that it’s very easy to criticize vigilantism when you live in a system that works for you. There is no vigilantes in my city, not because people are just nice, but because there’s no need for it. When the system fails, or if it turns against you, left or right, you’re gonna protect yourself with the means you have. You can call yourself a vigilante, a freedom fighter, a résistance or revolutionary, it’s all the same.

I would have been better if the Joker didn’t have that extra detonator, imo. Would have made his entire Ferry plan a much better ‘joke’.

Disagree. The extra detonator is what makes the Joker a villain, a bad guy - not just a guy on a bizarre mission to ridicule the illusions of law and order and civilized society.

The extra detonator proves that when it comes down to it, the Joker is just a guy who likes to destroy things. The business about law and order, like his stories about his scars, are just more lies he uses to manipulate.

One thing that should be noted is that the “liberal fascism” of the superhero has long been known.  In fact, it’s become cliché.  Tell me about a story where superheroes try to make things right in the world instead of merely fighting criminals, stopping the latest alien invasion, or saving people from a disaster, natural or artificial, and I guarantee it turns out badly.  Every single time.  Even in a fictional universe where the writer can make everything go their way, you almost never see a “happy” ending where Emperor Kal-El, or President Clark Kent, or whoever, leads the world into a golden age.

Basically even the writers who love the characters are okay with them being cops, or emergency responders, or even soldiers, but they are not allowed to be political leaders (of whatever stripe).  The exceptions are almost inevitably bad guys, with the number of good-guy political superhuman leaders almost minute.  And inevitably even they usually end up having problems due to their dual role.

No, the Joker was serious in saying he’d blow them both up if one didn’t blow the other: remember, he muttered “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” (or words to that effect), and pulled a denotator out of his pocket while he had the Batman pinned under that whatever it was.

This is very important to the equation because it explicitly removes the “trust the other to cooperate and we all live” outcome. It makes the reward for cooperation, the route the citizens took in the movie: Death in innocence; and the outcome of pushing the button: Murder in order to save half the lives in peril. Protect your integrity or your life. The morality of either choice is debatable, but in the end people would be dead because of the decisions of the passengers.

This makes The Joker’s Dilemma somewhat different than The Prisoner’s Dilemma. The TPD has four physical outcomes of varying severity: Nonexistent, light, medium, severe. A betrayer in TPD can receive the none or medium; and a cooperator can receive the light or severe, depending on the other’s choice. TJD has only a nonexistent or severe physical punishment. In TPD the best moral choice (both cooperate) is rewarded with a fairly tame physical punishment for all, whereas TJD has no such option. Someone or everyone will receive the most severe physical punishment.

Because of this, TJD removes the worst moral outcome. In TPD betraying is a decidedly evil decision because there is a chance for all parties involved to escape with light punishment. In TJD someone is going to receive the severe punishment no matter what, so it is not as morally reprehensible for either party to betray.

If the Joker really believed that Gothamites were truly as reprehensible he would have been comfortable using TPD. Unfortunately, that situation also leaves room for a positive outcome. Under TJD it’s a win-win for the Joker. Either one boat is forced to become murderers, or everyone dies.

Even in a fictional universe where the writer can make everything go their way, you almost never see a “happy” ending where Emperor Kal-El, or President Clark Kent, or whoever, leads the world into a golden age.

Miracleman (which is arguable).  This may be because superhero comics, by definition, need conflict - a utopia doesn’t get many stories written about heroes.

Ink Asylum: Noted, your distinctions between TJD and TPD.  However, it occurs to me that neither apply in that the actual situation isn’t a game in which both parties make a choice.  You don’t have a choice between pushing the button or letting the clock run down; you have a Dutch Auction where the first to push the button “wins”.

Fascinating discussion folks.

I think, for me, the key sequence was the two ferry dillema. In that sequence the people of gotham, both “good ordinary citizens” and criminals alike, proved themselves to retain an element of humanity that all the main characters may have doubted still existed. What makes this sequence especially fascinating is that the final decision not to blow up the other ferry comes down to two men who you obviously thought would make the opposite choice. The first was the hardened criminal who told the warden that the decision should be left up to someone who knew what it was like to kill. The second was the businessman who argued strongly for voting to blow up the criminals. When both men are given the detonators, the criminal, who knew what it was like to kill, threw it out the window without a moments hesitation. And the businessman, who argued for a mass execution, found himself incapable of being the one who actually turned the key that would result in that execution.

Good stuff.

“This is not quite like the Stafford experiment, or the Milligram experiment, as there was no “authority” telling them what to do- Joker’s a nutcase, not someone in a lab coat.  We aren’t raised or encouraged to respect terrorists.  And while this is the perfect example of the prisoner’s dilemma, the prisoner’s dilemma does not always end up with the two turning each other in.”

I agree with this analysis. If one of the authority figures on the boat had ordered someone else to turn the key on the detonator they probably would have done it. But when the authority figure themselves is put in charge of making that decision, they wilt. The warden freezes and leaves it to the hardened criminal to make the choice (who, “knowing what it is like to kill” makes the easy (for him) choice of throwing it out the window). The business man, who advocated for blowing the prisoners up, also froze when it came time for HIM to turn the key.

I think the lesson here is that many people may call for the easy way out (kill the other guy so that I might live), but their essential humanity steps in when it is them who has to make the decision.

I’m surprised that nobody on the boats questioned whether the detonator they had was for the other boat or for their own boat.

Dunno ‘bout all the allegory but strong movie. Ledger is superb. Anyone else catch his death-wish?

I’m surprised that nobody on the boats questioned whether the detonator they had was for the other boat or for their own boat.

While watching the movie, I assumed that this was the case, which made the ferry scene much more intense (and would have been a much better “joke").  I’m hoping Nolan left a subtle tell in the scene that can be picked up when viewed a second time.