The culture warriors’ pronouncements, as usually illustrated by Roy at alicublog, have as much relevance as my claims that the results of the most recent Boston Marathon validated my choice of hand soap (milk and honey!)

BTW Bob Guccione Sr.‘s Caligula is the most conservative, pro-family, anti-Communist film of all time. Don’t ask me how.

Hollywood is nowhere near as liberal as these guys claim it is.  Hollywood is all about the money - it’s about what sells.  They’re actually fairly small-c conservative in most things - they find a formula that works and they use it over and over and over again rather than take big risks.  Occasionally you get someone who takes a big risk, it pays off, and then everyone starts to copy it. 

Now where they might have a bit of a case is in films that are produced as “art” rather than with an intent to make a lot of money - films that are primarily released to art theaters or other small venues.  But even there it’s economics that drive the output - art theaters are patronized, generally, by people of a more liberal persuasion - young city dwellers with disposable income for the most part (since you don’t find many arthouses in rural Ohio).  So you don’t see films of a conservative artistic bent being produced for those venues because in general you aren’t going to make the money back.

But there’s nothing all that liberal about Hollywood - it’s almost “free market” at its finest since the only thing that matters is what sells.

I agree with NonyNony that it is (2) Hollywood is much more conservative than people think, because it caters to what Americans want. And now that we know Americans want maudlin and self-righteous chats about life with Aunt May, fake good-and-evil distinctions in a world that obviously doesn’t have them (consequences for others be damned), and female submission romance fantasies, I think I am perfectly justified in asking, what the hell is wrong with us?

Uhhh, is every movie about catching bad guys conservatives?  I didn’t get a particularly pro-American vibe from Spider Man 3 (any more than the other 2).  And wasn’t a big part of Batman about how the city needed a hero that worked within the law?  Seems like conservatives have just decided to see what they want (big surprise) and declare themselves the winner.

Actually I think there’s another explanation: the drug culture has taken hold of conservatives, or at least Breitbart (or is it Dimbart?).  He’s hallucinating like a madman.

Spider-Man 3, like every other Spider-Man movie, glorifies New York, that liberal hotbed, as a place where ordinary working folk exist and have the same right to be called true Americans as the Kents in Kansas do. I think that qualifies it as a *liberal* movie, not a conservative one. Besides, Spider-Man 3 is also about how the press lying to push a biased perspective is a terrible terrible thing that will make you turn into a supervillain who eats brains, that being a dick to your girlfriend is bad, that mindlessly seeking revenge is bad, and that using performance enhancing drugs which make you feel strong but make you act like a dick is bad. About the only part of that that’s remotely conservative is the part about performance enhancing drugs, and frankly liberals aren’t any more in favor of steroid abuse, which is what the symbiote’s a metaphor for, than conservatives are.

And yes, Spider-Man is all about responsibility, but I’m just not seeing how conservatism in the era of Bush can dare to call itself “responsible” without its head immediately exploding. Spider-Man does the right thing when faced with the temptation to do the wrong thing, but the “right thing” is almost never a conservative view of the right thing like waiting until marriage to have sex (it’s completely unclear as to whether Peter and MJ have ever done it, but it would surprise no one if they had); it’s the kind of right thing conservatives no longer comprehend, like eschewing murdering the guy who killed your uncle in favor of understanding his motives and letting him act to save his daughter’s life, or exhibiting forgiveness and understanding toward your enemies, or realizing that you are being an asshole to the woman you love and knocking it the hell off instead of blaming her for making you do it.

“the blatantly pro-war on terror Dark Knight.”

No, I think they missed the point.  Didn’t they listen to that speech Alfred gave about men who just want to watch the world burn?  He had been in some special forces unit overseas, and faced with extreme opposition from a foe he could not understand. When he’s asked how they responded he says, “We burned the jungle down.”  Only a real fucknut could think that exchange was a validation of preemptive destruction of cities in order to get one person.  Increasingly, the point of the Batman franchise seems to be that the main problem with Gotham is Batman.  Why doesn’t it surprise me that pro-Bush nuts can’t figure that out?

carovee, there is no such thing as a bad guy the way these films present one. (Batman even tells us at the end that it is important for the rabble to believe in good and bad guys in a simplistic way). Dividing the world into good and evil, based on narrow-minded norms that are not relevant to meaningful moral distinctions, is a conservative trope. And the American rabble eats it up, because they are provincial and arrogant.

Ahh yes 300 and “conservative values”....

The volleyball scene from Top Gun thinks 300 comes across as a “little too gay”

Another “pick one” point -

Halloween is an evil attack on all things Christian, and a highly successful VAMPIRE movie is pro-Christian because of an abstinence theme?  I haven’t seen (and don’t intend to see) the movie, but isn’t “saving yourself for the right vampire” a bad thing?

Of course, these are the same people who decided that Harry Potter is evil and liberal because he fights evil and risks his life for good but isn’t explicitly Christian, while the Narnia movies are good and conservative, even though there is nothing explicitly (ham-handedly implicit, but so is Harry Potter) Christian in them - God is played by a talking LION, fer-goodness sake. Aren’t good Christian kids at risk of dabbling in circus-oriented behavior as a result?

This is largely a Rorschach test. Remember how Iron Man was a conservative movie because Tony Stark was fighting terrorists but at the same time a liberal movie because he was defying the evil corporate people selling weapons to both sides?

And again, the Die Hard movies are always held up as great pro-American conservative films, but even ignoring the body-counts as all bad guys, blowing up property, both corporate and governmental as a way to get the bad guy holding your wife/daughter hostage is conservative by what standard. Maybe not liberal, but hardly Mom and apple pie stuff!

The Chronicles of Narnia movies are clearly out to turn all our children into carnies! The “carnie agenda” must be stopped!!!! The future of our families are in dire peril!!!11!1(cos 0)!

er… sorry, I couldn’t help it.

I think Twilight gets a pass because it’s written from an extremely Christian perspective when the Rowling series largely removes any overt religious tones and actually allows ethics and morals to exist outside of an openly Christian message.  I read the liveblog of an ex-Mormon who claims that Edward is so obviously Joseph Smith that she’s a little disturbed by it.  The books’s conservative bent only goes further as the series progresses, with the fourth book showing that dying for your unborn child is the preferred choice over aborting it.

In The 300, I did get the impression that the movie’s insertions (the political stuff back on the home front, mainly) were an attempt to tie Thermopylae to the Iraq War.

I reject your false exclusionary choices. All of the above are true.
Actually any choice that assumes conservatives are stupid, whiny, delusional, vindictive, and have a massive sense of entitlement is always true. Even when they contradict each other.

On The Dark Knight as a metaphor for the war on terror, Batman Begins was probably a better war on terror movie. The Dark Knight leaves the viewer with the sense that Gordon and Dent are trying to buy peace by making deals that will only backfire in the end. Batman doesn’t create the Joker the way he did in the comics or in the Burton version of Batman, but the Joker decides that Batman is “too much fun.” In other words, to the Joker endless war is far more important than any victory. Just like Osama had to be delighted when Bush decided to occupy Iraq, whatever the wingnuts think.

As I pointed out the last time this topic came up, these guys have a ridiculously restricted idea of what a conservative movie has to look like based solely on what’s currently considered “conservative.”

Look at Walt Disney, one of the most conservative artists ever to work in Hollywood.  Today, there’s no way you could claim his movies are conservative (in the way these guys mean) because he put stuff in his movies like concern for the environment and demonstrating that hunting is bad.  The scene in “Bambi” where the hunters kill his mother would get Disney denounced as a bleeding-heart liberal by today’s conservatives.  In “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Capt. Nemo became into an anti-war crusader because his family was tortured to death by agents of his country’s government who wanted the plans for his nuclear submarine so they could use it against their enemies.  Disney would have been driven out of today’s Republican party for being such a bleeding-heart, pansy-ass liberal.

Also, wasn’t “An American Carol” supposed to be the biggest hit of all time because Americans were just dying for truly conservative entertainment?  How’d that work out?  I notice it doesn’t even get a mention in the article.

Prince Caspian may have been a moderately successful film, but it underperformed to Disney’s liking. They’ve elected to not go forward with adapting the next book in the Narnia series to film. I don’t see how that backs up Dimbart’s claims. Then again, I’m sure he can come up with some self-justifying bullshit to crown himself the “winner” in this debate.

Also, wasn’t “An American Carol” supposed to be the biggest hit of all time because Americans were just dying for truly conservative entertainment?  How’d that work out? I notice it doesn’t even get a mention in the article.

I was just about to say this! I’ve seen commercials for the DVD, which aren’t anything like the commercials they had for the film when it was in theaters. It’s almost like the American Carol DVD and the American Carol theatrical release are two different movies.

They’ve elected to not go forward with adapting the next book in the Narnia series to film.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t make any Narnia book that has the country of Calormen or Tash into a movie because of their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim content.

You can’t both claim that Hollywood is producing tons of great conservatives movies that are massively marketed and highly successful, and then claim that you’re also facing McCarthy-style oppression that puts your very livelihood at risk for being conservative in Hollywood.

They most certainly can. Conservatives are all about having their cake and eating it, too.

I’m personally acquainted with one of the most vocal “oppressed Hollywood conservatives,” and I can tell you for a fact that he got his L.A. mansion and his cars and lunches at The Ivy and all the other goodies by adhering to the real values of the film industry: you do your part to deliver at the box office, we’ll pay you lots of money and give you your next job.

This is largely a Rorschach test. Remember how Iron Man was a conservative movie because Tony Stark was fighting terrorists but at the same time a liberal movie because he was defying the evil corporate people selling weapons to both sides?

That’s one of the keys to being a successful writer of big-budget pictures: you include some chin-stroker “messages,” but you make sure that they’re mixed enough that both a liberal and a conservative can emerge from the theatre satisified.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t make any Narnia book that has the country of Calormen or Tash into a movie because of their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim content.”

While it’s true that Lewis based the Calormenans on European views of Arabs/Muslims (although it wouldn’t be hard to claim they were based on Byzantine Christians as well), I doubt that would be much of a problem. Tash was more based on Biblical-era Canaanite gods like Baal and Moloch. Should they choice, Calormen could be Aztec (Tash after all demands human sacrifice). The main point is that they aren’t like the English children who come to Narnia.

As I recall from the book, the Telmarines had a few Arab characteristics in the book, but Walden Media turned them into conquistadors instead. Frankly, that fit better given their history, but it also it made more sense to an American audience.

Also sort of belies the “conservative” nature of Prince Caspian. Let’s see, a bunch of scuzzy, violent guys find a new land, drive the natives deep into the marginal world of the forest, only to have the natives strike back and drive the invaders back where they came. That’s not American conservatives. That’s the Ghost Dance.

Number 2.

Hollywood is *very* conservative about what messages it promulgates.

For example, read the graphic novel V for Vendetta, and then watch the movie.

for an even more explicit twisting… Read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, then watch the movie.

Even the plain simple stuff, like Stephen Gould’s Jumper is *very* much twisted from the book.

The changes that were made, were not made because you couldn’t put a book in a movie…They were made because all of the material I’ve cited was about maturity—emotional, physical, intellectual.  Stuff that the Patriarchy (which is why I read blogs like these) does not want the little children to witness.  Not without the Patriarchal Stamp of Approval, like girding up to go get ‘em bad guys, winning the hand of an upper class woman, and/or getting the respect of the community (and the Patriarchy).

Or have you not read Pullman’s book and the movie based on THAT?  Even the Harry Potter movies explicitly removes many aspects of the main character’s growth from the books.

You still not convinced?  Why not check out some asian films?  Specifically Chinese Pre Crouching Tiger/Hero and post?  You had real gems like Wing Chun with Yeoh, In the Mood for Love, or Hard Boiled.  Post Hero, there has been only one major and original Chinese series that is not statist, which would be Infernal Affairs.  Just about everything else, including such “arthouse” fare such as Lust, Caution has had element of pro-State rhetoric in it.  I enjoyed Warriors of Heaven and Earth through most of the movie specifically because it *didn’t* have jingoistic elements—until the very end.

With Hero itself, compare it with Emperor and the Assassin, which is a similar movie based on the same moral play.

I think we all should be more concious of the fact that elites do not neglect the value of movies and tv as propaganda.  Somewhat more subtle here than in China, but present even so.

“Ahh yes 300 and “conservative values”....”

Well, putting ahistorical homophobia (Spartans would have been engaging in high irony, if they called the Athenians ‘boy lovers’ as an insult) into bad cartoon action movies seems like a conservative value.

Thermopolyae probably has more of a claim to ‘Greatest Story Ever Told’ than other pretenders to that crown and they screwed it up and made it lame.

Who’d be stupid enough to do that? Guys who decide that the laconic (get it?) Spartans should yell most of their lines. Leonidas was the original John McClain, with his quips about fighting in the shade and such. The filmmakers had Gerard Butler apparently sat all his lines in a wind tunnel.

I really hated that movie.

Oh, don’t tell Breitbart, but the whole Matrix saga is about Jesus.

“Uhhh, is every movie about catching bad guys conservatives?  I didn’t get a particularly pro-American vibe from Spider Man 3”

I agree with Carovee. Not every “good v bad” film is inherently conservative. This whole thing reminds me of this girl I saw on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer messageboard who liked to argue that Buffy was “pro Christian values” because Buffy acted in ways that were good, moral and responsible (some of the time, at least). When we tried explaining to her that Christianity doesn’t exactly hold the monopoly on “being good,” she naturally flipped and accused us of attacking her argument because she was a Christian (quelle surprise).

“good-and-evil distinctions in a world that obviously doesn’t have them”

Hmm, was the invasion of Iraq good or evil?  I just can’t decide, it’s been such a mixed bag.

“300, which said a lot that needed to be said about the war on terror, ...”

Such as:

“Loin cloths are divine!”

“All that stuff about how important the phalanx is? Forget I said it.”

“This is Sparta!”

“Also sort of belies the “conservative” nature of Prince Caspian. Let’s see, a bunch of scuzzy, violent guys find a new land, drive the natives deep into the marginal world of the forest, only to have the natives strike back and drive the invaders back where they came. That’s not American conservatives. That’s the Ghost Dance.”

A few other minor notes about Prince Caspian (which I saw on DVD over the holiday and actually enjoyed): Some of the creatures that are shown as being unremittingly evil in the first film are here included as part of the oppressed masses. The minotaurs being the main example, and in the big battle sequence at Miraz’s castle there’s even a scene where one of the minotaurs heroically sacrifices himself so the rest of the raiding party can survive. (Not all of them get out alive, but many more of them manage to escape than would have if not for him.) Likewise, at the end of the film, Aslan and the Narnians show mercy to the Telmarines instead of simply slaughtering them all. Not exactly the American/Christian “values” currently trumpeted by the modern day far right as we know them, eh?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t make any Narnia book that has the country of Calormen or Tash into a movie because of their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim content.

If they did, that would count as conservative.

I know that a lot of people disagree with me on this, but I actually think that The Dark Knight was an explicitly pro-War on Terror film.  The Chris Nolan films have borrowed heavily from the Frank Miller comics, and Miller himself is… well… a fascist.  I know hardcore Batman fans try to pretend otherwise, but The Dark Knight Returns—while beautiful to look at—espouses a political philosophy that should terrify any sensible person.  The difference between the Miller comics and the Nolan movies is that Miller is trying to advance his reactionary politics, whereas Nolan is trying to make a movie that exploits the popularity of Miller’s work while still appealing to the largest possible audience—hence the half-hearted abandonment of Batman’s fascist tactics in the last act of the movie.  The reason we still debate whether The Dark Knight espoused a right-wing philosophy isn’t that the movie is nuanced or complex, but that the moviemakers themselves were terribly inconsistent and confused.

I’m much more impressed by this writer’s argument that No Country for Old Men is somehow a conservative film.  Now that’s a stretch—like most of the Coen Brothers films, the source of evil in this movie is capitalism; the pursuit of money for its own sake destroys both Moss and Chigurh.  Hell, if you didn’t quite get it, there’s even a scene towards the end where two innocent, well-intentioned boys turn into monsters once they see a $100 bill.  The title, No Country for Old Men, is clearly meant to be ironic—the Sheriff himself learns that his conservative belief that the world is getting worse is wrong; the world has always been a terrible place, as long as humans have wanted to acquire stuff.  It’s actually No Country for any sensitive or sensible person.

300, which said a lot that needed to be said about the war on terror, came in at number ten.

WTF did 300 say about the war on terruh?  In the movie, the Persians were a massive army from afar that came to Greece bent on conquest and the Spartans defied them anyway.  What massive Islamofascist hordes have tried to cross the Atlantic or Pacific and demand our submission?  None, of course.  Nor do they have the capacity to do so.

I’m much more impressed by this writer’s argument that No Country for Old Men is somehow a conservative film.  Now that’s a stretch—like most of the Coen Brothers films, the source of evil in this movie is capitalism

Bradley, I remember reading some 100 Best Conservative Movies list years ago, and one of the movies on the list was Aliens.  I remember thinking, “How can these idiots see Aliens as a conservative movie?” Like No Country For Old Men, Aliens is anti-capitalist.  The real villain in Aliens is the greedy corporate exec Carter Burke and the Company (Weyland-Yutani), not the alien creatures themselves.  It’s all summed up when Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley says to him near the end of the movie, “You know Burke, I don’t know which species is worse.  You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.”

Oh yes, 300 – the conservatives can have that one if they want to claim it. I was immediately caught by the director’s use of deformity and disability as a shorthand for evil (to the degree that the film glorifies eugenics and infanticide).

I mean, that’s not even subtle here. The Ephors, the traitor, the dancers in Xerses’ court – all deformed. Leonidas, on the other hand, survived a close inspection process carried out against the backdrop of the corpses of babies considered unworthy to live. He then proves himself fit to pass along his super-wonderful seed someday by facing a dangerous beast and defeating it when he’s yet a child.

It’s quite funny to see someone defending Christian values in one breath and favorably mentioning that piece of shit, 300, in the next.

Which do you think it is?

The third one. Anyone who thinks No Country is a “conservative film” demonstrates that conservatives are as skilled at movie criticism as they are at foreign policy and economic planning.

Look at Walt Disney, one of the most conservative artists ever to work in Hollywood.  Today, there’s no way you could claim his movies are conservative.

Ah, you haven’t seen Song of the South yet. Try unpacking Conservative into “racist, patriarchal, status quo enforcing”.

Or have you not read Pullman’s book and the movie based on THAT?

Man, I just caught the second half of the movie on cable yesterday, and I was so pissed.  The first book—where the your female protagonist is smart and brave and strong and the author actually cares about her and isn’t bored with her?—was the only one I liked.

And here’s the movie, with Lyra bringing up all the loose ends and telling her buddy Robert how she wants to discover all these truths…and it ends.

Fuck that shit.  “The Golden Compass” is about betrayal of trust, misplaced faith, and disillusionment.  The end of the first book is STRONG, and it’s not happy-go-lucky “I want to know what Dust is, don’t you, good buddy who will be with me forever and ever b/c we’re BFFs!”

No, you can’t console me with “but they wanted to make a sequel”.  There ARE sequels, it’s a trilogy, there’s no need to cut off the nose of the book to spite its face and save ‘room’ for a sequel.

It was already condemned as coming from Pullman, so why pull the punch at the end?  Stinks of conservative interference to me, for spoilage reasons I won’t go into.

People should check out the *serious* class focus that The Dark Knight and for that matter, the Golden Compass has.  Only the upper class has any right to change the world, cheerios!

People should check out the *serious* class focus that The Dark Knight and for that matter, the Golden Compass has.  Only the upper class has any right to change the world, cheerios!

That’s why I really don’t like attempts to make Batman “realistic”—if Spencer Pratt started dressing up like Dracula and beating up people who live in slums, we’d all be horrified.  The only way Batman really “works” as a hero, it seems to me, is when he lived in a surreal nightmare world envisioned by the likes of Tim Burton or Grant Morrison, where everything else is even more sinister than Batman himself.

Stepping back from the specific topic, I suspect we are going to see an awful lot more of this sort of thing, especially in the near future.

Having defined conservatism as more or less exactly equal to homophobia, anti-abortion, pro-war, and Bush Can Do No Wrong, and then getting their asses handed to them, these people have three choices:

Admit they were wrong and give up. (Sorry, just kidding. And unicorns roam our forests.)

Not admit they were wrong, but quietly redefine things behind the scenes and pretend that’s what they stood for all along (See also, black civil rights). Inevitable, but they are hardly going to admit it up front.

Redefine existing things as actually being conservative under their current rules by overlooking inconvenient reality. Given that this is their only approach to everthing, I expect it. About everything.

No Country for Old Men, a decidedly conservative film that linked the evil of its nihilist serial killer to the decline of morals since the 1960’s

...the HELL?!?!
Has this idiot never seen any other Coen brothers film?

ugh.
This is yet another “fluffer” piece for the ever weakening xian message- can’t make the world into your cult’s ideal vision? Start making shit up!
Let’s hope it just effs off and dies soon (probably not in my lifetime) or gets relegated to the “crazy cult” status it so richly deserves.

Ah, you haven’t seen “Song of the South” yet. Try unpacking Conservative into “racist, patriarchal, status quo enforcing”.

You missed my point.  By any measure other than the one current conservatives use, Disney’s films are extremely conservative.  The fact that Disney’s films include nods to things like environmentalism disqualify him as a “real” conservative to today’s right-wing nutjobs, which is why they spend so much time desperately searching for “real” conservative art.  They’ve disqualified everything that doesn’t fit their extremely narrow definition of conservative.

Heck, there’s plenty even in Song of the South that would get Disney labeled a wussy bleeding-heart liberal by today’s conservatives.  After all, it’s the original Magic Negro movie where Uncle Remus solves all of the white people’s problems by being nicer and wiser than all of them combined.  And it makes the “real American” white boys into redneck villains who want to kill their sister’s puppy.

I’m much more impressed by this writer’s argument that No Country for Old Men is somehow a conservative film.  Now that’s a stretch—like most of the Coen Brothers films, the source of evil in this movie is capitalism; the pursuit of money for its own sake destroys both Moss and Chigurh.  Hell, if you didn’t quite get it, there’s even a scene towards the end where two innocent, well-intentioned boys turn into monsters once they see a $100 bill.  The title, No Country for Old Men, is clearly meant to be ironic—the Sheriff himself learns that his conservative belief that the world is getting worse is wrong; the world has always been a terrible place, as long as humans have wanted to acquire stuff.  It’s actually No Country for any sensitive or sensible person.

Thank you Bradley!  I scrolled my way down this comment thread because I also felt motivated to defend one of my favorite films of all time from the smear that it is somehow a conservative film.  You’re right on the money about the role that the pursuit of money plays in destroying people’s lives in the work of the Coen brothers (even in their comedies…in The Big Lebowski, all that shit starts when the Dude gets concerned about getting compensated for his rug instead of just letting it go). 

Also, in No Country, the Sheriff could hardly be characterized as a “moral voice”; rather, he is confused and lost, and he even says himself that God never came into his life in his old age.  Which character steadfastly sticks to his “principles” (as characterized by another character)?  Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer who nevertheless does believe in some kind of principles transcending money.

In my favorite scene, near the end (not really a spoiler, because most of the film doesn’t so much hinge on plot points as it does the visual and spoken [albeit taciturn] poetry of each scene), the Sheriff hears a story from Ellis about how his uncle was gunned down on his front porch by a group of bandits and left to die.  The Sheriff asks him, “when did he die?” and Ellis, misunderstanding the question, tells him it must have been in 1909.  This drives home two points: first, as Bradley points out, the evil that the Sheriff is confronting in Terrell County is nothing new (Elias also explicitly makes that point, “What you got here ain’t nothin’ new”).  Second, it makes the point that it is not only evil that transcends time, but also death itself. The Sheriff is not only confronting evil, but also his own mortality. 

I would argue, based on the film, that death’s transcendent quality actually provides some small measure of comfort…see the very last scene of the film, and tell me if you get that feeling too.  That last scene never fails to leave me in tears.  It is absolutely sublime!

I love that film.  It stings to see someone try to use it as conservative propaganda.

shah8, I’m wondering why you single out Dark Knight and Golden Compass regarding its aristocratic worldview, rather than acknowledge the fact that it’s basically a ‘feature’ of almost all sci-fi and fantasy litterature and derived media (including the superhero comic book genre) except for those works that explicitly lampooned or subverted the common tropes of those genres.

I deign not call it a bourgeois worldview, because of the ‘noblesse oblige’ attitude of the Good vs Evil struggle in genre fiction, which is explicitly antithetic to the ‘nouveau riche’ neoliberal bourgeois worldview (I believe in America the term for that worldview is usually ‘libertarianism’, ‘classical liberalism’ or ‘conservativism’)

SPOILER from me ...

Which character steadfastly sticks to his “principles” (as characterized by another character)?  Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer who nevertheless does believe in some kind of principles transcending money.

Interestingly, the way I read the ending of the movie was that the reason Chigurh gets into the car accident is that he does give up his principles in the second-to-last scene where Carla Jean refuses to play his coin-flip game.  Whether or not he actually kills her is immaterial (which is why they don’t bother to show it) because either way, he deserted his own principles.  Either he killed her without the coin flip, which would violate his own rules, or he let her live, which would also violate his own rules.

And here’s the movie, with Lyra bringing up all the loose ends and telling her buddy Robert how she wants to discover all these truths…and it ends.

I caught it on cable recently, too. Even though I’m a big fan of the books (or perhaps because of that fact), I couldn’t bear to watch it in the theatre after reading the negative reviews. Still, I was curious about the art direction (which was very good and true to the book), so I watched it in HD. But the movie’s ending came as a surprise.

I took their “intercission” of the first book’s ending from the movie as an indication that the studio ultimately didn’t have a lot of faith (heh) that there would be a sequel, and decided to end the movie on a happy and somewhat tied-up note.

I’m curious if the book’s ending was in fact filmed and then cut later. If so, my best guess is that there was some self-sabotage inolved regarding sequels, but probably not due to Xtianist interference. As noted earlier, decisions in the film industry are primarily made on the basis of money and the perceived market environment.

Which character steadfastly sticks to his “principles” (as characterized by another character)?  Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer who nevertheless does believe in some kind of principles transcending money.

Chigurh’s dogmatic principles (which exist both in the service of and a result of his psychopathy) are demonstrably useful to those whose interests don’t transcend money. Sound familiar?

“People should check out the *serious* class focus that The Dark Knight and for that matter, the Golden Compass has.  Only the upper class has any right to change the world, cheerios!”

Ehn.  My take on Dark Knight was that Batman is presented as a necessary evil, a sandbag levee meant to allow a crumbling permanent structure to be repaired or rebuilt rather than to stand in for permanent systemic change.  His function is to allow people like Gordon—a man who’s spent his life trying to make do with the least crooked cops and prosecutors available—to unite and succeed in changing the city’s culture of corruption and bleak prospects.  The bright ray of hope is when a mob of, respectively, petty criminals and petite bourgeoisie decide not to blow each other up, not when Batman swoops in and catches the Joker.

@KeithM

The ferry scene in The Dark Knight?

Pure Twilight Zone, for my money.

Someone explain how that reminds anyone over 30 of conservative values.

The Dark Knight, in my opinion, is largely a moral quagmire.  It’s neither liberal, nor conservative in the standard definition.

It’s more of a pondering.  The Joker is viciously amoral.  He’s not really immoral.  He says the damage will stop if Batman takes off the mask.  He doesn’t see morals as even existing. 

He’s a nobody, from nowhere.  He’s an elemental force.  (actually, Batman’s very existence is what creates the Joker).

Remember, he starts out by hitting the mob.  During the bank heist, the only hostage who dies is the bank manager who came out firing.  The other bodies were those of his crew. 

Then, he gets interested in the Batman.  He does it all for the sheer pleasure of doing it.

He’s not a liberal nor is he a conservative nor is his message.  He’s chaotic, but he’s capable of order when it suits him. 

Batman is a psychopath at the end of the day, every bit as much as the Joker.  He’s just as amoral.  He thinks he’s the good guy, and he does have something that resembles a moral code, though it seems more flexible than the comic book Batman’s - he’s a bit more willing to “not save” someone and let them die than the comic book (the end of Batman begins involves him allowing the villain to die). 

He doesn’t want to be the people’s hero, he wants to inspire Gothamites to take their city back.  But he really doesn’t want to quit either.  He loves what he does.  That’s why he wouldn’t take off the mask and just face the Joker.  Really, who would suffer?  Alfred could get hurt, but no one’s really going to bother with him.  He’s only vaguely connected to Maggie Gyllenhall, so she wouldn’t suffer.  She was in greater danger just by being a DA who wouldn’t be bought.  WayneCorp?  It’s a publicly held corporation.  Bruce is just a shareholder.  Bruce himself could be sued, but his company wouldn’t be touched.  He may indirectly have power over a controlling share, but he’s largely absentee anyway.

The bad guys would only want to hurt Alfred, Lucius, etc if they needed to find a way to get to Batman.  With him unmasked, that issue is largely removed. 

Besides, removing the mask would mean that Bruce Wayne takes his face off and shows Batman to the world.  Bruce is Batman’s mask. 

Batman is a believer that he knows what’s best for Gotham.  He and his co-conspirators - Gordon and Dent.  So, he allows dozens or more people to die.  He allows for all this death and destruction to occur so that he can nab the Joker.  If he wanted to the Joker to come out, then he merely needed to unmask.  Then, he could worry about nabbing the Joker.  But, nope, he knew better than that.

Ditto with Dent.  Dent believed in Batman, moreso than himself, perhaps because Dent’s the only one who knew that Dent was flawed.  That deep down inside, he was a monster waiting to be unleashed.  Dent wasn’t terrifically moral.  He gave up and tortured the Scarecrow with great ease, before he lost the love of his life and he was scarred.

He wasn’t a liberal or a conservative.  He believed in law and order, by any means possible.  Underneath it all, he was every bit as amoral as the Joker and Batman.

Gordon is as bad as the rest of them.  He works with a vigilante.  While he detests corruption, he isn’t willing to chase the corruption out.  He doesn’t rat on bad cops, he hires them to work for him.

As far as analogues to the war on terror go, the closest analogue is the sonar gizmo.  It’s representative of the post FISA national security state.  It gives Batman total awareness of his surroundings, but at a great cost to privacy.

However, Batman is not a State actor.  He’s not the government.  He’s a really good hacker hacking into the cellular networks of all the cell phone providers in Gotham. 

That’s a huge difference.  It’d be much different if it was Gordon doing this.

Not only that, but unlike the conservatives in this War on Terror, Batman built in a failsafe.

Batman knew he would abuse this power, in fact, he knew that the power’s very existence was abusive.  That it was wrong.  He decided that the greater good was using it anyway, though he gave up the power to control it to another person, one with a moral code. 

The conservatives decided that such failsafes were unnecessary.  Lucius Fox is the FISA court as it’s supposed to work.  Batman obtained the information (or power), then retroactively asked to be allowed to utilize it, which is how the FISA court worked.  You could gather then intel, but you had to get a warrant within 72 hours to keep the intel. 

It’s not a liberal movie in any sense of the word, but it’s also not conservative.  It’s really not much of a commentary on current politics in any sense. 

If anything, its a commentary on power - who has it, who should have it, how it should be used, what it’s effects are. 

At the end of the day, does anyone consider the impact on the people of Gotham?

shah8, I’m wondering why you single out Dark Knight and Golden Compass regarding its aristocratic worldview, rather than acknowledge the fact that it’s basically a ‘feature’ of almost all sci-fi and fantasy litterature and derived media (including the superhero comic book genre).

I always think that reading is sort of limited. Let’s look at Star Wars. Yes, Luke is uniquely placed to save the Galaxy because of his parentage, but isn’t that parentage ultimately a metaphor for internal gifts? Superman dittoes. Batman, I think, hews more strongly to your reading. But even in the Golden Compass series, where every major character save two is a member of the aristocracy (and one of those two has SECRET SUPER DADDY), the protagonists beat evil through their own nature, rather than their parentage.

People should check out the *serious* class focus that The Dark Knight and for that matter, the Golden Compass has.  Only the upper class has any right to change the world, cheerios!

You know, I see that argument and I call bullshit, at least for Batman.

The fact that he’s a rich guy is out of practical necessity for the character: this is a person who’s hobby requires a large level of resources and infrastructure and time, something not feasible for a middle-class guy who also has to work to put food on the table.

When the character started he was merely fairly well off, as an explanation of why he’d have the time to run around in a costume and the ability to run around the world learning useful skills.  As the character started acquiring all the toys (Batmobiles and Batplanes and Batcaves), he had to be made richer to explain how an independent person could do that.  Well, as the Wayne family was made richer to explain how he had the money to do all that, it makes sense he’d have a butler (thus Alfred was introduced).  Over time, as the equipment became more sophisticated, the fortune had to grow as a “realistic” explanation for how Bruce Wayne could afford to pay for everything, which then led into the introduction of characters like Lucius Fox (brought into the comics in the 1970s) who ran the businesses that kept providing more money for Batman to use.

That’s why, in current comic continuity, Bruce Wayne is considered one of the richest men on the planet.  It provides the justification for how the character is able to do what he does, not why he does.  The movies have simply taken that entirely reasonable explanation.  Most of us don’t live in houses big enough to have massive cave systems underneath them, or have access to cutting edge technology for our private use.

There are lots of superheroes who don’t fit into what you’d call the upper class.  If you look at perhaps the six or seven most recognized superheroes in the world, yes, Bruce Wayne is portrayed as stinking rich.  But Clark Kent (Superman) is a journalist.  Peter Parker (Spider-Man) a science teacher—or was, I’m not sure what the hell he is now with his recent reboot).  Diana Prince (Wonder Woman is a government employee.  Bruce Banner (the Hulk) was a scientist and actually spends a fair bit of time on the run and destitute.  Steve Rogers (Captain America) was a soldier and had odd jobs from time to time, but only lived in anything resembling luxury when when he was in accommodations being paid for by someone else.

The difference between them and Batman is that they don’t, by and large, require a lot of support to do what they do.  They have power in themselves.  If you look at superheroes in general, you’ll tend to find that the ones described as upper class are that way because their character requires it to explain the how.  Batman and Iron Man are perhaps the two best known examples, and when you look at their stories you tend to note that they’re very much seen as exceptions to their social classes: Tony Stark’s and Bruce Wayne’s social peers tend to be either useless rich gits or actively malevolent villains.

Just for giggles, here’s the social standings of the members of the last version of the Justice League of America:

Superman - journalist
Batman - obscenely rich guy
Wonder Woman - mid-level government security employee
Black Canary - florist
Black Lightning - High school teacher, former Secretary of Education
Flash - full-time superhero, married to a local TV reporter
Firestorm - teenager, inner-city kid
Hal Jordan - pilot
John Stewart - former Marine and engineer
Hawkgirl - middle class-background
Red Arrow - father died when he was a kid, raised on a Navajo reservation, adopted by a rich guy (but later left on his own), former heroin junkie
Vixen - fashion model
Zatanna - entertainer

Not exactly your typical cross section of the upper classes, is it?

It’s really not much of a commentary on current politics in any sense.

Well… but it is, in the sense that it’s a movie about 9/11 and the War on Terror, and those have become political issues.  The movie is built around the premise that a human being (the Joker) can be so evil that he’s really “an elemental force,” a power that can only be fought through extralegal methods.  This is precisely the argument that the Bush administration has been making since September 11, 2001.  In this sense, the movie is most certainly a conservative movie.

It gets more complicated towards the end, though, because the filmmakers try to play it safe by not completely endorsing Batman’s fascism.  They have the hero (and Batman most certainly is designed to be the hero of this movie—hence the toys, video games, and children’s underwear bearing his likeness) acknowledge that his tactics are regrettable, but it still seems to me that the movie argues that they’re necessary to protect the city and its people at that moment—the status quo will be restored as soon as the crisis has passed.  The trouble is, in Gotham City—as in Bush’s America—the crisis never seems to pass.

Well, as the Wayne family was made richer to explain how he had the money to do all that, it makes sense he’d have a butler (thus Alfred was introduced).

Actually, I’m pretty sure that Alfred was introduced as comic relief in the 1943 serials (from what I’ve read, the character was added to the comics shortly before the serials came out, after Bob Kane learned that the character would be appearing on the screen).  Which doesn’t exactly negate your point, but it seems to me that presenting the working-class butler as silly, ineffectual, effeminate, and generally buffoonish tends to reinforce the notion that the Batman story should be troubling to most sensible Marxists.

(Granted, the character has fared better in the comics and recent movie portrayals, and the prissy butler is hardly the most offensive thing about those serials, which featured a sinister Japanese crime lord named Dr. Daka who had to tolerate insults like “You’re as yellow as your skin!”)

There are lots of superheroes who don’t fit into what you’d call the upper class.

You touched on it, but it’s not beside the point that Batman is (I think) the only one on your list who has NO superpowers.  None.  He’s just a guy who trained really, really hard and built some really cool toys unlike Superman (alien) or Spiderman (radioactive spider bite).  Even Tony Stark is super-enhanced with his artificial heart.

Random thought, but one of the things I liked about The Dark Knight is that they went back to emphasizing the detective aspect of what Batman does.  There’s always been an association between him and Sherlock Holmes, at least in the classic 1940s-1950s stories, so it was nice to see that brought back as part of the mythology.

BlacBloc, your statement is only true if you kept to the mass media stuff.  The Star Wars and their like.  Even stuff like Harry Potter, hardly the most progressive of fantasy, has very strong class elements in the story (the Beasley situation—Percy, especially, is deemphasised in the movies).  I can go on.  I mentioned The Dark Knight and the Golden Compass because they were being talked about.

preyingmantis, Fascism—the strenth through unity with the imagery of bound sticks, and axe in the center (against the pure forces of chaos personified by Loki the half-frost giant) is profoundly expressed throughout the movie.  There is unity here, but no real respect for the ideals of a civil society.  Respect for the ideals of an individual, yes, but everything about that movie is about rejecting the virtues of the processes society comes up with to regulate itself.  The cops are corrupt, the courts don’t work, people turn evil on a dime, and it requires the FORCE of one MAN behind will of ONE MOB to get anything done.  The Joker gets everywhere, does everything, regardless of how impossible that task might be.  The character is drawn that way to beg questions!

keithm, there are plenty of characters in media that are backed by foundations and other organizations like Justice League, Green Lantern, X-men, or Suicide Squad.  It’s easy to throw around counterexamples.  However, where you’re being somewhat willfully blind is the narrative in how Bruce Wayne’s family literally built the city, and the city’s nature owes *everything* to what Wayne Enterprises has done.  In a very strong way, the mythos of Batman has *always* been about *punishing* his city and trying to make it behave according to the needs of those who have power.  Those who *must* fear chaos as the only means of the liberation of their subjects.  The Joker in the movie has always been represented by the distorted lenses by which the powerful view Levellers.

At which point I’d be calling the sensible Marxists complete morons.

Huh.  That seems completely uncalled for.

The character may certainly have been introduced like that, but it very quickly left that in the dust.  Alfred has long been one of the moral rocks of the chaos that is Bruce Wayne’s psyche, the man who’s raised him after his parents died and who’s done his best to kept the psychopathy in check.  Sure, he’s the butler but for quite some time that’s been presented as a choice he’s made out of his sense of responsibility and genuine affection, first for the boy whose care he had, and later to keep an eye on the man that boy had become.

These people do not actually exist, and you’re basically talking about the past twenty years of comic book continuity (and the recent film series).  I’m talking about the history of these fictional characters and their development.  Certainly, in recent years, efforts have been made to downplay some of the more troubling aspects of these characters (how many people do you know who force their “father figures” to call them “master,” though?), but at the end of the day, attempts at making Batman “realistic” ultimately reveal him to be the type of person most of us would want to see prosecuted for his crimes—a rich fascist using violence to impose his will on an entire city. 

The Frank Miller comics in particular reveled in this idea, as I mentioned before.  Which is what makes them kinda awesome yet horrifying at the same time—much more of an artistic accomplishment than the recent film series (or most pre-Grant Morrison comic book treatments of the character).  As much as I loathe the political ideas Miller advocates and Batman embodies in The Dark Knight Returns, there’s at least a coherent vision shaping the story.  The Nolan films—like the “realistic” comic books of the last twenty years or so—try to have things both ways, by trying to make Batman both a grim, serious vigilante on a mission to control his city and a heroic and likable guy. 

That’s why I prefer to atmospheric and absurd Batman stories of the 70s, where the Joker tried to copyright fish or a group of circus freaks is discovered living on the fog-enshrouded moors of Gotham City.  There’s no real attempt at psychological realism or complexity, which—oddly enough—makes the character much more believable, if you ask me.

I think David Thomson made the point that The Dark Knight is indeed muddled in its values so as to appeal to the biggest possible audience; probably the Nolans didn’t make it that way for commercial reasons so much as to create a thought-provoker, by their standards.  So we get an Alan Moore Joker, a Frank Miller Gordon, a more or less liberal Lucius, a more or less fascist Alfred, criminals with whom extralegal force works (Mr. Lau), criminals with whom it doesn’t (the Joker), an unsympathetic mob that fails to appreciate the Batman, a sympathetic pair of masses on the ferries, usw.  But I’ve seen more than once the claim that “This is an even braver statement of opposition to terrorism than Iron Man!”  Exactly where does your head have to be at in order for you to regard a movie that opposes terrorism as “brave”?

Gracchus, apparently you’re right.  They did film the real deal, and the studio cut it late in the process, too late to have the clips edited from the video game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtplnBb-dpM

Shame.

Ah, at least with the internet we may be moving toward a day when artists can create their own vision and distribute it without corporate weasels interfering and changing things for the worse to make them “marketable”.

Also, in my head “Lyra” was with an “ee” sound as in “Lyric”.  The “LIE-ra” pronunciation, especially since she’s such an honest character really grated.

No Country for Old Men, a decidedly conservative film that linked the evil of its nihilist serial killer to the decline of morals since the 1960’s

OK, I have *far* from perfect recall, I admit. But. I distinctly remember that right after those few lines about ma’am and sir and the 60s, they did say something (in reference to Chigurh) along the lines of “But this isn’t part of that. No, this is something else.” In other words, an explicit and outright negation that the psychopathic serial killer is part and parcel of the moral decline they were just discussing. You know, kinda like the complete total opposite of the point Klavan is trying to claim they make.

It’s Darwin’s eyeball all over again, isn’t it?

For the Batman people out there in the earliest comics Batman did off criminals quite regularly.

http://www.spike.com/video/cinemassacre-movie/2999422 gives more of the history of the Batman origins including clips of the serials, The Bat, The Bat Whispers, the early comics.

A lot of the Batman graphic novels have Batman being the liberal or least anti-fascist against the goverment headed by Lex Luthor. Superman on the other hand is the fascist enforcer.

“...but it still seems to me that the movie argues that they’re necessary to protect the city and its people at that moment—the status quo will be restored as soon as the crisis has passed.”

The movie’s pretty ambiguous on just how well all that extralegal, super-regrettable, necessary-we-swear shit worked out, though.  The cell-phone-tapping sonar saves the day, kind of, but Batman (the dude who thought kidnapping a foreign national from a sovereign state by means of a low-flying airplane and a really good harness was a perfectly fine idea) is troubled enough by its potential for abuse to give the keys to someone else and destroy it afterwards.  The fallout from that illegal arrest got them their information, but also cemented the Joker’s hold on the other underworld bosses.  The “enhanced interrogation”? Gordon loses control of the situation almost immediately, and the results it yields are counterproductive.  Denying medical care to detainees lets a bomb into the station.  Holding the Joker incommunicado short-circuits the detonation…until one of the guards giving in to the temptation to abuse a prisoner puts it right back into gear.  Most of the Joker’s plans seem to hinge on nobody doing the right (legal/moral/humane/decent/whatever) thing and instead acting like vindictive, aggressive, selfish animals.  People helping each other, cooperating, and going with their better instincts hampers his ability to destroy.

A lot of the Batman graphic novels have Batman being the liberal or least anti-fascist against the goverment headed by Lex Luthor. Superman on the other hand is the fascist enforcer.

I always pegged Batman as more of a libertarian.  Big philanthropist with limited or non-existent faith in government (how, exactly, does Arkaham Asylum even keep its’ budget) and constantly in conflict with the media / populist mob dominated by typically ignorant reporters or ultra-liberal softy quack shrinks.

Superman comes across as a “benevolent” dictator every now and again, but most of the authors after the 90s picked up on how “Superman solves everything by beating dissenters up” was becoming a rather depressing motif and took him in a different direction.  Even the movie “Superman 4” tackles the problem directly as Sup’s attempt to abolish nuclear weapons single handedly just gets him in more trouble than when he started.  The current Superman character leans less towards fascism and more towards generic helpfulness.

Most of the Joker’s plans seem to hinge on nobody doing the right (legal/moral/humane/decent/whatever) thing and instead acting like vindictive, aggressive, selfish animals.

Don’t forget the final scene, when the Joker has his men dress up as hostages and the hostages dress up like criminals, as he banks on a “shoot first, ask questions later” police policy.

God damn that was a good movie.

Gracchus, apparently you’re right.

Thanks Caren. I really wasn’t sure, and appreciate confirmation of my suspicion. I have a feeling that, as New Line looked at the rough cuts, they saw that this wasn’t going to be the next Harry Potter franchise after all, and decided to (literally) cut their losses.

Honestly, as much as I liked the movie’s art direction and SFX, the story as a whole is better off confined to the books. I was hoping that the movie would popularise the series, and spread its good message, but that’s the show-biz.

Also, in my head “Lyra” was with an “ee” sound as in “Lyric”.  The “LIE-ra” pronunciation, especially since she’s such an honest character really grated.

“Lie-ra” is Pullman’s pronunciation. Think of it in terms of the musical instrument invented by Hermes (the silver-tongued trickster and storyteller), played by Apollo (patron of the oracle), and given to Orpheus (who travels to the underworld to save his beloved). Being an atheist doesn’t preclude a love of mythology.

Yeah, I figured it was Pullman’s pronunciation, instead of a Princess Leee-ah/Princess Lay-ah thing, but that’s the thing about books and head pronunciations.

Leera, as in ‘lyric’ went well with her last name and didn’t have the “LIE” that’s the antithesis of her in it.

Oh well, apparently the rest of the thread is about “Batman”.

I saw it at the midnight show, and well, being from Chicago, was horribly distracted by my city in the background.  Thought it was cool how the tried to square off the Marina Towers balconies (Jetsons/corn cob buildings) and would think about how much CGI per frame that must have been.  And Singapore was McCormick Place! 

They messed less with the city than in “Batman Begins”, where they would move buildings around and then add crazy stuff like the monorail and Wayne Tower. 

So, actually the movie is all about the machinations and mob rule of supposedly “Democratic” Mayor Richie Daley vs. the machinations and crazy greed of supposedly “Democratic” Governor Rod Blagojevich.  It’s a smear job on “Democrats”, thereby making it a conservative film, except that Daley and Blagojevich are greedy, crazy, power-hungry tyrants, so it’s reality-based, making it liberal.

Batman Begins has the only villain that Batman does allow to die - mostly because he also is resurrected repeatedly to torment Batman’s slip from his morals.

Most of the Joker’s plans seem to hinge on nobody doing the right (legal/moral/humane/decent/whatever) thing and instead acting like vindictive, aggressive, selfish animals.

And if they don’t, he’ll kill ‘em himself. If Batman hadn’t intervened, the Joker would have sent both ferries to the bottom. That’s the way he rolls.

I’ve been a Batman fan since I was a kid, so over the years I’ve learned to look at political and social messages as sui generis to whichever continuity or interpretation I’m regarding at a given moment. The fascinating thing for me is finding the common and constant tropes in such a wildly varying set of interpretations of Batman, Gotham, and the various supporting characters and antagonists.

As far as the politics and messages behind the Nolan movies are concerned, the comment I made above about Iron Man apply equally well. As with all such movies, I pull out the interesting and thought-provoking comments (Alfred’s story about the jungle warlord stuck with me, and my response was much like Eileen’s at 10:07), ignore the rest, and enjoy the ride.

I think it’s a group inferiority complex. While liberals simply make hopefully successful movies, conservatives have to make conservative movies, or who else will.

“Don’t forget the final scene, when the Joker has his men dress up as hostages and the hostages dress up like criminals, as he banks on a “shoot first, ask questions later” police policy.”

Yup.  A cursory attempt to negotiate would have revealed something weird going on, if not made them wise to the whole charade.

It’s not like you’re really beaten over the head with it, though.  The movie functions in no small way as a Rorschach test.  The characters’ motives are understandable, their inclinations largely sympathetic, the risks and losses are real, and the rationale behind the actions which play into the Joker’s hands is fairly well-established and not without its strong points.  It’s hardly a guarantee that negotiating will result in fewer deaths than a surprise raid from SWAT; it doesn’t always, so it turns into a judgment-call that we can understand.  It’s just that in this case the Joker can rely on the system’s degraded state as a force multiplier because those judgment-calls are now consistently coming down on the side of injustice and brutality.

(how many people do you know who force their “father figures” to call them “master,” though?)

Don’t forget, “Master Bruce” is what you call a child under your care.  If Alfred was really being subordinate, he would call him “Mr. Wayne.”  It’s more of a, “Hey, kid, don’t forget I was the one who changed your diapers” reminder wrapped a mock-subordinate phrase.

“And if they don’t, he’ll kill ‘em himself. If Batman hadn’t intervened, the Joker would have sent both ferries to the bottom. That’s the way he rolls.”

I thought it was kind of neat how the two stories he tells about his scars sort of dovetail with the functioning of his campaign against society.  You can either mutilate yourself in an ultimately futile gesture in the service of a dysfunctional relationship, or you can be mutilated by an authority grown warped and abusive.

Caren: I’m sorry, but calling Lyra an “honest” character dosen’t really jive with my reading of the series. She’s certainly a very moral character, but her skill as a liar is repeatedly noted in all the books. She was named “Silvertounge” after all a name she was very proud of. By the final book, she had to ask the Master of Jordan College to believe her story, acknowledging the number of lies she told.

Now, one can argue that she spent the three books lying as a defense mechanism, and that she was always scrupulously honest with her friends, and never lied for personal gain. I just think calling her fundamentally honest is a little like the “Lying for Jesus” excuse.

Don’t mean to start a fight or anything. Just my opinion.

Either he killed her without the coin flip, which would violate his own rules, or he let her live, which would also violate his own rules.

Mnemosyne, I’m afraid I am going to have to disagree with you on this one.  Chigurh only offered her the coin toss after she said to him “You don’t have to do this.”  His offer of the coin toss was the only concession he could give her.  Everyone else in the movie that Chigurh killed was never offered the coin toss.  In fact, the only other person who was offered the coin toss was not killed.

BTW, it is strongly implied that he killed her, because when he steps out of the house, you see him wiping his shoe off, presumably because of the blood.

I interpreted the car crash as simply demonstrating that Chigurh was just as vulnerable to the whims of fate as everyone else was.

Notorious P.A.T., I was talking about people not acts, when I said the world does not provide the neat good-and-bad distinctions found in films. Sorry, I should have been more clear.

Don’t forget, “Master Bruce” is what you call a child under your care.  If Alfred was really being subordinate, he would call him “Mr. Wayne.” It’s more of a, “Hey, kid, don’t forget I was the one who changed your diapers” reminder wrapped a mock-subordinate phrase.

Good point—although it’s worth noting, I think, that in the original comics, Alfred came into Bruce Wayne’s employ when Bruce was already an adult.  Like I said, I think the writers and editors and filmmakers have tried to minimize or remove some of the character’s more off-putting qualities in recent years.

I interpreted the car crash as simply demonstrating that Chigurh was just as vulnerable to the whims of fate as everyone else was.

But it’s after he’s taken the money, right?  And we understand that he means to keep it?  (I may be misremembering—it’s been a while since I saw the movie).  It seems to me that the moment any character in a Coen Brothers movie indicates “I deserve more” (usually, more money), then you know things are about to start going badly for that character.

Good point Bradley.  However, while Chigurh is injured, we can assume he will eventually be healed and go on doing what he does.  If anything, the movie demonstrates that he is a survivor.

No, you have a point, LWF. 

I meant that as a character, she’s honest.  She may be manipulative, but once she starts her quest, she’s not pulling pranks for the fun of it.  She’s a loyal and honest friend.  She believes in saving Roger, and she doesn’t have ulterior motives there.  She lies to save Iorek, but it’s to save Iorek.  And really, what other power does she have? 

In the deleted scene, you see it: she honestly thinks her father is a good man and believes in the alethiometer’s “truth”: that she’s bringing her father, the Good Man, what he needs, which is the alethiometer.

The fact that the oracle betrays her faith in it, as oracles often do; the fact that her “good” father is nothing of the sort; those are the disillusionments and betrayals of that childlike trust, that honesty.  That childlike view, with the trust and belief that are sacrificed…and that makes the book so much stronger than the completely weasley way they wimped out in the movie.

It’s not in a “Lying for Jesus” way, b/c I’m not excusing the lying; it’s her character that’s honest in comparison to her parents and pretty much every authority figure in all three books.

Also (and not a small thing) she’s not an untrustworthy narrator, like those damn Brontes’ have.  Ugh.  Threw books across the room when they would announce shit like—oh by the way, the family I’ve workd for and talked about for the last 300 pages, are actually people I know, and you know them too!  Bwah hahahahaha.  Fucking Victorians.

SPOILER

Chigurh only offered her the coin toss after she said to him “You don’t have to do this.” His offer of the coin toss was the only concession he could give her.

In other words, he compromises his principles for her.  Otherwise, he’d just shoot her in the head and be done with it.

Don’t forget, the only character who’s offered a coin toss is the gas station attendant who doesn’t have anything that Chigurh really wants or needs.  He kills the guy whose car he steals without any compunction because he needs the car, and yet he offers Carla Jean the choice when he shouldn’t.  That’s the compromise that causes his problem.  If he hadn’t offered it and lost that time, he would have been out of the intersection before the other car got there.

I still think that it’s ambiguous whether or not he kills Carla Jean, but more to the point is that you don’t have to show the murder, because by then it doesn’t matter anymore.  He’s already doomed himself.

The Coens only believe in fate that you bring on yourself, if that makes sense—fate only kicks you in the ass if you’ve already made a series of bad decisions.

However, while Chigurh is injured, we can assume he will eventually be healed and go on doing what he does.  If anything, the movie demonstrates that he is a survivor.

I guess that’s where I’m more of a cynic—I assumed that this was his first step on a slippery slope down to a shallow grave in the desert, because once you start compromising in the Coens’ world, you can never stop.  Cf. Fargo.

So long as one is willing to equate “Recent years” with “last half-century or more”.

A half-century is fifty years.  The post-Crisis Batman—the one who was “raised” by Alfred—has existed for twenty-two years.

Quite honestly, claiming that that a bit of the character that has been absent for the last 95% of his lifetime has any relevance is a bit of a reach.

He’s a fictional character.  He doesn’t have a “lifetime.”  He just has different depictions—loyal servant, faithful friend, surrogate father, uptight priss, bumbling doofus, “comically” effeminate, voice of reason, whatever.  But, quite honestly, it’s absurd to suggest that we should ignore this character’s early stories as we discuss the political and social aspects of Batman as a figure in popular culture.

Have some writers written intelligent and/or touching stories about Batman’s relationship with Alfred?  No question (the last two issues of Grant Morrison’s recent Batman work stands out as some of the best).  But it doesn’t change the fact that he was created as working-class comic relief in stories about a rich guy who puts on a costume and beats up people who he’s decided need a beating.

I feel like I’ve offended you somehow, and I’m not quite sure how.  Don’t get me wrong—I love Batman.  Actually, every incarnation except the one in the Nolan movies (which I like well enough, but which frustrates me because I think just about every other version of the character I’ve ever read or seen has been better—except for the Shumacher movies, of course).  But I think it’s useful to talk about some of the strange or off-putting aspects of even the things I love—like Batman’s vicious libertarianism, or the unfortunate racism that creeps into the end of Huckleberry Finn, or the rather confused morality of the Star Wars movies, or misgoyny in rap lyrics, or… Well, you get the point.  But if I gave you the impression that I thought Batman as a character sucks, or that it’s foolish to like him, then let me set the record straight and make it clear that I’m the type of guy who has a poster from the 1966 movie—in French, no less—hung in his office.

And here I was just thinking Batman was a straussian/neocon story about the lies you have to tell the common folk for their own good…

I’d have to say that all of the blows-up-real-good stuff is fundamentally rightwing because of the way it buys into some version of the Uebermensch idea (better if he’s a tortured uebermensch, because then you can see that the highest duty in life is going against your own moral code for the good of the <strike>fatherland</strike>little people. Before this administration, I’d also have said that much of it was also authoritarian because it gets us to assume an authoritarian society (for the hero to rebel against and maybe overcome) but now that’s just gritty realism…

Frank Miller’s Batman is about the collapse of social order associated with corruption at every level.  It’s not even remotely fascist—Superman is seen as being a fool who lost his capacity to do good by suborning himself to the state.

The Dark Knight Returns is about people being true to their natures, and what happens when they don’t.  It’s also about the responsibility of adults to bequeath a world worth living in to their children.  It’s about the fact that even when one totally despairs, there is something which is so worth fighting for that there is no room for despair.

Remember, it’s Superman who totally fails to do any good whatsoever in the comic.  Only Bruce Wayne, who is willing to accept help freely offered and devotes himself to improving the capacities of his charges, has a long-term effect.

Actually, every incarnation except the one in the Nolan movies (which I like well enough, but which frustrates me because I think just about every other version of the character I’ve ever read or seen has been better—except for the Shumacher movies, of course).

Sorry, I’ve got to disagree with you.  Though Michael Keaton was underrated as Batman, I do think the Nolan films are better than the Burton films.  Heath Ledger’s Joker character in Dark Knight is far, far more interesting than Jack Nicholson’s character in Batman.

I also like that the Nolan films are bringing long-lost aspects of the Batman character back into the mythos.  In addition to the detective aspect, I liked that Nolan used the “useless playboy” cover in Batman Begins (with the great shot of the newspaper headline “Drunken Billionaire Burns Down Own Mansion”).

I also think the Bruce Wayne/Batman split is more ambiguous (in a good way) in the Nolan films.  It’s been popular the past few years to posit that there is no Bruce Wayne, only Batman, but Nolan approaches it from the other angle and makes Batman a creation of Bruce Wayne, not the other way around.  That leaves us room for the creation to take on a life of its own and do things that surprise Bruce, as all writers know their characters will eventually do.

The Dark Knight Returns is about people being true to their natures, and what happens when they don’t.

Plus it has Miller’s favorite go-to character, the Deformed Evil Gay Villain!

Though I love Dark Knight Returns and I liked the first few books of Batman: Year One, I just don’t think that Frank Miller is quite the genius he thinks he is.  He’s revealed himself to be a one-trick pony.  I’ll take Gaiman and Moore over Miller any day.

That’s the compromise that causes his problem.  If he hadn’t offered it and lost that time, he would have been out of the intersection before the other car got there.

Fair point!

I still think that it’s ambiguous whether or not he kills Carla Jean, but more to the point is that you don’t have to show the murder, because by then it doesn’t matter anymore.

On that one, it is implied that he killed Carla, just as we can assume he killed the guy with the truck with the chickens in the back.  Llewellyn is also killed offscreen, though in his case we do get to see the body.

Nolan approaches it from the other angle and makes Batman a creation of Bruce Wayne, not the other way around.

You just made me think of the end of Kill Bill, wherein Bill expounds on comic book superheroes.  He says that people like Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker have to put on their costumes to become Batman or Spiderman, whereas Superman is Superman and Clark Kent is his costume.

One more thing, though I didn’t read the book by Cormac McCarthy, it is my understanding that in the book Carla does accept the coin toss and loses.  Chigurh tells her it was impossible for her to have won.

Having actually read and watched Twilight (unlike, I’m guessing, every dimwit who classifies it pro-abstinence), I can say I wouldn’t classify it as pro-abstinence at all. And not only because Bella spends a large portion of the books trying nail Edward, but because of the sheer number of erotic fan fictions it has inspired.

“Plus it has Miller’s favorite go-to character, the Deformed Evil Gay Villain!”

...where?

He says that people like Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker have to put on their costumes to become Batman or Spiderman, whereas Superman is Superman and Clark Kent is his costume.

Exactly. And this is one of those core themes present throughout all incarnations of Batman (including the camp 1960s version): the obsession with identity, with the masked public persona vs. the hidden private one. A very compelling theme, for obvious reasons.

I loved the Burton aesthetic of Gotham City - fantastic towers with wacky buttresses in black and charcoal. Nolan’s Gotham is more real and that I think loses something.

Burton would probably be the first to credit the great production designer Anton Furst (not to mention Fritz Lang) with that wonderful aesthetic, although there’s no doubt it was a joint effort. Gotham’s main city square, a twisted version of Rockefeller Centre, still makes me smile.

I agree with you about Nolan’s Gotham, although there’s a nice consistency in how its look changes from the first film to the second—a little comment on how NYC changed between the 1970s/80s and the 1990s/2000s (but again, a Rorschach test evasion).

Gotham City is as important a character as Bruce Wayne/Batman—the various members of the rogues’ gallery come and go, but Gotham (like The Dude) abides. I’ll admit it’s the main point of fascination for me with Batman at this point, eclipsing the human characters.

...where?

In The Dark Knight Returns, Miller portrays the Joker (by definition deformed) as gay, with an erotic fixation on Batman. Whatever homophobia drives Miller to obsess over this stock villain in his work, in this case I will acknowledge that it was a novel take on the character that played off the Joker’s traditional appearance and mannerisms.

Man, I’m reading Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men…

All of this comic-book geekery is really getting to me.  Comic Overload!

>>I love Alan Moore, but he is INTENSELY paranoid.

They screwed up From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and watered down V for Vendetta’s message into oblivion (though the movie was still pretty good). After that, I’d be paranoid about what they do to my baby too.

I might be late to the party, but the reason Dark Knight, Spider-Man, etc, are being claimed by the right wing is pretty simple.  Conservatives believe that liberals are moral relativists.  They deny, therefore, (based on their ludicrous misinterpretation of moral relativism) that liberals are willing to, or even capable of, distinguishing good from evil; they (conservatives) believe that they (liberals) refuse to oppose evil because they (liberals) refuse to admit that evil exists.

Any movie that deals with good opposing evil - especially where ‘good’ wins, and has to fight physically to do so - is going to be seen as conservative, because conservatives have appropriated opposition to evil as a uniquely conservative trait.  Superhero movies (and 300, which, of course, was taken panel by panel from a Frank Miller graphic novel), by the nature of the genre, are uniquely susceptible to this sort of interpretation.

And speaking of Frank Miller:

“Frank Miller’s Batman is about the collapse of social order associated with corruption at every level.  It’s not even remotely fascist—Superman is seen as being a fool who lost his capacity to do good by suborning himself to the state. “

No.  Sorry, but no.  Superman is a fool, yes; but the state he subordinates himself to - decadent, immoral, ultra-liberal, homosexual - is pretty clearly parallel to the Weimar Republic.  Batman (and his army of gangbanging followers) represent the violent, phoenix-like rebirth of a new social order; they are fascists in the revolutionary, rather than the governmental, phase; you can see this playing itself out in The Dark Knight Strikes Back, which is really about Superman’s redemption qua Ubermensch…

but yeah.  Frank Miller = fascist.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Miller portrays the Joker (by definition deformed) as gay, with an erotic fixation on Batman. Whatever homophobia drives Miller to obsess over this stock villain in his work, in this case I will acknowledge that it was a novel take on the character that played off the Joker’s traditional appearance and mannerisms.

Yep, that’s the reference.  Within the context of the story, it’s actually fairly compassionate as Batman realizes too late that the Joker has been in love with him all these years and that maybe he could have handled the whole thing better, but it ended up morphing into Miller’s weird obsession with evil characters who are deformed and/or gay in his later work.

I also can’t help wondering if Harvey Pekar laughed his ass off when the Joker killed off David Letterman and his entire audience, but that’s a question for another day.

I keep meaning to read Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son—does anyone know if it’s any good?  Just about everything gets a good review on Amazon.

I just saw the gritty, realistic Dark Knight movie last night, of all times. I still prefer the fun of the first two Burton movies, because despite the Nolans’ delusions of creating a realistic hero movie, the perfection of the gadgetry and the seeming invincibility/unknowability of the Joker really undercuts that pretension. I mean, the 1989 and 2008 movies even have the same completely unrealistic confrontation between a relatively unarmed Joker and a technologically empowered Batman, be it in the Batwing or on a motorcycle (at least in 1989, Keaton actually tries to kill Nicholson with the guns on the Batwing). For being the agent of anarchy, everything does really seem to work out for him really well.

P.S. RIP to Pat Hingle, 1989’s Commissioner Gordon and… despite all the post-mortem accolades for Ledger as the scariest villain ever… Hingle was the one of the most menacing villains I’ve ever seen, with his “bag of oranges” monologue to Angelica Huston in The Grifters.

Jasmine, I must respectfully disagree with you regarding Twilight not being pro-abstinence.  I have read the book (unfortunately, I got sucked into the hype), and the author employs a common plot device to keep her lovers from sealing the deal.  It’s one I’ve read in other supernatural romance.  If they have sex, his super strength may kill her.  So that allows the author to have them merely cuddle and pine for each other in prime Gothic style.  In fact, Bella and Edward do not have sex until they are married.

I would say sorry for the spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read the books, but I seriously despise this series and its religious propaganda.  When I read the first book I didn’t know anything about Stepanie Meyer, and was appalled at her horrible writing skills, the Mary Sue quality of her main female protagonist and the bizarre little plot devices (such as the no sex rule).  When I found out she was Mormon, it explained a lot.

I keep meaning to read Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son—does anyone know if it’s any good?  Just about everything gets a good review on Amazon.

It’s pretty good.  Maybe my favorite Mark Millar book (although I’m pretty passionately ambivalent—if that’s possible—about most of Millar’s stuff), and the first two chapters are beautifully drawn.  There’s a sharp drop in quality in the last chapter/issue, before a final sequence—suggested by Grant Morrison, if rumors are to be believed—that’s just fantastic.

Three stars out of four.  A solid “B/B+” effort.

I just saw the gritty, realistic Dark Knight movie last night, of all times. I still prefer the fun of the first two Burton movies, because despite the Nolans’ delusions of creating a realistic hero movie, the perfection of the gadgetry and the seeming invincibility/unknowability of the Joker really undercuts that pretension.

I agree. Superhero movies are inherently unrealistic, so ‘gritty’ superheros usually just seem pointless to me. I also enjoyed the ridiculous Batman more than the ‘dark’ Batman.

Late to the party, but had to respond to this, as a former Narnia-lover who grew up to hate Lewis as pure evil:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t make any Narnia book that has the country of Calormen or Tash into a movie because of their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim content.”

While it’s true that Lewis based the Calormenans on European views of Arabs/Muslims (although it wouldn’t be hard to claim they were based on Byzantine Christians as well), I doubt that would be much of a problem. Tash was more based on Biblical-era Canaanite gods like Baal and Moloch. Should they choice, Calormen could be Aztec (Tash after all demands human sacrifice). The main point is that they aren’t like the English children who come to Narnia.

As I recall from the book, the Telmarines had a few Arab characteristics in the book, but Walden Media turned them into conquistadors instead. Frankly, that fit better given their history, but it also it made more sense to an American audience.

This. Wrong.

Read The Horse and His Boy (if you can stomach it - it’s awful). The entire book (minus the ending) is consumed with Muslim slurs. Tash may “look” like a Caananite god in his description (not given until the final book, The Last Battle, when Lewis decided that Allah hadn’t been clearly denoted as EVIL enough, see below), but it’s extremely clear in the context that Lewis is hewing to the “all ‘gods’ other than God+Jesus+HolyGhost are really demons in disguise’ worldview. To Lewis, Tash == Allah. The Calormen look Arabic, live in beautiful Arabic pleasure palaces with flowing water and gorgeous gardens, they eat food lifted out of the Arabian Nights, and - oh yeah - they say “weird” stuff like “may he live forever” and “peace be upon his head”.

There is just no way whatsoever to translate that to Aztec, and - by the way - how would such a translation be any less racist drek? (“We’re not saying Muslims are evil, we’re saying Aztecs were evil!”)

Lewis was deeply concerned by attempts to reconcile the Christian God with the Muslim God. All those “Allah is God/Jesus and God/Jesus is Allah” people? Lewis wet his pants over that. That’s why the main plot of The Last Battle is an evil attempt to convince the Narnians that Aslan and Tash are the same entity. This final book is also where the “Tash requires human sacrifice” angle asserts itself, a detail he neglected to mention in The Horse and His Boy where, you know, it would have been plot relevant. Lewis was apparently concerned by his 7th book that he hadn’t made Allah evil enough and decided to jazz it up a bit.

I’ve got nothing against Christians, but seriously, Lewis was evil incarnate. Peace out.

Late to the discussion but Tommykey - you are correct that Chigurh kills her in the end - but I don’t recall any suggestion in the book that she had no chance.  The coin flip was her chance, furthermore the car wreck is a random happening and you should absolutely not read any moral into it about principles and greed. The book and movie are essential amoral in the true sense of the word and its laughable that anyone would see this as “conservative”.  It is almost nihilistic in its outlook and the complete opposite of a conservative-Christian worldview.

I’d strongly recommend reading the novel; obviously seeing the movie will diminish some of the suspense (luckily I read the novel first) but there is a lot more than meets the eye in the novel as one might expect from McCarthy.  Also be warned - the movie actually tones down the violence in comparison to the book if you can believe that.

Lewis was evil incarnate.

When I think “evil incarnate,” I generally think “war criminals,” serial killers, and those who exploit the weak for their own gain. “Guy who wrote a book allegorically portraying a religion he disagreed with as antithetical to his own religion” doesn’t really fall into the “evil incarnate” category.

On the Batman as fascist meme:

I have to respectfully disagree with the simplistic notion that Miller’s view and Batman are fascist

Actually, Superman’s adherence to “good boy rules” (as in the President being, by definition, Good and thus Sman always being at his command) is something that came up for cutting, vicious commentary in Frank Miller’s simultaneously fascist/antifascist The Dark Knight Returns: that Good lies in struggling against evil even when it comes in the form of lawful authority. That was a concept that “the big blue boy scout” has trouble with, so, in that sense, he is a conservative hero: he will choose law even when law is visibly in the hands of evil or narrow national ends.

and…...........................

[I h]ave to disagree with ... the notion that Miller’s Batman is a jackbooted thug, for a number of reasons.

In my first post I commented on The Dark Knight Returns being both fascist and antifascist. There is much in it that has a fascist bent: the “we” element of the superheroes, ie being superior and dismissive of the lessers, the purity of violence, the brainless leftie-bashing, tough talk about “criminals rights” hurting the society, the notion of great man driven by and to destiny, etc..

However, Miller’s Batman is distinctly antifascist in a number of more important ways:

> Wayne has chosen retirement and turned inwards (to attempted self-destruction, admittedly), and only is reawakened to be Batman again by the near-disintegration of the society around him, both at the street level (gangs, a near-medieval level of societal disintegration) but also at the political level (ie: the US government being corrupt, obsessed with the cold war to the point of letting its cities rot, etc.).

> Batman retains his loathing for the gun, referring to it as a coward’s weapon. Fascism cannot live without the gun, as that is the ultimate vehicle for the imposition of the will of the brute upon the civilized.

> The essence of jackbooted thugs is that they swagger towards and commit violence upon the weak and the helpless, whereas Batman stands in their defence. He is not goody-goody idealistic about it, in that he doesn’t seem to care much for people as people, but he is willing to be horribly killed, if necessary, to protect them.

> Batman as a solitary figure stands as a direct repudiation of the fascist notion that only the collectivity matters, that only marching in ranks matters. His attack on the mutant gangs is essentially an (almost hare-brained) act of individualism against gangs of thugs who better fit the notion of jackbooted thugs. (The mutants, however, are nihilists, so the example only goes so far, but they are bullies around a larger-than-life leader figure, so the example remains valid.)

> Batman has no sense of there being “good” victims worthy of protection and “bad” victims who can be crushed or ignored, which is a very anti-nazi viewpoint. One of his first acts on his return is to clobber a pimp who is hurting a prostitute; the true nazi would disdain the notion that such a “whore” would have any value. (Indeed, the Nazi martyr and anthem creator, Horst Wessel, was a pimp.)

>He embodies Burke’s dictum that evil flourishes where the good do nothing. After the pimp episode Batman shreds the money given by the pimp to a taxi driver to shut up during the attack. The clear message: playing along and looking the other way is a wrongful act. But he leaves the driver wholly untouched and unharmed, a distinction that no fascist would tolerate for a second: an enemy is an enemy and exists to be brutalized. Even semi-insane, Wayne retains a sense of proportion.

I think that’s enough for now, save for one important point. What does Batman feel angriest at Superman for, in their battle near the end? He is angry that Superman “always knew how to say yes, to anybody with a flag”. That statement is antifascist to an extreme. Miller’s disdain for easy answers, though, comes in the statement which follows that: “you gave them [i.e. the corrupt government] the power that should have been ours”. Is he talking about the honest, the vox populi (antifascist concept)? Or superheroes, which is a fascist concept? Miller doesn’t answer the question, preferring to leave the question open to debate.  ...

Continuing the thought above,
Fronts NYC had a key point nailed:

Miller’s sequel, “Dark Knight Strikes Back” extends the very anti-authoritarian streak of the first one and continues with media talking heads as greek chorus motif that features the comic dopplegangers of George Will, Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews huffing and hawing about the dangers and immorality of the Superhero revolution that takes place. The Batman character embodies a central paradox regarding superheros and their fascistic tendencies. The American comic industry was largely started by a small group of the sons of jewish immigrants, who had a lefty tilt. During WWII every comic enlisted in the war effort and created propangandistic stories where Captain America or Superman would beat up Hilter or Hirohito. The central irony here being that while they were enlisted to fight the axis powers, the superhero genre itself depended on many fascist ideas, namely that might makes right and violence is a great way to solve conflicts. Batman–especially in the hands of Frank Miller–is a vehicle to explore this contradiction. Bruce Wayne fights crime for selfish reasons, but is entirely selfless in doing so. His own force of will is the only justice or authority that he answers too, yet understands and distrusts deeply this trait in others. Ultimately, I think the Batman mythology reminds us how just how close the line between hero and villian really is.

If you have the time, that whole post and thread, ”Ayn Rand said the Ubermensch belongs to us”.

but I don’t recall any suggestion in the book that she had no chance.

Hi Soil Creep.  Again, not having had the benefit of having read the book, I read somewhere that after Carla calls the coin wrong, Chigurh tells her that it was cosmically impossible for her to have called it right or something along those lines.  In other words, she was destined to die, so she was therefore destined to make the wrong call.

Tells you what a fascinating movie it is that people can disagree so much about what this or that scene meant and so forth.

I think some people disliked the movie because they felt they were being set up for some climactic showdown between Moss and Chigurh and the sheriff and it never happens.  Moss is killed off screen, Chigurh limps away after a car accident, and the story ends with the sheriff brooding on the whole thing.  For me, the climax of the movie is when the sheriff (EdTom?) enters the motel room where Moss was killed and you think he is going to encounter Chigurh.  The movie does seem ambiguous as to where Chigurh is in relation to the sheriff when he enters the room.  Is he hiding behind the door? Is he in the next room?  Outside?

Essie,
Yes, Lewis based Calormen on orientalist, Muslim fantasy. I don’t doubt for a second that he wasn’t trying to copy Constantinople in the Byzantine era, but many of orientalist fantasies are based on medieval Frankish views of the Eastern Empire (as well as Classical Greek views of Persia). Thus there are ways that a screenwriter could create a fantasy Calormen without directly drawing on Lewis’s anti-Muslim stereotypes.
My point about the Calormen’s being potentially Aztecs was only to emphasize that any film makers trying to make A Horse and His Boy or The Last Battle are not bound to use the Muslim, Orientalist stereotypes that Lewis employed.
So long as Calormen is alien (i.e. not identifiably Narinian/ Western European, those visual cues have already been established) and opulent, it need not be obviously based on fantasy Muslim society or any historic society at all.

Tyro.

Histrogeek,

To me, there’s a gaping chasm between your first post which seems to say that, yeah, the Calormen might of kind of been Muslims, but they could have been Byzantine Christians or even Aztecs and your second post which says, OK, the Calormen are Muslims, but Hollywood can do whatever the fuck they want.

I completely agree that Hollywood can do whatever the fuck they want with regards to Lewis’ work.

However, I think it is worth noting that:

1. Certain CoN books are clearly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and perpetuate ugly racism.

2. Certain CoN books clearly insists that (minus two token Arabs) all Arabs/Muslims worship a demon instead of Allah/God and are going to miss out on Heaven.

3. Pretending this is not the case is what is allowing these movies to have so much mainstream traction (most liberals haven’t read HaHB and won’t) and are causing otherwise progressive parents to unknowingly buy racist drek for their children.

I reiterate my suggestion that you re-read HaHB - “copying Constantinople” is very much not what Lewis does in HaHB and given that you ignored all my other points from the book, I kind of feel like maybe you haven’t read the book. Because it’s bad, it’s blatant, and it’s disgusting.

Hmm. When I read the books as a kid, I was a Catholic school girl who had actually read the Bible, and I was also familiar with Islam in the abstract, having read about the Crusades and such. And I didn’t pick up that Tash was supposed to be Allah—I thought he was Ba’al. “The Last Battle” made this very clear to me. I suspect part of the *reason* I felt so strongly that Tash was Ba’al and not Allah was the child sacrifice and the fact that Tash was clearly a demon; that is, having already learned that Allah was the name of God as worshipped by Muslims, I honestly never picked up that Lewis thought of God and Allah as two separate entities and that Allah was demonic. I thought he was referencing a home-grown Judeo-Christian demon.

Which, of course, made the whole “Tash is the same as Aslan” thing a bit confusing to me, so I can see that you’re right and that was Lewis’ intent. But even as a smart, educated child with a religious background, I didn’t get it. I am not sure that the average child will pick it up either.

I do think the concept of “If you do good in evil’s name, you still serve good; if you do evil in good’s name, you still do evil” is profound, important, and *particularly* important for the religious to learn, because they are surrounded by a milieu that tries to tell them how important it is to serve evil in the name of good (gay-bashing, going to war, denying women equal rights…) For that alone, I appreciate “The Last Battle”. Mostly, though, I found it a very depressing and upsetting book and it was really painful to me when I realized that the Pevensies were in fact dead and the book was trying to sell me on the concept that death is a wonderful alternate world to go to, and I wasn’t buying any.

I rather disliked “The Horse and his Boy” too, but this was mainly because I actually wasn’t that interested in reading about the Calormenes. I much preferred the stories about human children who go to Narnia and have adventures. I also thought “Prince Caspian” was boring as shit. Having seen the movie, I still do.

“But even as a smart, educated child with a religious background, I didn’t get it.”

I read it when I was a kid and found the Arab/Muslim/Allah thing to be barely allegorical.  He might as well have just spelled everything backwards for all the subtlety he used.  There’s probably a difference if you’re reading it with a Catholic background or a more general Protestant background, though.  Modern lay Catholics in general seem to be less paranoid tolerance invoking god’s wrath.